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Allright, I don't see the point of going further wth this. Aside from hurt feelings, there's nothing taking place here except a reluctant/friendly understanding between regular reader Kevin and wendyb, freeper, and marty....at least there's that. If you all would like to continue the thread, you'll have to do it elsewhere. There are other things to discuss and I hope you guys will bury the hatchet and join in.
the management
187 comments:
You are so wrong it really shows your ignorance about medical conditions. Try educating yourself. It's ignorant people like you that make it difficult to be treated for pain.
anon, it's not hard to get treated for pain. But a perscription isn't what you need.....what you need is a shrink.
Anon, the ignorant people are the ones who read this article, and feel sympathy for the victim. She broke her foot! How on earth is 5 million dollars supposed to be a reasonable amount of money for her pain. The doctor didn't give her this disorder, she already had it! Yes the doctor broke her foot, but he wasn't at work. He was dating the "victim's" mother. His insurance should maybe pay for her medical fees, but that would not be 5MILLION DOLLARS!!! Anon, its the people like you that drive thriving countries into the ground, because you always want to put blame on someone. A smoker gets cancer in lets say the lungs. They need a lung transplant, I dont even know if they do those but its besides the point. The smoker dies on the table during surgery. Whose fault is it? You would say the doctors and nurses present at the surgery. It is actually the smokers. If they had not been smoking their entire lives, they would not be in this predicament in the first place.
http://www.rsds.org/3/pdf/Modified%20ASA%20poster-RSDSA.pdf
http://www.rsds.org/pdf/New%20Yorker_CRPS_2005.pdf
I have posted two links: one to an on-line survey of 1,459 people with CRPS and the second to a very readable lay article on CRPS for everyone's review.
CRPS is a neurological syndrome that is characterized by intense chronic pain-so painful that individuals with CRPS beg for their limb(s) to be amputated.
No amount of money can relieve the anquish of having this pain, 24 hours, seven days a week.
It's literally hell on earth.
Best of health, Jim Broatch
Executive Director
Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome Association
Difficult to be treated for pain????
Ohhhh- that must be why people rob pharmacies or the elderly for oxycontin- that explains it!
I've come to the same conclusion about ADHD. It doesn't seem to be real. I know I personalize everything - but every kid I know who is medicated for ADHD has lousy parents/home life - or parents who expect too much from a normal, active kid.
If it is real, it certainly isn't for the ?? how many kids who are being medicated for it.
Parent doesn't know how to handle kid - must be ADHD - can't be me and my pathetic lack of parenting. Dr. tells parents ...it's not your fault. That will be $385.
It makes me ill that these kids are being drugged - in a lot of cases = just so they can sit in chair for too many hours.
Fibromyalgia sounds kinda hinkey to me too.
Jim, in the absence of physical cause, what is the source of the pain? The only answer is psychological, no?
In your opinion, can RSD or CRPS be caused by an injury? These "syndromes" sound eerily neurological to me, if not a little bit hypochondriacal.
You'd make a lot more sense about the culture of victimhood if you didn't so eagerly display your ignorance about medical conditions.
Some of us who live with conditions like CFS & Fibromyalgia have just as little if not less use for liberals as this blog...but then I might be giving you too much credit, given the contradiction in a liberal-style rant against the pharmaceutical industry on a site where someone claims to have read an Ayn Rand book. Nevertheless, just because we share the fate of living in a society of complainers doesn't mean that some of us are incapable of dealing with chronic health issues while doing our best to keep our mouths as closed about what we deal with as possible.
I don't know anything about "RSD" or "CRPS," so, short of evidence, I find it best to not comment. I know about CFS & Fibromyalgia. If you think gratuitously dropping a scornful reference to conditions you obviously know nothing about somehow advances the cause of conservatism, why not show some accountability and attempt to back up this nonsense. Outside of the idea that some people are misdiagnosed, and that some others are in fact either just whiners or stricken with psychological and/or psychiatric issues, you can't.
But you can either try, which means you'll be grasping at straws like old Wall St. Journal editorials, Michael Fumento's hate mail, or the fraudulent research produced by a psychiatrist in the U.K.--or you could actually take the opportunity to admit that you were wrong to connect these conditions with the culture of victimhood.
In the meantime, people like me will just have to wait for market-driven solutions to poorly understood health conditions that are more real than you'd ever want to have to find out.
freeper, I don't have a problem with the pharm industry in general. In fact I support their pursuit of profit whole-heartedly. The fact that they're saving lives is a bonus. That said, you cannot tell me they don't sometimes persuade agreeable physicians to promote their products by intentionally misdiagnosing or over diagnosing certain illnesses, if not making them up out of whole cloth. There's a huge profit motive to do so.
I may have overstated myself by saying that none of these conditions exists but, my point was that rampant overdiagnoses and hypochondria play a huge statistical role in how many people actually suffer from causeless, phantom pain.
Freedom's point was a good one. Bad parenting accounts for 75% of ADD/HD diagnoses. That's my own empirical estimate from talking to people who work with kids. While there are some kids who actually have these problems, most parents use it as an excuse to drug their kids into being quiet and still, and the Ritalin manufacturers and physicians contribute to the problem.
I agree that Ed should probably do a little bit of research before making such an uneducated comment as "these conditions are made up and don't exist". However, I do agree with him that some of these conditions are often over-diagnosed. I also think that sometimes the diagnosis is made because no other label can be put on the condition. As for the ADHD comments, I definitely think that that label is often "sought out" by parents who just can't discipline their children; however, there are definitely children who legitimately have this condition and medication is the only way these kids can function at school and in the home. I think the schools also put pressure on the parents to have their kids tested when it is just a matter of having a "class clown" or a "chatter" in the classroom that the teacher finds disruptive. An unruly child does not always equal ADHD. I speak from my experience working with children and their parents and do not make this statement without forethought. But Ed...come on...don't make a bullheaded comment like "these conditions are made-up" until you've done a little more homework.
One of the wonderful things about the internet is that it allows anyone to post anything they want, their opinion, their likes, dislikes, their favorite songs, what they had for lunch, etc. and for many people they don't worry about those pesky little things called facts. They don't worry about doing any research concerning what they write about, don't bother to do background checks, due diligence, or any work whatsoever related to what they write. Instead they simply write what they feel and pretend it is the truth.
