Great News: Working my Way Back to the Classroom

Beyond the fact that every day my mobility has improved, I have also been extremely busy! For a long time I have been working on a project that is just about wrapped up now. As I may have mentioned before, prior to my injury, my second job for many years has been doing a sitting security job. At the onset of my injury, they were kind enough to offer me full time hours, for which I am extremely grateful. My career is in education and last Thursday was my first day back, just subbing for the day to see if I could handle it. By the end of the day and all of the next day I was in excruciating pain, but it was 100 percent worth it. I really missed those kids and so many of them came up to me, asking how I was doing. I get emotional just thinking about how wonderful that was. Since I have Thursdays off from my security job, I will slowly work to get my endurance up to handling a classroom again. I went in again yesterday and it was absolutely wonderful. I was home again. A little part of me was lost until I was back in the classroom again.

But anyways, as far as progression, I am following all of my PT orders, doing the prescribed stretching and movement. That is key. Every single day since I started treatment, I have felt a slight bit more mobility. It is small, but tangible. It is a blessing and wonderful. Who loves the way the sunlight looks on buildings as the sun is setting?

Walking and Great News from my Neurologist

"The natural instinct with pain is to nurture it, but with this, you have to work through it. Movement is key and if you keep it up you will likely be back to full functionality within a few months"

The news that has made my day! I am doing wonderfully, working at moving as much as I can and doing the prescribed exercises from PT. The movement hurt like anything to start, but with my diligence and listening to my doctors and therapists, I have gotten to a point where I am very near functional walking. The pain is still there and the stiffness in specifically my big toe and the flexing of my foot are still there, but they get slightly less each day. I do have a bad day every little while, but that is to be expected. I could really not ask for much more. All I can say is MOVE, MOVE, MOVE! I work to do a little job each day or every other day. Wiping down the floor, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, vacuuming, cleaning out the car, washing the car and more. Those little jobs in addition to trying to walk (with crutches) about a mile each day going to and from work have likely brought me to this ever increasing level of functionality. I do have to take things in moderation, so I do those activities incrementally, but I make it happen and you can too! If you do not move, things will hurt worse and worse and possibly spread. MOVE! Those giant trees did not grow instantly, it took time. With time, your condition WILL get better. Be of the 90 percent of CRPS afflicted folks with full or partial remission.

Thanksgiving/Start of Gift Shopping Week!

This week is a special week in regards to Thanksgiving, one of the most laid back holidays where you can watch the parade on TV, the dog show on TV and lots of football and movies along with gathering the family to have Turkey, Stuffing and all of that delicious food. Us in the Northeast United States are due to get a large snowstorm on Wednesday and that will definitely wreak havoc on our Thanksgiving plans, but we will see when that gets here. Hopefully you have a turkey, shopping, football or something else planned for this holiday.

I have to say that I am personally very thankful to have a wonderful fiancee, two wonderful bunnies, a wonderful set of two joined families, the beauty of life and the opportunity to experience life. My family came out for a visit this weekend to Pittsburgh and we saw the city's official Christmas kick off, Light Up Night, where the entire downtown area shuts down for a huge holiday celebration filled with lighting up all of the trees and displays, ice skating (I had to sit that one out lol) concerts, and FIREWORKS! They close off three of the main bridges, one of them shoots of fireworks and another has concerts and then serves as a great place to check out the fireworks. They shot them off of the bridge deck and then they had this wonderful waterfall style set of fireworks that streamed off of the side of the bridge, really a sight to see. We also visited the Carnegie Museums of Art and Natural History, checking out cool stuff, with my favorite being the impressionists Monet, Pissaro, Renoir and Van Gogh along with lots and lots of dino bones! Really a pretty fun weekend, plus my family wheeled me around, which I cannot thank them enough for. Think about what some of your favorite things that you are thankful for.

As far as with the condition, each day, following my prescribed stretching and strengthening exercises I have improved a bit each day. I had to splurge to get a pair of New Balance sneakers and boy have they made a difference. I saw a guy who fitted them to be perfect for my foot and I am getting closer and closer to natural movement. I cannot stress enough how important it is to move around and I wish I had gotten these shoes earlier in the recovery process because I would likely be even further along! I am set on the path to remission, are you? Are you among the 90 some percent of folks that have or eventually will go into remission? You can do it!

