Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy is also known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Among those who live with it, it has a darker name - "the suicide disease." Imagine that all of your nerves and senses are turned on overdrive. Imagine what that might do to your body. Your hearing becomes so keen that the electronic sound of a muted television can make you throw up from pain. Earplugs don't help. Every fibre of your body picks up the invisible assault. Touch is also hightened, but the NMDA receptors in the spine have somehow become caught in a vicious cycle of programming the nerves to interpret every input as pain, so your favorite fluffy flannel pajamas feel like sandpaper. When the pain becomes unbearable, you first begin to shake, then vomit or dry heave, and finally the major nerves short circuit for a time, making you fall down because your legs are suddenly two pillars of Jell-O. You sweat much of the time from the pain, and for some reason, it's especially stinky sweat that even the dry cleaners have trouble getting out. Baths are a new type of water torture. Insomnia plagues you because your nerves are so wound up and because the pain creeps into your dreams. RSD is the most painful form of chronic pain that exists today. It is more painful than childbirth and affects the sufferer twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. If you are of a religious turn of mind, you might wish to contemplate the parallells to what happened to Job in the Bible.
This is just a glimpse into RSD, a disease I live with. Little is known about RSD, but we are living in an exciting time when there is a growing body of research and national exposure to help raise awareness and funds to fight this disease. It is incurable, but treatment can help manage it.
For more information at this time, please visit:
A Beginner's Guide to RSDS/CRPS