In another life perhaps they would be politicians who say anything to get elected.
But the internet can also bite back. It allows those who read some of this dribble to do the fact-checking for them. Such is the case with this article concerning Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, or what those who have done the research now know is called CRPS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome Types I and II.
If you require information, actual information backed up by many decades of research, publications, medical professionals. etc. you can visit one of the two national organizations. websites. The first is American RSDHope (www.RSDHope.org ) and the second is the RSDSA ( www.RSDSA.org )
There you will learn about what has been classified as the most painful form of chronic pain that exists today, the pain is 24/7, it is most known as a constant burning pain that the victims describe as having their limbs on fire.
There are no medications to treat CRPS. There is no single treatment for it. So no pharmaceutical company is making tons of money from the victims of this disease which has been studied and researched since the Civil War. Once the Iraqi War is over they estimate there will be thousands more CRPS victims due to the severe nerve injuries that are occurring there.
Of course you could simply bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. Or you could judge the millions of victims based on someone like Paula Abdul. Or you could bunch CRPS in with other diseases instead of actually doing the article based on what the victim had. Or you could just make up your own facts to suit your argument. It's up to you.
Fighting for awareness one step at a time,
Keith Orsini
Director, American RSDHope
(and 34 year survivor)
www.RSDHope.org
9 million hits and counting!
I am absolutely discusted to hear that you think that RSD isn't real!!
I think you need to read this link that now proves that RSD IS REAL!!
http://www.ninds.nih.gov/news_and_events/news_articles/news_article_CRPS.htm
Thanks
Well, I thank you for at least offering that you overstated your case in your rant. But this leads us to what good such rants do and why it may make sense to think before one posts.
I don't disagree with the idea that ADHD is overdiagnosed; that pharmaceutical companies straddle an ethical fence; that personal injury attorneys work in ways that do damage to society at large; or that physicians allow whatever complexes they may be possessed of to cloud the medical landscape. However, none of this means that overreactions do anyone any good.
More than that, this cuts directly to why I pay little mind to popular media figures, some of whom I see celebrated here on your site. I'm all for pointing out a problem. However, it shouldn't exactly be a news flash that capitalism does not come without warts. What's the best way to deal with it? By pointing out the political and logical fallacies of your ideological opposites, and practically nothing else? Sorry, that's a waste of time so far as I'm concerned. Great if you require the self-esteem boost to be part of a big clique that makes a lot of money for its big mouths & big heads by pointing out the perfectly obvious, and even the not-so-obvious.
The real question is, what does someone do about it? Do you have any solutions? If the pharmaceutical industry is able to game the system to work with physicians in a way detrimental to society, what's the answer? Either you can prove that laws are broken (difficult at best; probably unrealistic any way you slice it), propose new legislation (MORE laws?), or governmental regulation (not exactly a conservative approach, now, is it?). Got any better suggestions? Unless a private 'watchdog' can be set up in a manner where it can exist solely on banner ads & contributions...good luck.
My suggestion is that angry rants make for good copy, but poor logic, and damage your credibility. I'd agree with your 75% figure on hyperactive children, but when you use a term like 'empirical' in the same paragraph where you actually admit that it's anecdotal, that's a contradiction that's worse than criticizing the free market while claiming kinship with economic libertarianism (which is how I interpret the proud reference to Atlas Shrugged).
If judgments and awards based on personal injury lawsuits and poorly understood conditions are so egregious as to actually spur changes for the better in our system, then they shall do so on their merits. And there's nothing wrong with trying to call attention to it. However, overreaching and seemingly deliberate attempts to make one's self look foolish do nobody any good...except for your ideological enemies. To a large extent, they're my ideological enemies as well, so let's just say that I can't imagine you see any reason to provide them with any ammunition as you have done here.
Shame on you for posting about a disease that you know nothing about!!! I have had RSD for 8
years and I would not wish it on my
worst enemy!!
Your blog really is horrible. I have CRPS and no I don't have pain pills, and why is that? Because pain pills don't even touch how extremely painful this is. I've had surgeries and nerve blocks and all kinds of treatments. I'm quite sure I didn't do it all for pills that I don't have or because I'm a hypochondriac. You should really research what you're talking about before you post such ignorance.
before you post anything you should really do the research.. many suffers lose abilities to use their legs, or their arms.. i am one that has lost the ability to use my legs because of this disease. I fight everyday to do simple things that people like you take for granted. last thing i wanna do is take a narcotic to just live . I do believe there are many things out there that are blown way over board, but really do the research. even after your nasty comments i wouldnt wish this disease on you or anyone else that is so heartless. You wouldnt wanna walk an hour in any of our shoes. so sorry you didnt educate yourself on something before opening your mouth. start reading.
My personal opinion is your the one who needs the shrink.Anyone who would post about something they know nothing about just to get attention and a rise out of people is actually lacking in self esteem.I truley feel sorry for you.
Your ego is so over inflatted that you want attention.whats wrong mom wasnt around growing up?
I am on crutches from crps.Soon to be in a wheelchair.My organs are shutting down.I may only have a little time left on this earth due to this.
To you a joke,to someone else its a life.
Pray you never get this illness.
karma is funny like that.Some day you'll look back and ask for forgiveness because someone you love dearly has crps and you have to watch them litterly crumble because no one can do a thing.
I will bet you didnt even look into this illness.Other wise you wouldnt have written this.
Did you write the same thing about cancer also?
You are just looking to upset people and ya know what? You dont upset me,I feel sorry for you that you are lacking the self confidence to be a compationate human being.
another bit of information for you.oxi does nothing to releave pain there is no drug to releave the pain from crps.
so before you go saying things about people robbing for drugs, did ya ever think it is your everyday junkies?there is no cure for crps.do your homework.There is such a thing in the head as a sympathetic nerves system.Also auto immune.Look those up in the dictionary and see what you come up with.It has nothing to do with psycological problems.
You let me know if and when you get crps if you can do the things you do now,if you can hug your spouse,do things with your kids,take a ride in a car.
eat with out a feeding tube.
let us know ok??
