Radiation and RSD
 

I had radiation therapy for Hodgkin's Disease 12 years ago. I was just recently diagnosed with RSd that's effecting my left hip, leg and foot.

Has anyone had any experience with RSD long after radiation therapy? Could radiation have been a contributing factor?

the fact that the initional symptoms occurrred so much later i would guess no. maybe it caused it or maybe your body has a time bomb within for years that you never knew about. for some people the cause is injury while as for others it is just an unexplainable. if you are looking for answers about the why i doont really have any good ones. but i am usually around if you need someone to talk to.

Suzandy,

I had 38 radiation treatments back in 1992 after breast cancer surgery.

I was injured in 1999 and diagnosed later that same year with RSD, I doubt one has anything to do with the other. I believe the longer we have this darn disease the more straws we grasp at to try and figure out what parcipatated our RSD. If you look on the board I have a question for everyone about having a neuroma and developing RSD. I think we are both searching for the what caused our RSD. If I am wrong just tell me but I don't think I am.

i have often read that people who have stress in their lives, emotional and/or physical, are more prone to RSD. so it could be all the things you were all living with and not necessarily the radiation that set it off. it would make sese that our nervous system was already taxed and so this just sent it into overdrive, right?
well, for wahtever reason, you and i have this monster and it matters more that you take the best care of yourself now and keep a good spirit and do things you love. joan

I have to comment on the "stress" thing...

Stress is not an explanation for any physical disease. It's used as such an explanation (incorrectly) by the general population, and therefore I think we should all be very careful about how we use the term.

Does stress put us at a greater risk for RSD? I highly doubt it. I think that it's an unfair generalization, just as some doctors have tried to psychologically profile RSD patients as being "perfectionists" or "type A personalities." None of this is true. We are all just as different in personality as the general population. I guess if they didn't say we were all perfectionists, they'd be saying that we're all lazy. It's just another way of delegitimizing this disease.

The truth of the matter, of course, is that *everybody* has stress. Certainly, some people have more stress than others, and it can contribute, to some degree, to health problems. However, there's no real information that says that stress leads to RSD. There's some research about stress and heart disease, but the idea about stress leading to RSD is purely speculation on the part of a few doctors and patients who attempt to tie together their own experience to explain RSD.

The biggest stress I've had in my life has stemmed directly from RSD. Before I got RSD, I don't believe that I had any more stress than the average 12-year-old.

Joan has a point about stress making people possibly more susceptible to health problems, but please remember that nobody has ever found a direct cause-and-effect relationship, and that generalizations such as that are dangerous, especially when nobody wants a doctor to tell you, "oh, it's just because there's too much stress in your life."

-Betsy

sorry about the confusion Betsy!!
 

Don't worry about it, Desi. I think it's expected that when you already have RSD, increased stress isn't going to exactly help pain levels!

Sometimes I write in a very nuanced fashion, and it's possible that I'm the only one who understands what I really mean! I wasn't really trying to draw conclusions, only saying that we need to be careful about speaking of stress as a cause of RSD. In my experience, it only leads to misunderstandings and problems. How many of us have been told, "oh, it's only stress"?? Comments like that stress me out!

I think we've all experienced something like that at one time or another. I know I'm not the only one who is bothered when what we're going through is belittled as something that anyone can understand. This isn't a paper cut or a pulled muscle. It isn't caused by stress at work or home. Whatever causes it, RSD is a serious illness.

I hope that clarifies what I was trying to get at!

-Betsy

Thanks to everyone for their responses.

I must say that I am 100% certain that stress contributed to the development of my RSD. Perhaps it isn't so in everyone, but it is in me. That doesn't mean that it is psychosomatic or that I am imagining it, but it does mean that stress predisposed me to this, as probably did many things.

I was in a job that had unbearable stress when I began getting initial symptoms of RSD. I was enraged and exhausted all the time though didn't resign since there were redeeming things about my job (mainly the kids - I am a teacher). Finally, I did resign due to my health issues, but I believe many months before that my job was going to cause my health to suffer.. and it did.

I know my nervous system was in overdrive with the rage I was feeling constantly. I also have another autonomic nervous system dysfunction and my health has probably been compromised due to radiation/cancer. I'm sure there are many contributing factors for me.