Hi Hope4tbest, Yes, I totally empathise with emotional stress and the onset of pain and/or flare. Although, much better managed now, I too use to have horrible "flash backs", and could actually feel the impact, smell the airbags and hear the sounds of the sirens and would go into a complete panic attack, which then induced my pain. Sirens will still set me off and occasionally I wake up in the middle of the night for no reason and smell that awful smell. Stress has a major role in my pain. Even when one of the kids have a problem or call me upset I can go from a 2 to a 10 in seconds. Some of it I can control and some I can't. It does amaze me though that memories of stressful times actually creates physical pain. The mind is truly a powerful thing. I have learned many techniques on how to calm the mind and then the pain. But I do still have moments when my adrenalin is so obnoxious even those tools that I have learned don't work, I just have to ride it out. Best wishes to you, it must have been wonderful to have such an awesome sister. It sounds as though you did not have time to process the situation, time will heal some of that and hopefully the pain will turn into a smile and laughter. God Bless

Jeanie