There is not much I can add to what my fellow-CRPS sufferers have already said. But, I want you to know that I am a long-time conservative, right-winger who was working very hard on a very successful career when CRPS came calling after I had broken my leg in a car accident. The last thing I wanted was to have my ability to walk taken from me, only to lose my hard-won career with it. My days now are mostly spent in bed in agony from a pain that no one can relieve. As for pain meds, the others have already adressed that subject. For this pain, they don't touch it! The folks with CRPS are not robbing drug store or elderly for narcotics. Narcotics don't help us! I am really disturbed that someone like you with your sweeping generalities can do so much damage to the conservative cause through ignorant comments made with any real knowledge. Shame on you!
I was really upset when I read your blog - I can't believe you would say such nasty things. I have suffered from CRPS/RSD in my left leg and right arm since I was 12 years old, it has affected my walking, I am in a lot of pain and the scary thing is that no medications help even touch my pain - and that is the same for almost every RSDer. Please don't tell us that we are doing this for drugs - we are not, we are trying out different medications in hope that they will bring us some pain relief, we do NOT want to take meds!
Please keep your opinions to yourself in the future - because one of these days you will look at what you posted and wish you never posted it.
OK, OK, I give, though what conservatism or Atlas Shrugged has to do with it remains a mystery.
I did overstep by generalizing all pain-related conditions as being suspect, and/or made up. Clearly that's not the case. I apologize for that. That said, do any of you find it slightly suspicious that this girl, in the absence of any other legally demonstrable damages, was awarded $5 million based on her claim of a general debilitating pain syndrome? It's a tad convenient sounding to me. It sounded a lot like car accident "victims" putting on a foam collar and walking into court with a limp on the advice of their lawyer as evidence of their "injuries".
That was the point I intended to make. Anyway, since I delight in pointing out everybody else's shortcomings, it's good to know I can count on all of you to point out mine.
Kevin.
Anon, the ignorant people are the ones who read this article, and feel sympathy for the victim. She broke her foot! How on earth is 5 million dollars supposed to be a reasonable amount of money for her pain. The doctor didn't give her this disorder, she already had it! Yes the doctor broke her foot, but he wasn't at work. He was dating the "victim's" mother. His insurance should maybe pay for her medical fees, but that would not be 5MILLION DOLLARS!!! Anon, its the people like you that drive thriving countries into the ground, because you always want to put blame on someone. A smoker gets cancer in lets say the lungs. They need a lung transplant, I dont even know if they do those but its besides the point. The smoker dies on the table during surgery. Whose fault is it? You would say the doctors and nurses present at the surgery. It is actually the smokers. If they had not been smoking their entire lives, they would not be in this predicament in the first place.
Well Kevin, you are as uninformed about RSD as the person who posted this article. She didn't HAVE RSD, she DEVELOPED RSD as result of the injury. I didn't state my opinion on the lawsuit so you are wrong in assuming people like me are driving countries into the ground, which is another mis-informed statement. It's people like me who feel they need to at least try to inform uneducated people of the facts about RSD. It's people like you that make RSD so difficult in getting the proper treatment. Furthemore,you are blaming the victim for the actions of the system who awared the money to this woman. Who are you to put a pricetag on a lifetime of extreme pain and suffering, brought on by the negligence of a stumbling drunk, who happened to be a doctor. You have no idea how much folks with RSD suffer, so you are in no position to say how much is too much.
Your lung cancer analogy is pointless also. This woman didn't have a choice about getting RSD like a smoker would have in getting lung cancer.
Do yourself a favor and stop pointing your finger at me when it's people like you who need to take the time to at least be familiar with what you are talking about.
Anonymous aka. Tumble
I have a question that maybe one of the CRPS patients could address. The pain I experience with CFS--we call it CFIDS, actually--is certainly nothing like the descriptions I'm reading, nowhere near as severe. It's not excruciating pain, not usually, anyway. It's one of my most prominent and constant symptoms with this condition where symptoms are known to wax and wane. While not terribly severe, however, it creates extreme fatigue, and I often pass out from the indirect effect of the pain.
I control it with what believe would be considered fairly high dosage of a nerve medication, Neurontin (generic: Gabapentin). This medication was approved by the FDA for treatment of epilepsy/seizure disorder. It's often prescribed to control certain types of pain, but from what I see, at low dosages by doctors who I think don't know a lot about it.
The media doesn't help: several years ago, Dateline did a hit piece on this medication. Apparently it had been prescribed off-label, resulting in a patient's death. I do believe that it must be carefully weaned off if/when one goes off of this drug, as seizures may result, which is why the patient the television program focused on succumbed, if I recall.
The hit piece brought together people who were either considering, or had already begun, a class-action lawsuit. My memory's hazy on this and I could look it up, but it's not really my point (though I do think someone was going for ratings with a story they wanted to use to catch some residual Vioxx/Celebrex outrage).
Have any of you tried this? Of course, this is not exactly the venue for medical advice, and the internet shouldn't be, either, but on the other hand I see no reason to not share good info if it's available. This drug is said to be well-tolerated, and I generally find that to be the case. I'm hit with debilitating pain after just about any activity requiring leaving my home, but without this my experience has been that I couldn't function even to the limited extent to which I'm capable. If there's any way it might provide some relief for some folks, at risk of coming off like a shill, I'd suggest looking into it. If it's not indicated in any way, then my apologies, but in some circles it has a misguided bad rap & if it could possibly provide help to anyone, I'm just throwing it out there. If anyone could address this, maybe it could be helpful.
As for this blog, I'm guessing that its principals may be looking at certain things a little differently after reading some of these comments. The "Ed Anger" approach from the Weekly World News is great for humor when directed at cultural targets, but some of are here to shout from the rooftops that what I'll describe as the 'Oprah-fication' of America isn't as accurate a caricature as it may seem.
And the condition I deal with is most certainly an 'Oprah' condition, in that context. However, there is NOTHING conservative about ignorance.
"OK, OK, I give, though what conservatism or Atlas Shrugged has to do with it remains a mystery.
I did overstep by generalizing all pain-related conditions as being suspect, and/or made up. Clearly that's not the case. I apologize for that."
