I was a very active 14 year old. I was in gymnastics 24 hours a week. The first week of June right after getting out of school, I possibly broke my foot. They are now debating whether it was broken because one doc said it wasn't and 2 said it was but they were both pointing in differnent places so I don't really know. Anyways, it hurt in the cast, but I thought it was from the injury. After getting out of the cast in July, they put me in a cam walker and told me to ween my way out of using it along with the crutches. Well, it took me a whole month to get off the crutches, but I didn't wanna use them when school started the second week in August (school starts soooooooo early in South Carolina). I shouldn't have stopped using crutches, but there was no way I was getting around my high school in crutches.

The doctors (not my regular ortho doc, he was out of town everytime I had an appointment) kept on saying that I was exagerating and babying my foot and I really needed to get out of the boot asap. I tried one day at school and felt like I was gonna DIE. It hurt SOOOOOOOOO bad. After that, I went back to the boot for a while longer. We kept on going to visit the docs and they kept on getting mad at me. My orthos nurse practictioner got really mad at me for not being back to normal stuff and back in gymnastics. Then after my regular ortho came back, he realized that after knowing me from 2 previous and minor injuries, I normally bounced right back and he knew that something was really wrong. After many tests and stuff, he diagnosed me with RSD. I didn't know what it was and he and my mom kept really quiet when I asked what it was and if it was curable. That scared me lots. I did tons of research and just cried when I finally understood what it was.

I then ended up going back to crutches for a few more months until January when RSD took over both legs. I then moved to a wheelchair. I have had one nerve block done. It ended up making the RSD worse so they didn't dare go for anymore of those. I had 2 creams for my feet. I don't remember exactly what was in the first one, but it didn't do anything for my foot (before spreading to other foot). It didn't help, but it didn't make it worse. I stopped the cream. Then I was given a second cream with a vasodiolater. Unfortunatly, it led to a SEVERE allergic reaction and left me with Steven Johnson's Syndrome. It took everyone awhile to diagnose me with that because of the RSD and regular ortho was out of town. All the other docs said it was a rash, cellulitis, dermatitis, nothing (hated that doc) and tons more. That slowed things down a bit.

I went through lots of physical therapy. One place didn't really do much. Another place my mom thought was good and was happy with, but I didn't feel like it was helping at all. It made the pain even more unbearable to where I had to miss school the next few days.

I'm about to start intense physical therapy in 3 days and go homebound from school. Its gonna be 35-40 hours a week for a month. I'm gonna be the second person to go through with it at this place. The person before me was also a kid and now she is able to roller skate and do almost everything she was able to do They feel good about me too. I'll let yall know how it goes.