Quote:
Originally Posted by fmichael
Ginnie was a little luckier than I was, but I was still caught relatively early: at least by the standards of 2001. I started having exceptional pain while my ankle was cast, while my ortho had the sense to refer me to a kindly old gent who was considered a founder of pain medicine, he didn't have the sense to tell them to immediately get me out of the cast, but instead doubled my dose of Vioxx to 50 mg/day. It was only a couple of months later, when my internist - looking for an answer - sent me to a rheumatologist, who ran his battery of blood tests, all of which were normal, but who then sat me down and gave me the tentative Dx of RSD.
The old pain doc saw me a couple of days later and I got my first LSB under fluoroscopy, with no change of any kind. He repeated it a week later, but the second time did it bi-laterally, and WHAM: 10 days remission! That, of course, was the "good news" . . .
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fmichael
Ginnie was a little luckier than I was, but I was still caught relatively early: at least by the standards of 2001. I started having exceptional pain while my ankle was cast, while my ortho had the sense to refer me to a kindly old gent who was considered a founder of pain medicine, he didn't have the sense to tell them to immediately get me out of the cast, but instead doubled my dose of Vioxx to 50 mg/day. It was only a couple of months later, when my internist - looking for an answer - sent me to a rheumatologist, who ran his battery of blood tests, all of which were normal, but who then sat me down and gave me the tentative Dx of RSD.
The old pain doc saw me a couple of days later and I got my first LSB under fluoroscopy, with no change of any kind. He repeated it a week later, but the second time did it bi-laterally, and WHAM: 10 days remission! That, of course, was the "good news" . . .
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"Good news"...oh my. I've read some of your posts and I can see you've been through so much. You are an inspiration and a good role model.
I had a contusion on my shin after having a varicose vein removed from my right calf just over 2 mos. ago. I was put under general anesthesia for the surgery so I wonder what happened. Surgeon says "I have no idea..you were placed on your back, just like the 700 other procedures like this I've done, and your shin was never touched." I'll never know I guess. Something "touched" it to say the least. The surgical areas healed nicely but the shin/leg pain persists and is getting more severe and spreading up and down my leg (knee is now stiff).
I was referred to a pain management practice that's literally in the same building and under the same company as the surgeon's practice. 1st visit there I was told by a physician's assistant that I likely had rsd/crps just going off of the symptoms and answering her questions. So, the next week I had 3 lumbar sympathetic blocks. With all 3 of them, I experienced warmth and pain relief for several hours. They had me see a pain specialist physician who then informed me that since the blocks were "unsuccessful", I don't have rsd/crps. I don't want to have it...who does? But I read that unsuccessful LSBs don't mean that one doesn't have rsd/crps. My diagnosis is now simply "pain". Seriously. I have most of the common rsd/crps symptoms unfortunately. The pain is so bad and this pain specialist is taking me off of low dose narcotics all together. Neurontin and Lyrica both left me with horrid side effects and I can't take them.
I'm just wondering if blocks that reveal that pain is sympathetically independent vs. sympathetically mediated are an automatic reason to rule out rsd/crps?
Thanks fmichael and to all of you.