Mark Personal Victories!

It is important that you look at every little incremental improvement and mark them. These are the steps to getting yourself out of a negativity rut and in the mean time, after a while, all of these incremental changes will be pretty significant in the long run. I have brought myself to a hobble and support my own weight over the last few days. Yesterday I busted my hump going through my place and cleaning. Scrubbing, reorganizing, de-junkifying and more. Yeah, that's right, I just made up a word! Another day more little progress. I still have to crutch to get around outside because of the sheer distance and the danger of walking on falling apart sidewalks, but I can do nothing but look at things positively. Yesterday they found I had degeneration of the bone, but it is something I can slow/manage over my lifetime. Another day, another small tick up in the path towards remission!

Remember that over 90 percent of folks go into full or partial remission. Never forget that! Hopefully I'll be back to enjoying coasters in the spring and back into my career as well. We've got this!

My family is coming to visit this weekend and bringing my girl Sophie, a Shiba Inu

As you may have noticed, I am hardcore into roller coasters, as is my Fiancee and we have made this calendar. If you like keeping the things you do organized and like to look at nice pictures, or you want a snazzy gift for somebody please help support us and get our 2014 calendar at http://www.lulu.com/shop/my-calendar/calendar/product-21243899.html

Let your rehabilitation process grow!

Follow the tips your doctors give you. Follow the exercises your therapists give you to a T. The exercises may seem painful, because they are, but the further you do them and the stronger you get, the less pain you will have. Of course you will always have bad days, but follow through! There is so much beauty to me in the process of agriculture. If you break down the process, you eventually plant your plants, whether they are corn or in this case, grapes. They don't just go plant them and eventually get grapes, they need to take care of them by weeding around them, watering them, fertilizing them, treating them with things, trimming, making sure a possible blight does not spread and more. It is a process, just like your healing process. Never forget that you can work towards remission with complex regional pain syndrome. You do not just take a medication and then it gets better, you have to work at it. There is no quick fix, it takes work. If you do not work, your pain will get worse and functionality even more dismal. You will have a bad day or two still, but imagine that you are farming and the end result of your work will be partial or full remission. 

MOVE, MOVE, MOVE! It is critical to feeling less pain

Think of starting yourself moving like trying to get a car going on a freezing cold day. Maybe it takes a little longer to start and a little longer for the heat to kick in. Once you blow through that cold air, the warm air starts to come in, similar to how it is when you start moving when you are hurting, it takes a while for you to start to move better, but you eventually do. Just work hard at it. Until you do, you will continually get worse. You HAVE to move. If you don't move, you will continually feel worse. Remember, there is nothing wrong with your leg, no matter what colors and swelling you have. That pain is not pain telling you to stop moving and that you are hurt. It is pain but not for anything, just bad signals. You HAVE to move around or it will hurt more and your muscles will further atrophy. In honor of JFK, we will look at one of his accomplishments as a Vet that served on PT 109. Yes, that is me at four years old riding this tribute ride to him and his brothers in arms. Let's think back to FDR who was one of our best presidents and was stricken with Polio. We can pull through this if he pulled through Polio. We are 10x better off than he was and he went on to be President! If we simply move as much as we can, we can gain more movement and less pain. If we do not move, things will just hurt more the next day. It hurts a bunch to get moving, but if we do not do that, we are just hurting ourselves further. We cannot feel hopeless in this! End rant.

Rant second wind!

It has to managed, and that is through trying to get the pain down as much as we can through physical and chemical medicine. The absolute most important thing is through physicality and moving. I was absolutely DYING yesterday. I was moving around my apartment to clean some and it killed. The more I did, the less it hurt. By the time I was done, I was feeling pretty darn good. You have to move around. I tell you, the first time I had diminished pain, I went and cleaned everything super duper hardcore. By the end I felt good. The next day I hurt like all get out and then moved around and it started to feel a little better. Remember, it is like the movie Groundhog Day, or like that 50 first dates movie when it comes to getting your pain down. It is either, move and hurt like all get out initially and then have diminished pain throughout the day, or have constant pain. I'll take a certain period of time of pain over constant pain. As with anything though, to get to this point you have to work towards it. You've got this! Life is too short to not make the most of your time through getting moving and feeling diminished pain. 

