The age of my discontent...

In 1992 I was working for the USPS delivering mail in Vacaville, CA when a step to a mobile home collapsed and I fell onto the big toe of my right foot. The people had been warned before, but had ignored the notices. I immediately called my supervisor who came out, took me immediately to the best foot doctor in the area. After six weeks in casts and boots, the pain was getting WORSE, not better. THey finally sent me to the Pain Clinic at UC Davis where after a period of diagnosis they finally told me I had Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy. At that time they told me I'd be in a wheelchair within 6 months and the only treatment was to surgically remove the nerve, inject the nerve with a radioactive material to kill it, or have a permanent morphine drip installed. At the time I had a 2 year old child, so I decided to fight it myself. I managed to avoid a wheelchair until 2009, but now I'm in a chair and my next fight is staying out of bed so I don't become bedridden...I refuse at this point to have a bedpan! I have a WONDERFUL Pain Management doctor who really understands and has me on a great medication regiment...but yesterday (The Sat after Thanksgiving) I fell leaving my daughter's home and now I'm in another flair.

I was lucky enough that for the first 13 years or so the RSD/CRPS stayed in the toe/foot of my right foot, but every time I did anything to hurt myself, it would spread, until it finally reached my knee. THen in 2009 I agreed to have knee surgery on my knee to clean it out because it was "bone on bone"; biggest mistake of my life. The condition spread all the way up to my lower back and hip. I had a spinal cord stimulator implanted which helps a lot, but then I had another fall in 2013 that resulted in my left leg beginning the show of symptoms. JUst in my knee so far, but after yesterday's fall I'm scared.

There was also an auto accident in 2007, a drunk ran us of off the roat (my 8 year old daughter and myself), where I hit a burl of dirt, went airborn for 40 feet, hit the ground and rolled 3 times. My seatbelt was in the door and the door got ripped off, and the car rolled over my left arm. It was broken, and had cow manure packed against the bone. I spent 5 months in and out of the hospital having necroptic tissue removed from my arm. THey wanted to amputate, but I refused. After the fall in 2013, the CRPS began to spread to my left arm.

SO....now I have RSD/CRPS in my right leg, left knee and left arm. I was also diagnosed with Bi Polar disorder in 1990 after my daughter was born, but a drug called Lamectil had been a godsend to keep me on an even keel.

An in 2007, on top of the RSD/CRPS, the doctor diagnosed me with Fibromyalgia.....apparently my body should have had a warrenty on it. Gallows humor, I know....but sometimes you either have to laugh, or cry....and crying makes my nose run and is harder to stop .