Ed--again I thank you for having had the decency to reverse course on your words. I won't waste much more on this, except to say that I brought conservatism into this because this looked like a site put together by people who would consider themselves to be conservative, at least relatively speaking. Is that not accurate? Should I have used 'Republican' or 'right-wing' or even 'Libertarian?' Labels can be tricky. When I see a site like this, it looks like the people putting it out are what I would consider to be conservative.
A rant criticizing free-market practice that is not illegal had me puzzled given what I saw in a brief perusal of the site. I looked at the profile & saw that one of you guys lists Ayn Rand books, which looks like a clear-cut case of wearing one's influences on their sleeve. Given the contradictory content in the rant here, it gives me pause. Should it not? Either you're for the free market & you accept it as it is, or you don't...blaming drug companies for finding ways to increase profits smacks of railing against greedy CEOs & the evils of Big Oil & other such liberal red herrings. I thought it was worth it to point out how little sense this all made. Get it now?
The $5 million judgment is more a reflection on society than a valid reason to drag John Edwards into ANYTHING. Perhaps the woman did indeed deserve something for her suffering. There are good ways & bad ways to present criticism of this. This was, I think you may now see, perhaps not the best way. Not if you want people to take you seriously. I prefer that people who are right-wing do everything they can to avoid NOT being taken seriously. If there is liberal bias in the media, one of the best ways to fight against it is to do what you can to keep the rants free of ignorance. I don't see how you could possibly disagree with that.
you know what gets me is that i have sit and watched my best friend suffer from RSD. it is not a joking disease. before you give out your "opinion" you need to walk one day in someones elses shoes that has RSD. my friend use to play with her kids and run and play participate in all of the kids school activities. to having to sit at home and do nothing or struggle to get dinner cook, go to the store, bath her little boy, no she has to depend on someone else to help her. she cannot go to the store and actually enjoy herself, a walk to the store is not a good idea even if it is just 2 blocks away. you take a chance at not being able to make it home or scared to drive because you can not control all your motor skills in that area of your body that has the RSD. any long drives are not possible without the pain of being in a car for so long that you cant walk when you finally reach your destination. the times they sit and cry because they cant take the pain and noone understands, missing out on your kids graduation from Middle school and kindergarten, thats something you will never get back. so if you are planing on talking about something you knwo nothing about then you need to get your facts straight before you start running your mouth and you have no idea about the problem.
freeper, I am in favor of the pharmaceutical free market, but only when it's legal and ethical. Persuading unscrupulous physicians to over-diagnose illnesses to drive sales is both illegal and unethical, and is by definition deceitful and therefor not part of the free market.
As for my supposed politics, I'm part conservative, part libertarian, and once in a while, liberal. I am intentionally mercenary about the issues and shill for no man or party. After two years, I'd think you people would get that.
Hello Ed,
I’m a college student, majoring in social work who happens to have Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, depending on which doctor you speak with and which literature they work from. Doctors may not know how to cure this disorder, and we don’t have good tests to prove that we have this pain, but I can tell you honestly that I would not make up this level of pain. If I were faking it, creating it in my head, that would be wonderful, it would mean that I would know how to fix it. Unfortunately, I’m not making it up and we don’t know how to fix it. The medical care I require to attempt to manage my pain effectively enough to allow me to continue my studies is quite expensive, even with the excellent insurance my father has through his job. I can tell you that I would give anything to make this go away or get better, but there just aren’t many options and there are thousands of others like me. We don’t like this reality that our lives have become. All we want is to be able to function wll and have our pain taken seriously.
I hope that you never experience this condition. I also hope, however, that you will take some time to understand this condition and educate others on it.
I see you've "clarified" some of your outrageous comments, lol. My husband suffers from complex pain, and received the precipitating injuries during his wartime service in the United States Marine Corps. He is one of the most motivated, disciplined, dignified individuals I've ever had the priveledge to have known. The tripe you spill here is no different from the careless, ignorant attitudes I encounter nearly daily when I pull into a handicapped parking space, or make room in the front of the line at the bank for him to wheel himself up to the teller's window, or at the pharmacy every so often as well, when I go to fill the prescriptions that allow him have a marginal functioning inside our home. I offer you the same thing I offer others willing to bully those in this kind of pain, and that is this: I'll break your spine for you if you really wish to prove your point that this kind of pain is imaginary. Then you may go apply to SS for disability, and lo and behold, you'll find that your pain is indeed a valid medical condition! RSD/CRPS has been documented since the Civil War, and there are countless veterans right now with complex pain and debilitating injuries, with more on the way. I would love for you to spend one hour in my husband's condition. I truly would. YOU would have it coming.
If what you're describing is illegal, then surely a legal remedy may be pursued. Hear about any lately?
Who decides what's unethical, Ed? Would it not be unethical for a pharmaceutical company to ignore their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders? Should they not pursue every legal avenue towards providing investors with a profitable enterprise?
If you actually believe that there can be a free market with no deceit...who are you kidding? That's as painfully naive as somehow believing that a load of anonymice suddenly stumbled upon a blog, out of the blue, to slam you for telling people they should look to psychiatry to treat physical pain.
If you've been doing this for two years, one would think you'd get the nature of how people use the internet. But you strike me as one of many who think they support free markets...until and unless some pet issue of theirs presents a conundrum they have no answer for. Oh, let's make a lot of noise & say dumb things on our blog because of some case that points to the need for tort reform. Really dumb things.
Brilliant.
i personally would like to thank you for being man enough to say you apologize,
you dont relize how big of a can of worms you opened up in the crps world.
as for the lawsuit,i agree when it is a cup of coffee at dunkin doughnuts that says hot.
BUT.. with that said 5 million wont even cover her medical costs of having rsd.you have no idea what painful proceedures we indure with the hopes of a little bit of relief from being debilitated.
I say this is worth the lawsuit. some indure pain pumps which are disfiguring and spinal cord stimulators with which you have a battery in your body and wires up your spine,you have no idea what out medical costs are.so please do not use rsd as an example of a frivilis law suit.
thank you
Ed said "my point was that rampant overdiagnoses and hypochondria play a huge statistical role in how many people actually suffer from causeless, phantom pain."
