Dear Kim -

I am so sorry to hear what happened, even if it was inevitable. I hope and trust that you have a good WC attorney.

Looking at some of your earlier posts, I get the feeling that you have a pretty good grasp of the physicians in your area. Sandy suggested that I might be able to offer something, but while I have access to a remarkable little search engine, showing the names, addresses, etc. of those pain management specialists who have been board certified by the American Board of Pain Medicine (ABPM), a certification that is only given after the doctor completes a formal residency or fellowship in pain medicine and then sits for an 8 hour written exam. (This is in contrast to another "certifying" organization that requires no formal training in the field.) Here's a link that lays out who they are http://www.abpm.org/about/index.html and here's the search engine http://www.association-office.com/ab...dir/search.cfm

Checking out MapQuest I see that Galina would be a lot closer to Baltimore if you had a boat. As it is, it's over an hour and a half away. Looking instead at those neurologists and anesthesiologists in Eastern Maryland and Delaware who have been certified in pain medicine by the APBM, we have the following:

John Y. Chun, MD
1325 Mount Hermon Rd Ste 14B
Salisbury, MD 21804
Office Phone: (410)677-3125
Office Fax: (410)742-0604
Cellular Phone: (443)235-2337

Brent Fox, MD
703 Lakeside Dr
Salisbury, MD 21801
Office Phone: (443)783-3543

Thomas M. Rosenthal, MD
322 W Carroll St
Salisbury, MD 21801-5412
Office Fax: (410)548-4119
Office Phone: (410)860-8446

Emmanuel Devotta, MD
Brandywine Pain Center
7th & Clayton St
Wilmington, DE 19805
Office Phone: (302)998-2585
Office E-Mail: brandywinepm@yahoo.com

Please note that I did not include those pain docs with an initial residency in physical medicine. It may be my own personal prejudice, but I have never found them helpful in the treatment of CRPS.

That said, I have no idea what any of their bedside manners are like, or whether they accept WC patients. That said, I hope it's useful.

Finally, in an earlier post you mentioned Johns Hopkins. From what I can see in running the names of their faculty through PubMed, they are not really on the cutting edge in terms of CRPS research. And when I went out there in 2006, I had the most abysmal patient care experience in my life, where I was initially referred from a rheumatologist at the Mayo Clinic to his counterpart at Hopkins, but he couldn't see me because CRPS is "not a defined rheumatological condition," so he passed it over to the top dog in the Pain Division and it got passed downhill from there, until I wound up seeing a newly minted "Instructor in Neurology" who asked me in frustration what she was supposed to do for me. When I suggested asking the aforesaid Dr. Top Dog, she said, "What makes you think he would return my call?"

That said, the big exception to my riff on Hopkins is if anyone has issues of female pelvic pain. Check it out, Johns Hopkins Research Program for the Study of Chronic Pain Syndromes in Women, Ursula Wesselmann, M.D., Ph.D., Principal Investigator at http://www.neuro.jhmi.edu/PelvicPain/home.html (Supposed to be very good.)

Sorry you had such a rough day.

Mike

ps I always respect a doctor who is willing to give out his or her cell phone number.