Its good to hear that things are going well for you. I think that PT will be REALLY good for you, not just for your body, but also for your psychological/emotional state. You will become part of the healing process and I think that is empowering .

Its good that you are up and moving .... bad that you are not sleeping, there's nothing like a good night's sleep and helps the body heal. May the Goddess of sleep visit you soon . lol

Fingers crossed that soon you will be able to have a "little more normalcy " in your life ....

All the best to you.

PS Thank you for sharing your experience with DRG .

I'm glad things are coming along nicely for you, catra. Big thumbs up!

Thank you all for your kind words and support.

Today was my first physical therapy session and I found it extremely exhausting...lol. Lots of stretching and laying down exercises which I was not expecting. They were all hard...but good hard...but one involves me holding a strap and that really hurt my hands. It's one of my home exercises so I'm going to see if j can rig up something at home that doesn't hurt my hands so much...or even if wearing gloves will help. After my laying down stuff I did 8 minutes on a stepper (the kind where you sit...not the standing one) and that was ok...maybe a little too easy actually...but then again we will see how my muscles feel later today/tomorrow.

All in all...very happy with how the day has gone and with how things are progressing. Since getting home I got to take my first hot bath in 6 weeks...woohoo!!! That felt NICE. Then I've continued my regular laps around the dining room and even took a short walk outside. Hopefully I'm not overdoing it...I don't feel like I am but I know it's a lot for one day. I'm just so excited to be able to move and really want to get released back to work at my next doctors appointment...but I know that will take a lot of hard work and commitment to the therapy.

Back is feeling pretty good. Still not 100% healed and burns a little if I bend or stretch my back...but other than that and being a little tender it doesn't feel bad at all.

Day 2 of PT...more stretching and some balancing exercises. Plus they start out my day with 10 minutes on the seated stepper machine. The stretches...wow...I know it makes sense that my muscles are super tight after 2 years of minimal use...but darn! Some of the exercises are Pretty easy and others are definitely tougher. The physical therapist has been great at adapting stuff because of my shoulder issues and my sensitivity to touch.

Poor you! My hands started to join in the CRPS party, so I know what you are dealing with. I noticed they were painful and were very red after I attended a balance class, where the stretchy bands were used. I have to watch not to grip my cane too tightly and I try not grip the handlebars of the recumbent bike I use at the gym. I hope you find a solution.

Just a quick update on physical therapy. Friday was day 3 of PT (doing 3 days a week). A few exercises were easy and I almost wish I had kept my mouth shut about it because what they had me do instead was way too hard. I did it...but it was too much and I have been paying for it. Flare up in my leg to about a 6 and still feeling that a day later. Plus...my hips hurt really bad...Both of them. So I think that last thing was just way too much. The good news is...I don't know that that exercise is anything like anything I will ever have to do in the course of a normal day...dangling my foot off a ledge and doingn forward, sideways, and backwards motions 10 times each. Yeah...no. I'll make sure to tell the therapist all this on Monday. Hopefully the pain is back to baseline by then because with the hip pain I haven't really been able yo do moat of my exercises and I'm pretty religious about doing them so I'm very frustrated to not be (I did try but the hip pain was intense and abnormal so I stopped).

Aside from the PT issues from friday...everything is going well with my treatment. Life with a 3 yr old makes recovery difficult at times...I somehow ended up with a very tiny elbow getting me in the back right on the one incision...that hurt...but no damage done other than a little pain for about 30 minutes (Advil took care of it).

BUT overall I just cannot stress how much this has changed things for me. Still have terrible pain in my upper body and I'm not free and clear in the leg either...but the pain in my leg is just so much less that I feel like I could walk for miles...if it wasn't so cold outside. But I do continue my laps around the dining room table each day even with the hip and flare up pain...albeit perhaps a bit slower these last couple of days...and I am so happy with my progress overall.

Catra,

After my most recent return to aqua PT, which Btw I dearly live and continue to recommend, my right hip acted up, alot! I was doing too much, too fast, including going to the gym on alternate days, unfortunately, despite taking a break, it hasn't stopped hurting. It's gone from acute to chronic, low pain. I have tried heat and limited amounts of ice, but i have not gotten much relief.

I suspect basic, daily activities plus a wonky gait aggravates it. As I learned in the past it may take months for it to settle down, but you are doing the best activity ever, moving. I am going to try floor yoga, in addition to mindful meditation. (It also looks like my CRPS is in my other foot and hands, I think the prescription, compounded LDN is not as effective as the liquid LDN I mixed myself. I started having more flares after I started on the pills.)

The exercises aren't about having you do motions you do in real life, they are about strengthening and stretching muscles and ligaments you haven't been using in years. My hips are a mess from not walking properly from 2.5 years, so I can only imagine what yours are like from a longer time. Hanging your leg off the side of the table is a stretch of the joint. Moving it around is to build strength. A lot of what they have you do feels odd and painful at first. If it causes a flare then you did too much. They should never have you do so much that it flares you. Only up to threshold of a flare, not past. You know that edge when you feel "uh oh, better stop or it WILL flare" That's when you stop. And maybe the next time you can do one more rep than you did the day before. That's how CRPS people progress. We can't do up to tolerance (as much pain as we can handle) cause that reinforces the pain pathways. And causes flares which just slows us down. (And I learned all this from the intensive functional rehab with people who specialize in CRPS, who worked at Stanford).

Oh...I understand all that about physical therapy...I was more talking from the idea that at least it's not something I would do everyday that would regularly cause a flare up or be beyond me...like if it had been step ups or something like that. I know PT is good for me and that it's stretching and conditioning muscles.

I'll also be honest too that when it comes to avoiding flares...I'm not sure how to gauge that right now at PT. Having gone from baseline 8 to baseline 2...I am really struggling to know how far is too far. So it's hard for me to communicate that or even know until after the fact that something was too much. I want to make sure I'm pushing hard enough...but not too hard. I just have to make sure I communicate with my therapist so she knows the next time and maybe we can find a middle ground that still pushes me without flaring.

My pain is still elevated today...at about a 4...so not too bad but this is lasting longer than any other flare since the DRG was put in so I want to proceed with caution. Wearing my lidoderm patches today and will do some heat after PT and hopefully that will help me get through it today without making it worse.

I wish you well on recovery. I think PT for me was too much to handle, and I got worse during the 8 months I was having it... No other treatments were given at the time as they were still not sure what was wrong with me.

Then my orthopedic surgeon said I needed to quit PT as it was much too harsh for me, so he gave me simple exercises to strengthen my muscles back up. Took 2 to 3 years, but the muscles came back. I worked hard on that!

Sometimes easy does it, even if it takes a lot of time.