Hi Coffeebean,
I'm sorry you are in a big flare. Surgery is certainly something to be stressed over. I'm sure you have discussed pre-arrangement to avoid spread. I experienced anxiety attacks for the first time when I got RSD. Didn't know what was going on, as it was 4 years before diagnosis. But anxiety is part of the Limbic part of brain that is affected. Anti-anxiety med ,to me and my Dr., is just as important as pain meds. It calms the sympathetic nervous system and aids in pain prevention.
My sleep med quit working also and I wasn't going to sleep till 5-6 in a.m. It was awful. I was a mess. Saw my Dr. and he put me on a med that he is just finishing a trial study of 200 people. The med was in study for fibromyalgia-low dose - and found it greatly helped with sleeping. I have fibro. so he put me on 300 mg. of seroquel and I sleep sound 9 hrs of restorative sleep. Because of the good sleep, he cut the anti-anxiety med in half. From 6mg to 3mg. But lots of days I only take 2mg. It's lorazepam. He left it up to me for the pain med. I cut back from 6 vicodin a day to 2-3 a day.
Seroquel in large dosage is for bipolar and schizophrenia, which I don't have, but the pharmaceutical company did this trial of low dose, to see it affect on fibro. I've been on it about 7 weeks now. I'm getting my life back, able to drive, grocery shop, errands etc.Sleeping sound sleep is a gift. I'm so grateful.
It's good to hear from you again. 4 weeks seem like a long time. I just went thru kidney,liver, heart, tests-all good except low on vit.D and hormones. Saw a hormone Dr. and doing bio-identical hormone treatment plus taking 2,000 vitamin D.
I get terrible headaches too. I have trigeminal nerve disorder. And I fell and ruptured a disk in my neck and get terrible headaches from that. Fibro causes achiness, we have very sore spots at trigger points, like the elbow. I think quite a few RSDers have Fibro.
Hope you get some answers and good treatment. I had a EKG that was abnormal and went to cardiologist and went thru lots of tests and all was fine. But I do have high blood pressure from RSD. It's an autonomic disorder, so affects internal organ that are involuntary, like heart, lungs, kidneys, bladder, body temperature, sweating, circulation.
Let us hear back from you-Take care, your friend loretta