You can't deny that - and those of you who truly suffer from pain of some sort should be irritated by that as well.
I would hope you would agree that our level of irritation should be commensurate with whatever statistics Ed is referring to in his statement.
Since he didn't, if you'd be so kind as to cite some, then it might be possible to clarify a perceived level of irritation at that aspect of 'causeless, phantom pain.'
In the meantime, I'd ask that you consider the idea that the initial post is far more irritating, especially because there is a stated presumption that the pain doesn't even exist, and no collaborating information of any kind to back up that assertion.
I await your response.
freeper, I would think you, of all people, would resent the practice of feckless physicians diagnosing an illness just to drive drug sales. Yes, it happens all the time, but that doesn't make it OK. Moreover, it is not the fiduciary responsibility of the company to the stockholders to make as much money as possible, any way possible. It is to make as much money as possible, legally and ethically. Do you seriously think there is an arguable ethical point with that practice? I'm no lawyer, but I'll bet there are laws restricting drug companies from encouraging physicians to diagnose certain conditions to drive sales. There are certainly ethics guidelines of the AMA regarding cozy physician/drug rep relationships.
You can't win on the free-market enterprise argument and you know it. Nobody is a bigger cheerleader for the corporate pursuit of profit than me, but not at the cost of the compromised practice of medicine.
How so many RSD sufferers wish there were a magic "pill" to take for this horrible affliction that my 11 year old suffers from. Other children are in wheelchairs unable to walk or even be touched. Most of them have no pain medicine that touches this fiery hell.
Shame on you for invoking right-wing politics in this. You only prove liberals right in your mindless banter.
May God never strike one of your loved ones with CRPS. I wouldn't with that on anyway, not even someone as cruel as you are to opine on the suffering of many on subjects that you have not one clue.
Freeper - Didn't he apologize for that and try to explian what he meant?
You want statistics on how many people are misdiagnosed? I'm sure all CFS studies would show most people diagnosed actually suffered from CFS. Isn't that what we are saying the problem is? And most probably even believe they do have it. How many people could read through the symptoms and say Gosh , I think I have CFS ?
How many would you believe are misdiagnosed? What is the criteria for being diagnosed?
I am sympathetic to anyone who does suffer from chronic pain. I believe there are mysteries of the human body and unknown diseases. But I will stick to my belief that there is a crazy big number of hypochondriacs and lazy people wanting disability income. Another issue I have with these problems that were mentioned.... How many of these people with ADHD - fibromyalgia or whatever eat healthy foods and maintain healthy weight - exercise - how many smoke or have allergies?
To the anon who posted this:
"so before you go saying things about people robbing for drugs, did ya ever think it is your everyday junkies?there is no cure for crps.do your homework."
my comment was in response to someone who said it's hard to be treated for pain - my point was if it is so hard to get some wicked powerful pain relief then why are so many people addicted to it?
I wish you were here to see my best friend suffer and tell me that it's not real! Have you ever walked by a person and have them scream in pain because you caused a breeze that make them feel like they are on fire? I dare you to spend half an hour with a RSD sufferer. Is your leg purple and feel like it is on fire?
freedom2learn
why are so many people addicted to it? Because these are people who did at one time have cronic pain.A surgery,a broken bone,then take prescribed medication and use it in a wrong way.going against what the bottle says.chewing instead of swallowing which allows more into the blood stream.your name says freedom2learn.So why are you not doing so? Any pain medication site says to take as directed.they also give you information on why people become addicts.once again the internet is a tool.use it to learn rather then jumping on people who are dying or who have illnesses that there is no cure for.Look it up.you certainly do not seem sympothetic.
in addition there are people who eat healthy,did exercise before a dibilitating disease and did not smoke or drink.
yet still get these illnesses.
sence you seem to have the answers and catagorize and lump sum why dont you tell us how we get so sick we are on death beds?
Ed:
I have a proposition for you. Since you took it upon yourself to publish medical and legal information about RSD, I would like t properly educate you. It is apparent that you are extremely ignorant regarding RSD.
I do have some background in both the medical field as I hold a current license in the state of California and I also have some education in law at the doctoral level. However, my greatest qualification in RSD is that my foot was severely crushed 2 years ago and I have been living with RSD since. I have two spinal cord stimulators implanted in my spine with a generator implanted in my buttocks, which I will fully describe in detail if you would like to take up my proposition and be educated about RSD.
I don’t believe nuclear tri-phase bone scans lie and I find it very hard to believe that insurance would pay about $75,000 to have two spinal cord stimulators implanted in my spine if I had nothing wrong. Not to mention the lesions that broke out on my foot that landed me in the hospital for a week. Huge disgusting thick yellowish fluid oozing lesions because my brain is unable to send the appropriate signal to the nerves in my foot and leg.
I am just curious. Are you college educated? For someone that is as ignorant as yourself to write a blog such as this, I find it hard to believe you are an educated man. I’ll go as far as to invite you to come to California and walk a day in my shoes.
RSD has devastated my life. It has robbed me of my health, my quality of life, my career, and the ability to be the wife I once was. Fighting to live a somewhat normal life with RSD is hard enough without ignorant people such as yourself posting information about RSD that you have absolutely no information about.
I look forward to your reply.
Pamela Sarah
To add to Anon's last posting, most children who develop RSD are competitive athletes, dancers, gymnasts, etc.
I think that the people here who are expressing their ignorance on RSD, fibro, ADD, etc, are just the lucky/blessed ones who haven't suffered from it. They want to tack it onto right-wing politics where it has no place. I am a conservative republican who is embarrassed by this lack of human compassion. I'm not asking your taxes to fund a thing, Mr. Rantright-raver, and I'm not even asking you to be a "compassionate conservative." But have a little human decency and quit lumping everyone into your little box that you like to call the "victims" of society which repulse you.
Having said all this, I do agree that YES, pharmaceuticals reps are a huge problem today. I overheard a rep tell my Dr outside the door to give a certain ADHD med to any patient who exhibits a short list of symptoms. That infuriated me ALMOST as much as this dismissal of "phantom diseases." Why? Because my son went through a battery of testing for ADHD (never had a behavior problem, by the way) and this sort of casual diagnosis and giving of prescriptions just minimizes those who do have the disorder. I also agree that attorneys can and do latch on to these disorders and run with them for their own monetary gain, which is equally as sickening to me. This also only hurts those who truly suffer.
