I have finally arrived home for a 4 day break between the 10 days of infusions and the start of the 2 day a week for a month protocol. Ketamine works extremely well for me so far!!! I am able to tolerate noise again with my ears!! I don't like it, but I can take it, which is a real change from how I was. I can wear a bra strap on my shoulder for the first time since my injury (11/06). My head no longer hurts terribly all the time, although it does ache a bit. I have one area of lingering pain in the back on the right in the occipital area, but that was always my worst spot. The pain in my legs, my hips, my arm, and my neck is gone. My appetite is spotty and I have lost some weight - the first weekend I had a lot of trouble with my stomach which may have been because I tapered too quickly off of Fentanyl.

Since it's only been a few days, it is too soon to tell whether this treatment is going to hold for a long time for me. I still have a month of 2 day per week treatments, and a month of one day per week treatments to go. The hardest part of all is the travel - I live several hundred miles away (in RI) from where I am being treated, so I am staying with my parents while getting the treatments. I need to get from RI to Jersey (fly or drive), then everyday my father drives me an hour and fifteen minutes each way to the doctor's office from their beach house at the Jersey shore. I owe my parents more than I can ever repay them!!

It was much more difficult than I anticipated to be away from my family and friends for the first 2 weeks...I am glad that part is over!

I have tried just about every other treatment for my RSD, and nothing else was nearly as effective as ketamine!! As most of you know, I am still fighting to get WC to approve these treatments. And even though United Healthcare has approved them, I need to pay Dr. Getson and request reimbursement from UHC because his office has assured me that it will not be anyhwere near what they require for payment. In the meantime, my parents have taken care of the payment end for me. The cost per day at his office in Marlton, NJ is between $1250-1500 to get better, in case anyone is wondering....

In the end for me, it came down to research - I had to find out who the docs were that had ketamine, (from Jim Broatch at the RSDSA) - paperwork preparation - I had to put together a package for each of them that I wanted to see, - and $$. Because both WC and my private insurance company came up short I needed to find financing for my ketamine treatments in order to get them.

What makes the least amount of sense to me is that the time and cost of the other treatments I have endured- 7 SGB, 1 LB, and 7 lidocaine infusions combined likely exceeds that of the ketamine. And they were not nearly as effective. Why bother? I've been diagnosed since June of 2008 and we've been kicking around all these different treatments, instead of jumping right into the MOST effective treatment first. Dumb, dumb, dumb....

Love and peace, Sandy