Sorry I was so slow in getting my post in!!!

No reason for it - just what passes for normal life these days getting in the way. Plus sometimes I feel I would just be repeating myself so I don't post or i hold off until I feel I have something useful to add. I guess like everyone else, there are posts that I don't feel I can add anything too or that my views might not fit with so I just let them be.

Having done endless research, gone to medical conferences on CRPS, talked with several of the international clinicians who are currently at the leading edge of CRPS research and actively lived with it all for years, I am now fairly sanguine about the whole thing most of the time so I suppose I post from that perspective. I know that's not an attitude that everyone shares (or can share for so many reasons) and it may offend. I'm not a cynic but I am a realist, I don't do platitudes, sentiment or religion and all that can rub people up the wrong way!!!

And to SallySue, I'm sorry but i dont believe there's a chance of medical science curing this condition in my lifetime (Im not that old BTW!). Although there are plenty of developments in medical science, there is still amazingly little understanding of how the human body actually works. Bear in mind also that the drug development process takes 15 years minimum. The costs and the attrition rates are absolutely eye-watering. The number of new drugs making it to market every year is small and many of them are only variants of drugs we already have. CRPS doesn't have a big enough or symptomatically consistent enough patient group for anyone to fund the drug discovery process for 'CRPS specific' new drugs. CRPS patients will always have to rely on trying drugs that were developed and licensed for other conditions once they are already on the market. That's not to say there won't be improvements in symptomatic treatment (both pharmacological and other modalities) as the years pass and understanding increases but my money isn't on a cure.