Loretta; Interesting post.

My RSD started with an injury. At the time I knew it was serious but didn't really understand how or in what way. I'd never heard of a disease like RSD and the doctors were bending over backward not to tell me. My triggers were unknown and the only symptom was a pretty constant very low level pain in the hand. I was tired a lot and felt stress more keenly but didn't suspect this might be related. Stress manifested itself in bad digestion and this too wasn't connected.

As time went on the triggers started becoming apparent. If I used the hand or there were shocks to it then it would hurt more the following day. I bagan doing things one handed. By this time they were providing some medical care but I still didn't know anything. It was only after injuring my ankle (probably caused by the RSD) that it came out of the partial remission and started spreading. It seemed almost as though it first started creeping into the other systems and then up my arm until I had what seemed like a classic case of shoulder hand syndrome.

Since then it has tried to spread to almost any new injury site. I cut my ear a couple years back and it sometimes suffers severe high intensity pain but I do have means to control it and 250 mg of grape seed extract every third day seems to shut it up. I usually need to keep my hair off of it and cold sometimes affects it.

The right hand also shows some signs of RSD and the site of an angiogram from 2003.

It also is progressively expanding down from the shoulder as well as up into the neck and around to the front. As the area expands though it seems the problems become less "focused". It's almost as though this thing can cause only a set amount of pain at any given time and that can be all in the back of my hand or spread around a lot.

Of course the pain can be tremendous so avoiding the triggers still seems the way to cope. I do not want a spread but so far the spread hasn't been an extreme problem. It would become one if the right hand gave out or I couldn't walk. The spread is just now reaching down to a pre-existing back condition and this is very frightening as well. It seems to set off the pain in the back but I can simply ignore this now and it goes away. If I actually hurt my back it might prove more serious. I'm extremely cautious.

It feels like living on a bubble for eleven years sometimes but everyone here gives me a lot of courage to replace what seemed to evaporate with the disease.