I have suffered from RSD for 6 years now and it took Drs 4 1/2 years to diagnose. Mine started with a torn Achillies tendon surgery that went awry from a BAD Dr.! I had 4 surgeries to repair the achillies with 11 tears and horrible pain to follow.

I had "friends", family & Dr's tell me I was just looking for drugs, seeking attention and Dr's tell me, "don't worry, you won't loose your leg today" (when I fought like hell to keep my leg attached from a severe MRSA infection.

My pain was so bad, for so long, that I was actually starting to contimplate amputation! NO JOKE!!! I didn't sleep more than 2 hours at a time and was trying to raise my 2 children.

I was on crutches so long, that I now have permanent nerve damage in both arms, carpal tunnel and thoracic outlet syndrome in my right arm. I can never use crutches or a cane again and am on permant dissability. I was at the end of my ropes and yet doing everything I could to keep a smile on my face and pretend all was well.

Then I went to a wonderful Neurologist who looked at me and said, "you are not insane, you are in pain". I cried and hugged him. Music to my ears. I began sympathetic nerve shots and went into remission only to have a BOZO t-bone my car in May and send me back into RSD and give me severe whiplash.

I am back in RSD but the Dr's didn't diagnose it until this week! Again, it was "in my head". Ugh! I started sympathetic nerve shots again for my RSD this week and go back next week for shots in my back for my whiplash.

Ny neuro says that it will be even harder to get me out of RSD this time than last and it took a year and a half last time. I am frustrated and tired. Anyone know any good places for relaxation exercises on the web?

Have you tried any Google or You tube videos - for relaxation , sleep....

http://www.google.com/search?q=relax...N&hl=en&tab=wv

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Dear renhenne -

Every month or so I put in a plug for MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) classes, a program developed largely for pain patients by Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhD out of the University of Mass. Med. School over 30 years ago, combining, over an 8 week period, a weekly 2 and 1/2 hour class, usually in an extreme comfortable environment with lots of various cushions, combining readings and interactions with training in meditation and light yoga (great for proprioception: even if it’s lying still on the floor and just “sweeping” the body in your mind, finger by finger), daily self-practice with guided meditations and yoga exercises on CDs, and concluding with a day-long "retreat.”

The U. Mass. Medical School has since trained thousands of teachers, many of them PhD psychologists or other licensed mental health providers around the country. (Hint: while someone doesn't have to be a mental health provider to be a great MBSR teacher - mine wasn't - it makes all the difference in terms of insurance reimbursement for the classes, which I've seen range from everything from $75.00 (Manitoba Mental Health) to the $700.00 that is commonly charged in Los Angeles.

The best overall description of the program I've found is from an MBSR instructor in Athens, Georgia http://www.mindfuliving.org/MBSR.html

Two years into this beast, I was referred to an MBSR teacher by a very good pain psychologist, and it turned my life around, or started a new one, more to the point. Here's their homepage http://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=41252 and a linked page specifically describing the MBSR program http://www.umassmed.edu/Content.aspx?id=41254 At the bottom of the second page is a link to find MBSR teacher's in your area.

The whole point of MBSR – from my perspective - is that it gently teaches how to break patterns of catastrophizing thought and as well as how to begin to develop some real equanimity with pain, but always from the perspective of love of self and others.

At the end of the class, my instructor introduced me to her teacher, Shinzen Young, an "insight meditation" or Vipassana teacher, originally from los Angeles who travelled to Japan in the mid-Sixties as a PhD student in Asian Languages, only to eventually be ordained as a Buddhist monk in the Vadriana tradition, from which he moved to a Zen monastery for several years. Before travelling to S.E. Asian and training in Vipassana with some of the greatest Burmese teachers of the day. I began studying with Shinzen in late 2002 and have continued to date, including participating in a series of call-in 4-hour "Mini-retreats" with people from all over the world. In fact, it was shortly after I began studying with Shinzen that I was able to finally wind-down my legal practice – where I hadn’t netted more than a few hundred dollars a month (and often nothing at all) since the RSD hit in the late spring of 2001, to which I had clung to solely as a matter of retaining my own professional identification, something I had spent 20 years cultivating.

Within the chronic pain community, Shinzen is best known for one small book in particular, Break Through Pain: A Step-by-Step Mindfulness Meditation Program for Transforming Chronic and Acute Pain (Sounds True, 2004), available through Amazon (along with accompanying CDs) for $13.57 http://www.amazon.com/Break-Through-.../dp/1591791995 The CDs consist of a series of guided meditation that will provide the chronic pain patients with better relaxation exercises and practical suggestions for breaking up the "pain experience" than anything I know of. Here’s Shinzen’s synopsis of the book, which appears on his personal website www.shinzen.org at http://www.shinzen.org/shinsub3/artPain.pdf Please check out the discussion under the heading “How Pain Becomes Suffering” at pp. 3 - 4.

And for a couple of other links, Shinzen's “Home Practice Program” of phone-based classes and & retreats (no one turn away for lack of funds) is at http://www.basicmindfulness.org/ while the homepage of his extensive collection of talks on YouTube can be found here http://www.youtube.com/user/expandcontract#p/p

I hope this information is helpful. Please check it at least some of it out. After 9 years of chronic pain and more recently some cognitive losses, I very much doubt that I could have avoided depression without it.

Mike

Do you happen to have access to an acupuncturist? I was skeptical but started it. My first treatment didn't make much of a difference, but my second treatment was AMAZING.

I know a lot of insurance companies don't cover it, and a lot of us already have so many extra financial obligations due to our disease, but I really recommend it. I know some acupuncturists will offer a sliding fee scale. It's worth a look at least.