Originally Posted by catra121

For me...it is all the time non stop no second of total relief...that's MY RSD...other may be different. There's no moment when I am not in pain and I would say most days at my best I am at a 5-6 on the pain scale and most days that gets to a 7-8 by the end of the day. Bad days and flares reach that 9-10 level. This is a significant improvement over where I was two years ago...and is the best I have been since I got RSD almost 4 years ago.

The pain itself for me doesn't come from any particular movement but can sometimes get worse with certain things (like holding things or full weight bearing on my left ankle)...but the pain is always there.

I also have three very distinct types of pain that are caused by my RSD.

1. The all the time every second of every day pain is an intense burning pain. I usually describe this as a feeling like my bones are made of hot pokers and the heat radiates OUT from them.

2. With sensitivity to touch and temperature...when things touch me that is more like a hot poker or blow torch being dragged along the outside of my skin and the burning pain being on the outside like I am physically being burned (as opposed to the radiating OUT like the regular burning...if that makes any sort of sense). Sometimes if the thing causing the pain is in a small area (say...caused by a rain drop hitting me as opposed to a cold breeze which covers a larger area) then I describe it as feeling like I was shot or stabbed with a hot poker.

3. There is this intense bone crushing pain that typically comes with flares. This I can only describe as what I would imagine it would feel like if you put your bones in a vice and squeezed until they were completely crushed. This is by far the most severe pain but it doesn't come as often as it used too...only with flares.

Some people describe the burning sensations differently...we all have our own way of thinking about it. For me...these are the three very distinct kinds of pain some of which are triggered by very specific things. It took me a long time of living with this sort of pain all the time to really be able to clearly define the different types of pain and to know what things trigger what sorts of pain. In the beginning I will be honest that it was just so much pain all the time that I could not sort out the differences because all I knew was it was PAIN and it was BAD. The longer I have had RSD...the more I have grown accustomed to the monster and learned to cope with it. Many times it's a balancing act between what provides what amount of relief vs pain and weighing the benefits over the negatives.

Other than movement are there certain things that trigger your pain?