Dear Ali and Karen -

Thank you so much for your contributions to this thread. For years I have had recurrent non-traumatic bruising at the site of my original injury. At first, I had it photographed, but the responses from my doctors were always the same, some version of "I dunno."

Personally, I think that the bright boy or girl who finally explains the mechanism of endothelial [from endothelium: the layer of epithelial* cells that lines the cavities of the heart and of the blood and lymph vessels and the serous cavities of the body, originating from the mesoderm] and/or small blood vessel dysfunction in CRPS at the cellular level will have moved the ball farther downfield than anyone else in recent times. And here I'm talking not just about reduced blood flow/oxygenation, but actual structural changes in the nature of very small blood vessels and/or their linings.

My hunch is that it's a big deal posing as an artifact.

Mike

*The covering of internal and external surfaces of the body, including the lining of vessels and other small cavities. It consists of cells joined by small amounts of cementing substances. Epithelium is classified into types on the basis of the number of layers deep and the shape of the superficial cells. http://www.mondofacto.com/facts/dictionary?epithelium