Please, as a fellow conservative, I am asking you on your site to be very careful in your attacks on people who have illnesses. Also, please check out the websites that have been previously posted here. RSD has very little funding and the victims are very much "on their own" and isolated.
well said caymantime.
well said
Boy Ed u sure did open up a can of worms havent ya? Well i have had rsd now for almost 14 years now wayyyy back in 1995 i had a severe cut to my left thumb and hand and to my amasement the FRIGGIN PAIN HAS NEVER STOPED E_V_E_R GOT IT?
Seeing how u seem to know alot about rsd and chronic pain then u tell me why i and others have struggled to keep our jobs and our lives ( as we once new it it to be ) by working as long as we can i hace an scs implanted in my behind,yea love the way it feels wish i could personally hook u up to one myself feels great everytime i sit lovely feeling, u really need to try it sometime oh yea and not to mention ALL THE PILLS WE HAVE TO TAKE ON TOP OF THAT, MANY TIMES A DAY!!!!
I dont know about anyone else but i always wanted a life like this.Cant anyone help it if we are the ones with this crap, I woke up one day and had a very,very bad day well (this crap hits us like a lightening bolt) I ACTUALLY TRIED TO CUT OFF MY OWN HAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yea rsd will drive a person crazy any chronic pain will.
I wake every day as i am sure others do too crying in pain like we have been trying to tell u if this is all in my head not real then why do i feel as if someone is pulling my arm off??? Oh yea dont let me forget to say that i (like others) have lost my job. 11-11-2004 last day worked, so lets see i continued to work for ten more years before i just couldnt do it anymore and i loved my job, my life ,kids, grandkids u name it. I havent been able to get all this crap out in 14 years and lookie here all it took was for u to come on the internet and belittle us that are suffering from all kinds of chronic pain,OH HELL NO SIR U DONT HAVE THE RIGHT!!!!
I would like to apoligize to if i have offended anyone was not my intention, SOFT HUGS TO ALL CHRONIC PAIN SUFFERERS!!!!
RSD/CRPS is certainly all too real. It's ignorant comments from people who don't bother to research or try to understand that make me very angry.
I have had RSD for 5 years now. It spread very rapidly and the only place I don't have it are my torso and head. All of my limbs,feet and hands,hips and shoulders are affected. This started with a broken knee at work. I had a job I loved and if I could stop taking my meds right this second I would. I hate having to take meds but I hate being in agonizing pain even more!
My skin is discolored and can look almost black it gets so dark. I'm very fair skinned so one can imagine how bad it looks. The hair on my head falls out by the handful and the hair on my legs is very sparse due to it having fallen out. My skin is so dry it sometimes cracks open and gives me even more pain. Even a simple paper cut can take up to 2 weeks to heal. I get open sores on my legs that take 2 weeks to a month to heal, all from RSD. My nails barely grow at all which isn't a bad thing by itself, but the pain is overwhelming. The part I like best is when all throughout my body it feels like someone has lit a bonfire underneath my skin. (sarcasm included).
For a disorder that doesn't exist it sure manifests in a lot of physical symptoms. Just a little fyi as well, I HATE DOCTORS!!!! My whole life I never went to the doc unless something was seriously wrong with me, like I literally had to be unable to walk or breathe before seeing a doctor about it.
I don't wish ill to anyone but for so many other people like you,sir, I wish for 1 week you could suffer with RSD as millions of us do everyday. The constant, unending pain, the burning, unable to get out of bed in the morning much less sleep more than a couple of hours all night long because of the pain. The loss of mobility, not being able to cook for yourself, go shopping, enjoy a day outside playing with your children. I bet after just 1 day of it you'd be begging for someone to take it away. Unfortunately for the rest of us, we'll be this way and worse for the rest of our lives.
Oh, I forgot to add a couple of things with all the rest of these lovely symptoms of mine. My memory is shot. The muscle spasms make the pain worse, if that's possible. The uncontrollable jerking of my arms and legs also is a real pain too, quite literally. It's unnerving to have to lay there as a body part or more than one flops around like a fish out of water and nothing I do can make it stop. This goes on and on and on up to an hour or more each time, many times a day. I'm quite thankful for one med, a muscle relaxer I take that, thankfully, has cut down on the amount this happens to me each day but it still happens way too much.
"freeper, I would think you, of all people, would resent the practice of feckless physicians diagnosing an illness just to drive drug sales. Yes, it happens all the time, but that doesn't make it OK."
Oh. Really? Gee, thanks, Mr. Ed. Or should I find a better name for a parrot who's just discovered the interweb & gee look at me I have a blog, like, wow, LOL, but I can't write my way out of a paper bag. Sheesh.
There are lots of things I resent that I can't do a damned thing about, and I couldn't do anything about them when I was healthy, let alone now that I've been mostly bedridden for nearly a decade. That's part of why I accept the free market for what it is. Unfortunately, while this may be news to you, 'ethics' is subjective in places like Wall St. Subjective to a fault. Did it ever occur to you that there are packs of wolves who would like nothing better than to prove illegalities in the relationships between doctors & pharma? Ever notice that it's not something you hear much about? Ever wonder why? Because that's the way it is. That's life. Life is unfair. Isn't it ironic that you're now the one in the role of complainer?
I can't do anything about what goes on between pharma & physicians. I am powerless to make a difference in that arena, and, to compound the irony, many if not most of the people who look to do this sort of work share many similarities with the former vice-presidential candidate you inanely chose to name in this discussion. You want to 'do something about it,' that's where you have to go.
