My journey with RSD started in 1998, while I was working as a Radiologic Technologist. I was taking a film back to the ER when I slid on a wet floor and tried to recover. I felt a pop, a burn and then numbness in the middle portion of my left knee.

After two surgeries with no relief from my continuing pain, my “doctor” decided that he was going to drain my knee. At this point, he had partially convinced my husband that this was an addiction issue and that if he didn’t recover fluid from my knee, he was done with me. Several of his staff held me down while he stuck my swollen, purple knee again and again. I cried and screamed He laughed and laughed.

I went to another doctor who broke my leg and relocated my patella with a nail.

Then I met my pain doctor who is now pretty much retired from pain management. He told me what Cynthia’s doc told her on “Mystery Diagnosis”. If you have pain out of proportion to the injury with the discoloration and so on, it’s RSD until proven otherwise. He immediately started me on pain and anti-seizure meds.

Following this I had a surgery to remove my patella which had basically died due to the effects of the RSD.

Then I started to work my butt off. PT didn’t help much, I got a lot of snickering behind my back, so I started swimming – a lot of swimming! Then some walking and some weights. Today, I smile. I have time with my kids and my husband. I still have RSD but it will never again have me.