For the third time in six months, my Activa Dose II Controller Ionto device failed on me Sunday night, probably because I'm pushing the envelope just a bit, although not as aggressively as before: now using 2 mA for anodal stimulation of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex @ "F3" and 3 mA directed towards the dominant motor cortex @ "M1," both for 30 min./day. (With "lower extremity" pain, I was advised from the start not to expect too much in terms of pain control, and that about sums it up.)

As I've previously mentioned, the stimulation @ M1 worked wonders for my symptoms of "sympathetic dysrhythmia," primarily edema and myocardial small vessel constriction that not only had ceased to respond to nitroglycerin but had shown up for the last 2 years running in nuclear MRI blood profusion studies, while the treatment @ F3 was doing wonders for my verbal speed and word recall and though by no means a cure was greatly helping to control the "brain fog" associate with the "loss of executory function," disorganization, etc.

While the machine was sent back the next morning and a new one is being ordered as a back-up in any event, I don't expect to have a machine in hand until - realistically - the middle of next week: where I only got around to pleading with my doctor to buy a spare for ASAP delivery on Thursday night.

Just to chart what's happened in the interim, by the second or third day off the unit, I was completely unable to keep my focus, flitting from task to task with little or nothing getting done. By Thursday - 4 days into it - I could feel a real problem with delayed word recall. And finally, late Friday night, I became aware of significant edema in both ankles, on account of which I've had to hit the Lasix/Rx potassium supplement combo for the first time in maybe as long as six months!

Bottom line: Ballerina had a profound insight when she realized that tDCS could be valuable when utilized as a maintenance therapy for CRPS. It's just that it doesn't work so well when it's not working. (Go figure.) So, from this point out I'm going to be keeping a spare around. (And at $280, it seems worth the money.)

In any event, I just wanted to chart the time(s) of symptom re-occurrence for whatever value it might have for anyone else.

Be well all,
Mike