It hardly takes a genius to stand up & say 'this is wrong.' Like I said, this is a matter of pointing out the perfectly obvious. What are you going to do about it besides complaining? You have much more of a choice in the matter than I do because of my physical limitations. My response is partially based on how the practice of pharma lobbying physicians led to physicians noticing that an epilepsy drug helped control 'phantom' pain suffered by people with the condition I have. I let the market take its course; acknowledge & condemn what I would consider to be unethical behavior, relationships, and actions; but accept that I'm not in a position to do much about outright illegalities, and I leave that task to those who are. Whose efforts, ironically, would be paradoxically compromised by tort reform. Well, you take the bad with the good & vice versa. In principle I'm on board with tort reform. In reality I accept life whether tort reform happens or not. If there are illegalities that aren't dealt with by appropriate parties & there's something I can do, I'll do my best to do it. One thing I won't do is go anywhere near the position of Michael Moore, which is something you're way closer to with your complaints than I am.
"Moreover, it is not the fiduciary responsibility of the company to the stockholders to make as much money as possible, any way possible. It is to make as much money as possible, legally and ethically. Do you seriously think there is an arguable ethical point with that practice? I'm no lawyer, but I'll bet there are laws restricting drug companies from encouraging physicians to diagnose certain conditions to drive sales. There are certainly ethics guidelines of the AMA regarding cozy physician/drug rep relationships."
You're clearly no rocket scientist, either, and a gremlin just came out of nowhere to tell me that if I'm in need of an economist that I might do better looking, uh, someplace other than THIS site.
I already said, if there is a legal remedy, then why not do something about it, instead of merely complaining? Do you seriously think I'm arguing FOR unethical business practices? Oh, brother. I don't know how many times it will take to explain this, but the folks who are most likely to uncover any illegalities are the ambulance chasers you've already shown your disdain for. That is, unless you believe that our elected representatives actually have a stake in uncovering this sort of wrongdoing.
Didn't think so.
"You can't win on the free-market enterprise argument and you know it. Nobody is a bigger cheerleader for the corporate pursuit of profit than me, but not at the cost of the compromised practice of medicine."
With cheerleaders like you, we might as well all become Communists. Define 'compromised practice of medicine,' please. Then kindly explain for us all how exactly your definition relates to illegalities. Specifics would be appreciated. I'll be waiting for that. Skippy?
Now...
Freedom2learn?
"Freeper - Didn't he apologize for that and try to explian what he meant?"
How many times would you like me to acknowledge his apology? It's there, in case you missed it. I was quite specific. One thing when it comes to caring about people taking responsibility for their words is, if they actually go ahead & take that responsibility, which Mr. Ed did, it's incumbent upon a fair-minded person to acknowledge this action. I believe Mr. Ed has learned something over the past couple of days, since posting something he probably didn't think he was going to have to backtrack on. The visitor counter on this blog is well into the five figures, so I think that counts for something. I'd prefer to be as civil about this as possible, but Mr. Ed has chosen to maintain something of a rude tone with me. That's a reflection on him. You may do with that what you wish.
"You want statistics on how many people are misdiagnosed? I'm sure all CFS studies would show most people diagnosed actually suffered from CFS."
And you'd base that on...what? Why would you be sure? Do you not understand what I was asking? Let me make it simple. If Mr. Ed had simply said that in his opinion, that there were enormous problems with misdiagnoses & perhaps even quackery, that would've been one thing. However, he was so sure of his premise that in one place he used the term 'empirical,' and here, he referred specifically to statistics. The problem is that it's the statistics that are 'phantom,' NOT THE PAIN...at least for those of us whose pain is REAL.
One major difference that I discern between 'conservatives' and 'liberals' is that 'conservatives' prize the importance of personal responsibility. That extends to one's words, of course. Mr. Ed lived up to his end of the bargain on some of his careless words, upthread. However, not so, here, at least not yet. Taking care with one's words when you have a blog is a responsibility one should live up to if they take the concept of personal responsibility seriously. Hmmm?
"Isn't that what we are saying the problem is? And most probably even believe they do have it. How many people could read through the symptoms and say Gosh , I think I have CFS ?"
Detailed information on the validity of a diagnosis of CFS is readily available on the CDC website. It's not exactly a state secret. FYI, there is an overlap of some symptoms that are seen in both CFS and...depression. That's part of what leads to the controversy, and the poor communication as well. That doesn't mean that one has to be a genius to comprehend that an easy way to tell the difference is that the fatigue and pain that may accompany depression is typically well-treated with exercise. The response of CFS patients to exercise is, mostly, extremely poor.
This stuff is pretty basic & could prevent a lot of silly 'it's all in their heads' types of nonsense, but that would be the sensible & easy way to approach these issues. Nah. Why bother with common sense?
"How many would you believe are misdiagnosed? What is the criteria for being diagnosed?"
Fewer and fewer over time, as physicians learn the differences between genuine cases and other scenarios, which may either legitimately be psychological or psychiatric, especially the aforementioned bugaboo of depression; or, at the unfortunate end of the spectrum, malingering and fraud. But there's not a ton of promising research being done in these parts. This may be a hangover from a story reported by, I believe, Michelle Malkin, some years back regarding millions of dollars intended for CFS research that was mysteriously unaccounted for...and it's hard to argue with the idea that research on cancer and heart disease is arguably more important, since those are life-threatening diseases, and CFS isn't technically a 'disease,' at least not until enough research is done so that it may qualify for that designation (until then, it remains a collection of symptoms that we still refer to as a 'syndrome,' for better or worse, though in other countries it is referred to as myalgic encephelomyelitis, or M.E.). Oh, and then there's the AIDS lobby. I don't really feel like arguing with them, thank you very much. The most promising research is actually being done in the U.K., where M.E. is handled by the NHS as a psychiatric condition. Within the last month, a researcher scrimping for private funding, since all government funding goes into Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (which includes exercise regimens that make patients WORSE), published a study that pointed to seven subsets of M.E./CFS that can be identified by genetic markers. That's probably the best news I've heard for this condition in all the time I've been stricken with it.
"I am sympathetic to anyone who does suffer from chronic pain. I believe there are mysteries of the human body and unknown diseases. But I will stick to my belief that there is a crazy big number of hypochondriacs and lazy people wanting disability income."
Which is based on a fraction of reported earnings. I made a very decent living prior to becoming ill. My SSDI ended up being based on something like 1/5th of what I earned when I became ill. As it happens, my application was approved more expeditiously than many CFS cases because the medical evidence was overwhelming, specific, and inarguable that I could not possibly continue working. Yet not long afterward, I had a doctor tell me that he believed that since I had been approved for SSDI, that I had no incentive to try to get better. So perhaps you might want to think about how that belief of yours is held by a LOT of people, and in a zeal to expose the fakers, it can end up doing no small damage to people who are NOT faking.
