Living with RSD

All through high school I was active. I played football, wrestled, and was on the weight lifting team. I was never tall, only 5′10″, but always strong and active. Since I was 13 I worked with my dad doing construction over the summers, as well as working various farms during the hay season and cutting many lawns for the locals that hired me.

Once I graduated high school, I went on to college. My financial aid got messed up somewhere along the line, and I had to drop out after 2 semesters due to lack of money to continue. I went to work for a sawmill, where I worked for almost 10 years.

Then one day, I was doing something I had done more times than I care to think…I climbed up 2 stories above the stacking line to unjam a cant from the edger, and it kicked on. The cant (a debarked and squared 16′ white oak log) came flying out of the machine and hit me in the face and chest, breaking 6 ribs, my sternum, jaw, cheekbone, eyesocket and knocking me 2 storied below. I fell, landing on a steel I-beam so hard I twisted around it and fractured several vertebrae. I was treated for my back, and of course the various other breaks bumos and bruises, but something kept messing with me even more than the pain of my fall…my right leg began burning, swelling, and changing hot to cold all the time.

I went to 5 different doctors for 3 years and all of them gave me a dozen different possible explanations, but nothing helped. The one even told me it was a fear of returning to work, and it was all in my head. He tried to make me see a shrink, because he said there was nothing physically wrong, except a little lingering scar tissue and arthritis in my back. Finally, i found a doctor that knew what she was doing. The first visit she saw me, within 5 minutes of talking to me, immediatley diagnosed me with RSD This was a little over 6 months ago.

Since then, I have steadily gotten worse, in spite of her best efforts to treat me with drugs, therapy, and even pain injections into my spine. Now my left leg is getting the same problem. I cannot walk without a cane, I can’t function hardly at all. The arthritis in my back has also gotten very bad, and what helps one problem only makes the other worse.

My wife has no idea what to make of me. I always was the clown, the joker, the guy that everyone came to for a laugh. Years ago I had one coworker ask me if I even had a temper, because I was pretty much the most mellow happy-go-lucky person on the planet. But now i find myself depressed a lot, and even snapping at my wife and kids for no reason. There are days it hurts so bad I pray to die, because i can’t stand the pain, or the fact i cannot do the things with my kids I always dreamed of doing. I can’t throw a ball with my son, or go for walks with my daughter, I can’t teach them things like how to ride bike or climb the big oak in the front yard.

We lost our house, I lost my job, and we are now living with my mother-in-law because I am hoping that my application for disability comes through. My wife seems to think that 90% of my pain is made up or over exaggerated, and i can’t make her understand that while I look ok, I feel so horrible. I am having trouble even getting to the bathroom alone, and standing long enough to shower wears me out for the day. I have no idea how it can get worse, but the doctor told me it will. I am in stage 3 of RSD and she says there is nothing they can do to help me now. I take neurontin, but it has become inneffective at best, and the only relief i get is temporary from a TENS unit, when i can get my wife to help me put it on.

Because i cannot get around or be active, I have gained a lot of weight, which just maked it worse. I am embarrassed to even go out of the house, because of how i look and how i have to move to walk. Any ideas how i can get my wife and family to understand I am not lazy and being mean, that I simply cannot function? I don’t even feel like a man anymore. I have at times seriously entertained the idea of ending it myself, but I can’t because I am afraid of what my kids may think of me. But yet, how can I embarrass them by showing up to their school functions, boy scouts and girl scouts functions, etc. I live in a small town, and there is no one else here that has the same problem. No one gets how badly this thing eats you away. Any words of advice wisdom, would be a huge help.