The Beauty of Nature

We were visiting family in Western New York this weekend and on the way back we took the Lake Erie Seaway trail. We took a stop in Barcelona, New York and just took in the hundreds and hundreds of birds that were sensing an oncoming storm and were flying in formations to seek shelter. How many of you folks have just sat and taken in nature recently? What are some of your favorite moments partaking in this pastime? You should go outside today and take note of things such as the behavior of animals, the way the buildings around you look while the sun is shifting throughout the day and more. Take in the beauty of life!

On a side note, here are some things from around my place, plus my wardrobe of size 12 shoes. If anyone needs anything for their place or wears a mens size 12, be sure to check it out! http://www.ebay.com/sch/dwitos/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=25&_trksid=p3692

An overview of my treatment thus far

Follow the Road, regardless of how bad it may seem!

Do everything your therapist says. With mine they have me do the alphabet side to side with my foot, foot pumps, and circles 20 times both directions. Then I lift the heel up to lifting the toes up and that gets easier and easier each day!Then I massage it with different materials/textures. Smooth, rough and everything in between and then massage it with lotion. In addition to the NOI "Recognise" App that I mentioned in an earlier post. All of this is with Neurontin as my medication. The mantra that has gotten me through everything was given to me by my therapist "The pain is not real, your foot is fine, the pain is just bad signals." From there on out I move it realizing it is just bad signals, there is nothing wrong with my foot, ankle and leg. What you do with that then is work through it and the pain, even though initially bad, actually subsides a bit and you gain functionality and the pain gets less and less and less. Don't read too much on the net because it is all negative. More folks go into remission than not. Just work at it! That is all you can do, and live life! There is a woman on my page that got it almost full body and with the right treatment she is fully functional again. Do NOT let the Debbie Downers on the net get you down! By the way, I am not a doctor, I am just telling you about the treatment I have received as someone with a foot, ankle and lower leg afflicted. 

Wonderful News and Huge Progress Towards Remission!

As I have mentioned earlier, the majority of CRPS cases go into remission at one point or another. Every day is still different in regards to pain and swelling, but I am really making huge progress. I have worked on the prescribed stretches, massaging and retraining my brain through an identification app through the NOI group. This app is available for hands and feet and what it entails is identifying either right and left hands, or in my case, right and left feet. The more you do it, your brain can retrain itself regarding the syndrome and trick the brain into putting things back together. Initially, the average CRPS person takes 4-5 seconds or more to identify the feet, and two weeks ago that is where I started. Now I am under 2 seconds! The average person takes about 1.5 seconds to come up with the correct solution. All of this put together has brought me towards putting more pressure upon my inflicted leg and foot!!!! A HUGE step (literally) towards remission, after last week's step of getting to wear my regular shoe!

Life keeps flowing like a waterfall! This one located in Ithaca, New York

Having a really great week!

I have really made some leaps and bounds this week. Little progress is always wonderful. I started Physical Therapy a few weeks ago and have stayed diligent with keeping up on the suggestions for stretches and exercises in addition to massaging the area. However wrinkly my foot is, I have to be happy about the fact that it is the smoothest it has ever been! Beyond the benefit of smooth skin, I have been able to put on a pair of running shoes instead of wearing the orthopedic boot. The shoes are cloth on top, so they enable me to put my foot that varies in the amount of swelling. I can make walking motions and put light pressure on it. I look forward to making more and more progress towards possible remission! I was also able to partially stand in the shower instead of having to sit on the shower chair. These little steps are really helping me get places. My spirits are up this week as I am also pretty close to getting the book done that I started when my injury happened. The moral of my story is to stay diligent. I have worked my hardest to do what I have been prescribed as far as therapy and the information from the doctors. Please, please, PLEASE listen to all directions. They are your best hope at living at your best. The majority of CRPS cases actually do end up in remission at some point, things are not hopeless. I am hoping to be headed towards the path for I am doing everything I can to reach that goal.

I posted this a little while ago:

It was supposed to be the summer of Dave, SUMMER OF DAVE!

