Heya all.

Firstly I love all you guys and you are all so awesome - you don't realise what a difference you all make to my day and my life.. it is so great to feel I can come to a place where people understand.

Well... today has been... quite a day. Been struggling with good old RSD as ever and it's been cold and raining here - WHY did I choose a university in Bath?

Saw van guy - this process is going to be alot longer than I thought - was hoping that it would be "well, you passed your driving test in a cripple car so lets give you a bigger car so we can shove your wheelchair in and thus you can then actually USE the car WITHOUT having to have the spare person to lift you out of the car at the other end. Apparently, I now have it written that WOEIWR (whatever on earth I have wrong with me today) is degenerative. Wow. Thanks for telling me! Thus the person was trying to tell me that I really should consider stopping driving and just getting a passenger van. Anyway, he's agreed that I can drive, but I now have to have a different van because I need new controls. They are going to try and either make the steering joystick controlled or some other high tech gadgetry..However. This all takes time - so I could be looking at another 6 months or possibly more without a van.

Does anyone else have issues with heat sensation? I can't really feel it. And... well... I was hearing up my wheat bag earlier which I use when it's cold and damp just to warm up stupid limbs and it was so hot I burnt my hip - but not very badly. I then heated it up again for my left arm which is being a total b**** at the moment and has to have moist heat before restretching it. I didn't realise it was hot again until my carer came running in because she'd smelt it burning and I'd just been sitting there. so now have the most amazing burn running the entire length of my left arm. To cap it all, I was with my boys (my... lovely, yummy, rugby boys that live in the university flat next to mine) and they were heating the pack up again and thought I said 20mins not 2. I noticed after about 15 minutes and realised that it was about to blow up... so grabbed the bag and chucked it on my lap - and of course because of the pain of moving fast I went in to "body lock down mode"... After a minutes stunned silence Ben grabbed it off my lap and ran with it outside (sounds heroic until you realise we get charged for setting fire alarms off - especially for exploded lavender). So am now burnt pretty roughly on my left leg from hip to knee and my left arm. oops. It REALLY hurts now though and I can't believe I was that stupid!! But, at least it was bits I'm used to not working anyway - and what's a but more pain to an RSDer?

So... have managed to destroy the wheat bag (had it confiscated by the boys - only to be used under strict supervision of anyone that isn't me)... get told about the degeneration (I personally thought that what they meant was that I wasn't likely to get better - not that I was going to get worse - not really sure where worse goes from here physically - well, I suppose if I get ill to stay in uni - but that is NOT going to happen.. (though hey, thinking about uni - I may appply for a pain management condition for my year placement - which I can take in the US - so I'll let you kjnow if I decide to go there and then you can tell me the great places to go and which hospitals are good.. (there's a great research position in Harvard they were telling us about but it's in an area I'm not very interested in).

Loads of Love

Froggsy xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx