I would definitely recommend NSAIDs (if you can tolerate them and haven't been told to avoid them) to help with both pain and inflammation. Along with my gabapentin, the next most important medication is Naproxen Sodium. You can buy generic off the shelf very inexpensively. It's the same formulation as Aleve, just cheaper. I use the 220 mg tablets; two of them will get you close to the 500 mg often prescribed dosage. Ibuprofen works, but it only lasts for about 2-3 hours and Naproxen Sodium will get many people 6-8 hours of relief. Best to take it with a little food as they can be hard on the stomach for some people.

As far as symptoms go, the one thing to keep in mind is that it is a very UNIQUE condition. So while you may have some of the same symptoms that the next person does, you might not too. And you should know that you do NOT need to have "all" of the traditional symptoms to get a diagnosis.

And this is something really important to commit to your memory: "CRPS is widely misunderstood, even by professionals". That is why you need to be treated and diagnosed by professionals who have experience. I'll bet I saw 10 doctors and professionals before I found a couple that knew CRPS and I was able to be diagnosed; mine was actually a group diagnosis......One doctor I saw never treated anyone with it and one doctor had only seen two cases in 26 years. To those, you say thank you and head for the door.

As far as tests go, you are going to get a whole lot of difference in opinion on that. Many (most) are not going to give you a conclusive yes or no answer. So because of the difficulty in testing for CRPS, I'm going to suggest you see a number of doctors and let them decide your path with testing.

Here are some links to CRPS articles I have bookmarked. Check them out; they might be helpful to you! The last link has a lot of very good information, even though Dr. Hooshmand is now retired.

http://www.podiatrytoday.com/article/2672

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/1145318-overview

http://rsdrx.com/