The moments that get you by and the benefits of Vitamin C for helping CRPS

I flip up my laptop this morning and the first song to come onto my Pandora is this

Steve Winwood's Higher Love

Second Winwood reference in this blog, oh well. Hearing this song brought a smile to my face. It is those little moments, taking in the beauty of moments that keep my spirits up and the incremental progress I make each day.

As soon as I was diagnosed with the condition, my podiatrist prescribed for me Neurontin and Vitamin C supplements. If you are dealing with this condition, it has been found that Vitamin C supplements can really make a huge difference in your condition. Next time food shopping happens, be sure to pick up some Vitamin C supplements and also purchase citrus/orange juice. Citrus season is not too far off and we'll have a fresh crop of oranges from Florida, so make sure you stock up on this. It can make a huge difference in your condition, this has been found within scientific studies as found in this NIH report. You have to figure, "hey, it can't hurt"

NIH Study

Fall colors are here!

Be thankful for the things you have right now. At this moment
we have the ability to look out our window or take a ride and see some beautiful fall colors. This beauty only happens once a year. Our friend Chrisiy sent in a pretty fall photo here:

So pretty! 

This time of year is special. It starts to get cooler, the beautiful colors come out, Thanksgiving is on the way! We have so much to look forward to coming up here. No time to worry because we cannot miss out on the beauty that each day brings us. Here is a photo gallery of a cool fall day trip my fiancee Brit and I took recently, checking out the legendary Kinzua Bridge in North Central Pennsylvania. 

https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.374859942644006.1073741864.200128360117166&type=3

Our first post: Life is too short to worry!

Life is too short to worry. Our condition stinks but we cannot sit and worry about it. This page is a place to go as an alternative to a lot of the misinformation you see on the net regarding our condition. We need to listen to our doctors and live life! Our lives are changed, they are different, but we just have to adapt to the new normal and work to improve ourselves. This is a place to go to help forget our problems and also guide us in the right direction of things that can help us. I put a beautiful sunset on Lake Erie as the photo because life is beautiful, like the sun and nature and we need to embrace it.

I broke my foot in August and was told the bone should heal up within 6 weeks or so. From close to the onset of the injury I felt tons of swelling, tingly pain in my foot, odd colors of red and purple and these symptoms all the way up to my knee. I felt that it was just part of the healing process and in my initial follow up 4 weeks later that was what they said. At approximately 8 weeks the orthopedist noticed there was an ulcer on my foot and sent me to another doctor because he was unsure of what it was. He sent me to an Internal Medicine Doctor and he was unsure of what was going on, but that it would heal within a month but to call him if there was still swelling and pain. I called him and he sent me to the ER to have some tests done. They did a blood test and that came out normal, they did an X-Ray and Doppler Test to check if there was a blood clot and that came back fine and they suspected there may have been infection. They were not sure though and referred me to someone they knew was great, a podiatrist. That podiatrist looked at my foot and leg for two seconds and knew right away that this was CRPS. He prescribed Neurontin and this immediately brought me back to bearable pain. After that I saw a In the mean time, since the injury was in August, I had to go on leave from being in education. I was very fortunate that my second, weekend job was a sitting security job that gave me full time hours. The future of my career in education is in doubt at this time, but I am very fortunate to have a job that is covering my bills and a lovely fiancee to get me through this. However, there is no time for worry. I am in the midst of therapy that is really making a difference in my functionality and I can lightly move my foot in walking motions on my crutches now, with light weight bearing. 

Instead of letting myself get down about the situation, I look at the positive aspects of every day. A moment feeling down, a moment worrying, is a moment wasted. Listen to your doctors, get second opinions, do what they say and things will get better. CRPS is the new reality if you have it, you just have to adapt. It is your new normal. You can improve if you work at it. Do not let the "web doctors" freak you out like they did when I first was diagnosed. Keep a positive outlook and think of how much worse you could have things. Look at the sun rise, look at the sunset. Go see a movie, go sit on a bench somewhere and take in people and nature, but most of all, just live life. Your time on Earth is limited, do not waste it on account of something you cannot control. The best things in life are still there, just take the time to appreciate them and adapt to the new hand you have been dealt.  Steve Winwood once said "The Finer Things Keep Shining Through." Let them shine through for you, let the best of the world shine through for you because there are so many great things out there. Just keep on plugging at it and making it work.