Hi everyone,

Thought I would introduce myself. I am 39 years old, married and a mom to 2 beautiful girls. One is 18 and the other is 2 and a half.

On Oct 15th/2010 I was hurt at work. I work with special needs children and this year I was put with a very aggressive student. He grabbed me by the hair and cranked my neck back and then when I reached up with my right arm he grabbed it and gave it a good pull. At the time of the injury my shoulder/neck felt like it was on fire and that fire has not gone away in 5 months. I am also getting a lot of different symptoms as well. My symptoms are as follows:

Constant burning feeling in my shoulder and sometimes neck that seems to increase due to movement and stress.
Swelling/tightness in my shoulder that never seems to go away.
Shooting pains from my shoulder down my arm and a shooting pain from my ring finger up the arm.
My whole arm and hand can ache at times.
Sweating from my pinky and ring finger even when limb is cold. I have just noticed in the last 2 weeks that all 4 fingers sweat now as well.
white dots (patchy) up my arm.
Tingling in my fingers and in the middle of the night my arm goes asleep 2-3 times and is completely numb.
A constant Migraine.
Only being able to sleep 1-3 hours at a time and wake up many times during the night due to burning pain.
Loss of range of motion in my right arm. Unable to lift it very high.
Fingers swell and turn a bluish color at times.
Limb will get very cold (turns white) or very warm (turns red) at times.
I am also finding I can no longer tolerate heat or ice packs any more or my arm will turn bluish and cold and burning feeling will increase.
Also my right hand is very dry and itchy.

I was recently diagnosed with CRPS (RSD) by a neurologist and a pain medicine specialist.

I am currently taking Cymbalta (for the pain), have naproxen (which doesn't seem to do anything) and Oxycotin.

I am starting a new physio therapy next week. I will be going 3 times a week for 2 hours a day. I am a bit concerned about this as I would still like to have some quality of life and not just pain all the time.

My pain doc tells me that I have to work through the pain. I understand I have to get this limb moving but at the same time I don't know how much pain I should have to go through. As I am sure you all know it hurts just to move the limb in the slightest and if I move it a lot I spend the next 24 hours curled up in a ball in pain.

Anyways that is a quick introduction of myself and what I am currently going through. I look forward to getting to know all of you and sharing advice/support with each other.

Take care,
Karen