After reading your pain & injury description - I would like to suggest your read a bit about Thoracic Outlet Syndrome also{TOS}.
TOS and RSD have some overlapping symptoms and some people do have both conditions.

I'd just hate for you to have a mis-diagnosis or missed diagnosis.

TOS info:
http://www.medifocushealth.com/RT017/index.php
http://www.nismat.org/ptcor/thoracic_outlet/
http://tos-syndrome.com/newpage12.htm
http://tos-syndrome.com
http://www.doctorellis.com
http://www.cwce.com/feinbergarticles/tos.htm
http://www.tellmeabouttos.com
http://www.vascularinstitute.com/Resource_TOS.htm
http://drbrantigan.com/about/index.htm
http://www.ecentral.com/members/rsanders/
http://www.causeof.org/posture_tos.htm
If you skim thru these it will give you more of an idea about TOS and if it might apply for you .
more here-
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread84.html
and the main TOS page if you have questions -
http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/forum24.html

To Jo
 

thanks for the info and the links, they are very informative. and, you are certainly correct, I do not want to be misdiagnosed. thank you!

To Jo (again)
 

..was just reading, about TOS, on one of the links you sent me. Are you supposed to, for diagnostic purposes, have all the listed symptomology? I never have any kind of chest pain, ear pain, anything like that. How does a doctor differenciate between RSD and TOS, or any alternative condition altogether. Though I will not claim to know tons of info. on RSD, I did read that, what makes it hardest to diagnose is that its symptoms and patient's complaints/descriptions of pain, resemble, very closely, other problems in a variety of areas etc.

No not all of them are "required" to be considered a TOS case.
A mix of those symptoms are the usual.

And at the beginning of TOS the symptoms can often move around- and that really confuses the non TOS drs.
And the severity can fluctuate with uses that aggravate it.

Delayed pain is a usual sign- the pain will get worse hrs after certain uses and take days or longer to recover from.
Constant tight neck muscles or easily strained neck muscles
tight or strained feeling in the forearms

Oh and look in a mirror and check to see if your shoulders are level or one higher than the other and then if you can or have a friend check your hip bones for evenness.

If uneven - check that useful sticky for the chiropractic links - it explains how the body will try to compensate for crookedness.
That was a part of my TOS cause then adding in the yrs of repetitive work.

I don't have RSD but have read a lot here from the group.
They can help with the differences too but I'll try.

RSD
Painful burning skin, extremely sensitive skin - to touch, fabric, even air or light breezes will be painful, lots of swelling, skin color changes, texture changes

TOS
loss of fine finger coordination in hands, upper body muscles {neck, shoulders, back, arms}that tighten up easily or ache constantly, nerve zaps, bruit {you can hear your own pulse whooshing sounds}, tendency to get triggerpoint knots in muscles, blood flow in arms can get stopped if arms are raised to certain positions, can present as many different RSI injuries at first.
The vascular system compressions can cause swelling for TOS too - but usually not as extreme or colorful as RSD.

The chest pain comes on usually if you get a major muscle spasm of the chest muscles.
I had it once from extreme physical overuse at the time - took months to recuperate from those.

Hi,
 

I see where you are in Louisville. There is one of the best TOS Drs. there and Jo might remember his name. I don't but I was going to see him once when I'd went back home for a visit. I will try and find his name for you if Jo doesn't remember it. There is also a list of TOS Drs. on the TOS forum.

I have both TOS and RSD.

I was born and raised near Louisville. I still have a lot of relatives in that area.

I hope you start getting some relief soon and do get those blocks. I hope you don't have both. To me it has always been a tossup to which is worse. They run a close race.

Have a good evening.

Ada

for ada and jo
 

thank you both, again, for you insight, yor desrcriptive sharing, and your willingness to share your own experiences.

honestly jo, from what you have said about TOS, it sounds, if there is such a truth, better than RSD. RSD seems very much like an indefinite curse. How is TOS treated? it is a chronic condition as well, correct? Are the treatments similiar
?

Hope these links help:
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/t...c/thoracic.htm
http://www.medicinenet.com/thoracic_...me/article.htm
http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/001434.htm
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/t...tsyndrome.html

Thanks and if you need anything just ask

Hi,
 

I don't think there is really a cure for TOS. The surgery helps with some of the symptoms but you still have the pain at times and there are things you still can't do because of it.

I have had surgery on the right side. I cannot look at clothes on tall clothes racks, can't hang clothes on clothes lines and I can't reach up the cabinets many time for dishes. Also no heavy lifting.That is with most people that have had the surgeries. Some got worse after surgeries also. To me it is right up there with the RSD when it comes to the symptoms and the pain until a person gets some kind of control over it.

It takes PT and most times surgery to help it. I sure hope you don't have it on top of the RSD.

Ada

As meds go...
 

If your diagnosis is confirmed as RSD/CRPS, while one med may not work, another may. I was put on neurontin initially, and then was prescribed a host of med cousins (in turn, not all at once), in hopes that one would help more than another. My neurologist told me Lyrica has a 1 in 3 chance of helping, and fortunately I was a one in three. It saved me and decreased my pain enough for me to do the exercises that I am sure were part of the healing process. Water therapy -- that helped too. The thing is, the process can be so slow and sometimes the increments of improvement are so minute it seems like nothing's happening. It helped (me) to get used to expecting slow results, meaning sometimes I wouldn't see the results until two months into a treatment of some sort, but there was still progress. Just in baby baby steps.

To hopealot
 

I completely understand the baby steps in the process. And, I try to, on the darkest of days, change my perspective and remember exactly that; those baby steps.

How long did it take, after med adjustments, finding the best meds most efficient for you, and various treatments, in order for you to truly notice a decrease in your everyday pain? What is an average pain day like for you now? How long have you been going through this process?