Dear momof4 -

As one who has spent about as much time and energy chasing information in this as anyone (although admittedly only pursuing of late those treatments that (1) were supported by reliable literature, (2) were not contrindicated for me and (3) I could afford) I have found that I use the gathering of information as a means of blotting out some of the experience of RSD, even if it is only at the emotional level.

In other words, to the extent I am not allowing myself to fully experience my emotional reactions to RSD (even if they are terror, hopelessness, fear, etc.) in the name of hope, then hope is indeed the enemy of acceptance. Only once I can look the thing square in the eye, down to my deepest levels of dread, can I say that I have accepted RSD. And here, acceptance, becomes a good thing indeed, for as I open myself fully to the most unpleasant of emotional states, at least over time, I can find peace within them, as paradoxical as that may sound.

Think of it as a good existentialist challenge.

Mike

ps A few months ago, I showed The Natural History of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, Schwartzman RJ, Erwin KL, Alexander GM, Clin J Pain 2009; 25:273-280, full text at http://www.rsds.org/2/library/articl...lexanderGM.pdf (in up to 40 years of following 656 individual adult patients who had CRPS-1 for a minimum of one year, there was no case of spontaneous remission: in kids it's an entirely different story) to a doctor who had been treating me for a long time and asked him why when I came to him he said that most cases go into remission. He replied, " . . . most people come to me and they're in great pain. They're frightened. What are you going to do? You've got to give them hope!"

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I better connected with the first doctor who diagnosed me, who looked at me with his dark Syrian eyes, a year or two later, and said, "RSD is lifelong and progressive; you will get worse." Then too, Dr. No. 1 did refer me to a pain psychologist who in turn referred me to an MBSR teacher, who assigned everyone in the class The Wisdom of No Escape and the Path of Loving Kindness by Pema Chödrön, so indirectly, perhaps he did his job: in my case.

But in general, it's been my experience that doctors are way too light, in telling patients all they know of the likely course and effects of this disease - which according to Schwartzman et al, above - seem pretty well settled for the individual patient by the one year mark. Would that it were otherwise, so that the healing process could begin that much sooner.