[wbrianiii]

It all started when I was in the US Navy. In Jan. 1979, while preparing to drop anchor at Karachi, Pakistan, I got a length of the ships' anchor chain dropped on my right foot. Being on a destroyer, we were not equipped to handle such major injuries. We were there by ourselves, no capital ships with hospital facilities with us, and we weren't advertising to the world that we were in the area. The ships' Medical Officer was a corpsman chief petty officer, and while he told me I could see a doctor in town, he also offered his opinion of the state of Pakistani medicine at the time. The general consensus was that they would amputate. I wasn't ready for that then, so it healed poorly, and I limped around on a bad foot for the next 29 years.

In Dec 2007, while relaxing on a weekend, my bad right foot began to hurt, a lot, much worse than "normal pain." By Monday it had not let up, so I went to see my doctor. Eventually the podiatrists removed the sesamoids from that foot, and fused the end joint of the big toe. A year later they were forced to remove a screw, as my body was rejecting it. There has been all sorts of physical therapy, exercises, everything imaginable. The pain finally got so bad that in April 2014, they attempted ti kill the nerves with alcohol injections. There were to be 7+ injections, but the third one went terribly bad. It felt like he injected sulfuric acid, and when he was done, I had to look at the end of my big toe to be sure the end wasn't blown out. That was the day the burning started, and it hasn't stopped since. They attempted to surgically release entrapped nerves, but there was so much scar tissue from the original injury, they said there was not much they could do for me. I was sent to the pain clinic, where they did a lumbar sympathetic nerve block. There was to be a series of 3-4 to see if I was a candidate for a SCS. The 1st one only made the pain worse, so that idea was scrapped. I went back to my podiatrist and asked them to amputate. They sent me to orthopedics to see about it, saying they had exhausted all forms of treatment, and with a diagnoses of CRPS, causalgia. That was last Dec. They didn't do it. They sent me from Loma Linda to Long Beach for a 2nd opinion. I was scheduled for below knee amputation last June, but a week prior to the date of surgery, they cancelled, with no reason given. I am back at Loma Linda, and have an appointment with the pain clinic next week. I have made it very clear that I am not going to repeat anything that has already been tried and failed. My pain is now such that I have difficulty wearing socks and shoes on that foot, and I cannot have a top sheet over it. It is affecting my sleep, as the pain sometimes wakes me up at night. I haven't walked without a crutch since 2008, and since 2009 I have worn out 3 wheelchairs. I now use a rigid ultra-light weight chair, and just had all the tires, wheels, casters, seat cushion and upholstery replaced. I still have a diagnoses of CRPS type 2, but it has also been called type 1 and RSD.