Originally Posted by mjl1261

I wish there were one or two things that I could point to and say that's what put my husband in remission. Unfortunately, it was one of several things or even a combination of all of them.

He had two surgeries (including a nerve graft from his ankle) on his hand to repair damage from a table saw. He spent two weeks in a splint and was told no finger movement whatsoever. Three (I think) more weeks in a splint with only passive movement allowed, with three visits per week to physical therapy. A couple of weeks into physical therapy, he started complaining about severe burning pain and increased swelling. His pain was in one spot on his hand, probably the size of a pencil eraser.

His surgeon diagnosed him right away with CRPS and sent him to a pain doctor. They started him on 400mg gabapentin three times a day. He couldn't tell a difference in the pain level. Ultimately, they had him up to 1200mg three times a day with no noticable change in pain level.

They scheduled him for a brachial plexus block which worked for about 12 hours. Then he had a stellate ganglion block which worked for about 8 hours. After another SGB, my husband said, while numb from shoulder to fingertip, "It still hurts in that spot." On the drive home from the hospital, he said the vibrations from the car ride made his pain go to a 7. We were completely bummed. By this time he had all of the classic CRPS symptoms: temperature changes, skin color changes, wild hair and nail growth on that hand, swelling, and that burning pain. Riding in the car always caused a spike. But he never had the allodynia that so many suffer from. And none of the symptoms ever spread above his wrist.

Meanwhile, he was still going to PT three times a week and doing all the same exercises at home in the evening. He did them every night, without fail, even on Christmas. Gradually he quit complaining about the pain and by Christmas (four months after the accident) said he wanted to stop the gabapentin. He said it wasn't helping and it was killing his short term memory. The doctor agreed to let him try and told him to drop to 800mg for a few days, then 400mg for a few more. He was completely off medication in a week. He said there was an increase in pain but not enough to make him want to go back on meds. He said it was months before his short term memory improved.

He kept doing his PT exercise and we added a nightly epsom salt soak to try to help with swelling. He also started taking N-Acetyl Cystein daily. Over the next three months, his swelling improved, the color and temperature changes went away, and the hair and nail growth returned to normal.

So what put him into remission? I really can't say. If you ask me, I think I would not be typing these words today had he not been diagnosed so quickly. I think the aggressive PT was a huge part, plus the fact that he did the exercises religiously on his own. Did the blocks help? Who knows? On the surface it appears not, but maybe one or more of them flipped some switch somewhere.

Today he takes no medications and has no pain. There's nothing he can't do today that he did before the accident except what's limited by the extensive nerve damage done by the table saw. He mows, weed eats, runs a chainsaw, he's used a plate compactor, he's run a grinder up his leg to the point where I thought he'd need stitches. I held my breath for days after each of these activities, certain that his symptoms would come back, but so far they haven't. The only remaining symptom he has is a sensitivity to cold in that hand. He wears his mittens even when the temperature is in the mid-50s.

I did make him sell the table saw.