Just think about it a little.
Then ask yourself if you could possibly have more of an issue with the fakers, who create and cause beliefs such as what you've stated, than those of us who are not faking do. After all, it's partially because of fraudsters that the process of qualifying for SSDI, after years of paying into the system, mind you, is as difficult as it is. So I would submit to you that you couldn't possibly hold as much animus towards the fakers than the actual sufferers do.
"Another issue I have with these problems that were mentioned.... How many of these people with ADHD - fibromyalgia or whatever eat healthy foods and maintain healthy weight - exercise - how many smoke or have allergies?"
ALLERGIES?
Ugh. Excuse me...this is not obesity leading to diabetes we're talking about here. And personal responsibility just happens to be the single most important tenet of conservatism in my book. You are speculating, for what reason I do not know...but I don't know in what universe you think you're going to find a connection between ADHD &...not exercising? I almost can't believe I'm reading this. I'll try to keep this civil. These are UNEXPLAINED conditions with NO KNOWN CAUSE. Those of us who pay attention to such things know damned well the importance of diet & exercise. But, I can no longer exercise. If I come down with heart disease due to lack of physical activity, it won't be because I chose to not get my butt to a gym, it's because I CAN'T. Ah, but that's not even the point. You're making a statement here where there is NO correlation to cause-and-effect. For the record, I don't like a generation of children on Ritalin or a generation of adolescents on Prozac when many of them probably shouldn't have been treated with these medications, but that's a societal end product in these times we live in. To say you're barking up the wrong tree here is as kindly as I can put it. In conclusion, you can't point to the statistics that would bolster Mr. Ed's anecdotal point, because they don't exist. What you both should understand is that I don't like it any better than either of you do, but I won't conform to Mr. Ed's view of the culture of victimhood.
And that's coming from someone who's tried dozens, perhaps hundreds, of treatments, and I'm still mostly bedridden. Life won't stop for my sake. Complaining about it won't do me much good. Coming from a blog that complains about complainers is a bit too much.
RSD/CRPS it too real for my family. My husband was diagnosed with CRPS2 after a tractor pinned, crushed, and broke his foot back in 2002. At 32 yrs old, he has not been able to walk since that day, and likely never will. The disease spread from his foot to both feet, both legs, and his chest. He has undergone countless surgeries, implants, medications, experimental meds, physical therapy, counseling- you name it. Nothing has stopped it, nothing cures it.
People stare at his grossly purple, blue and black feet and legs when I take him anywhere. They whisper wondering why he has to have a specialized wheelchair to keep his legs up at all times, and what is making his legs and feet so bad looking, discolored, and swollen. Literally, they look like bloated corpse limbs. And, in winter, they wonder why he is in shorts. He cannot wear shoes, socks, pants because the pain is so severe- he cannot stand even the lightest touch. He sleeps in a hospital bed, has to help to bathe, dress himself, you name it- if not for me, he would be in a nursing home, his CRPS2 is really that bad.
My husband was a strong, totally healthy man before this. He fished, hunted, worked construction- took his children to play ball, went to their school functions, carried them and put them to bed. He helped out our parents with their home repairs, worked on our cars, and had fun out with the guys. And he and I traveled, danced, made love, and dreamed of our big plans later in life- vacations to Alaska, touring the countryside on motorcycles, you name it. Its gone now. Our life is now overwhelmed with doctor appointments, medications, managing complications like ulcers and sores, loss of teeth and vision from side effects of meds- and confined to our home, because he is so disabled and in so much pain, he cannot be out for long. His pain is so bad, it can make this strong, grown man, cry. It makes me cry. I hate this disease. It tortures my husband endlessly with severe gnawing pain, severe disability, and an uncertain future that has robbed us of our lives.
I would give everything I have and would ever have to give my husband back his life and be free from this horrible pain. This disease is more real to me than anything else. Its hell, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. Thank God we are still together, and I have not lost him. Many people with this disease give up- they lose hope, and commit suicide. We lost a dear friend to its complications, and know its worst outcome. We fight this every day. And despite everything, we try to remain hopeful- one day, they may find an effective treatment, or a cure. We pray its soon! So many are suffering! But with so little funding, and so much mis-information or prejudice towards people with chronic pain, we fight a hard battle to get proper attention to this disorder.
Try to imagine the lifetime medical costs for someone like my husband, not to mention his total loss of income and pain and suffering. The costs of medications alone have been in the tens of thousands easy some years. Oh- throw in the pain and suffering of the family members too. Our children lost the father they knew, the life we had, and the future we could provide them. I have not been able to work in years caring for my husband, and lost my health insurance, all of our savings, and most of our friends. (you really learn who your friend are when something like this happens)If this woman has suffered like my husband, she will need the award she was given.
There are jerks out there that fake all kinds of illness, that take advantage of the system, and that rip off others. And sure- there are smarmy lawyers, doctors, pharm. companies, reps. and Paula Abdul type antics that make people question everything. But they occur with every kind of illness, every type of accident, everywhere in the country. And they've been around for years- its not a new event.
RSD/CRPS is not a new disease by the way- it was recognized during the Civil War. It has had a variety of names over the many years- but the disease has not changed, nor has its devastating complications.
Please, for God's sake, don't trash a very real disease for the sake of a blog on tort reform. My husband and others need people to recognize the severity of this disease without the strings of politics and prejudice attached.
dear ed,
i too was offended by your comments. however, i do thank you for your apology.
i developed rsd after a carpal tunnel surgery after my hand surgeon who has done 2500 of these, allowed a resident , who has done 4...mine was his last...to take over. he pushed the scope in too far and released the blade cutting my ulnar nerve. neither surgeon realized they cut the nerve and it took me 21 days to finally get through to him that something was wrong. the burning searing pain was indescribable! it was discovered the nerve was cut but too much time went by and the damage was too great to fully repair this. i sued my surgeon. i had a terrible lawyer so ended up taking a bad settlement. hospitals and dr.'s are always telling you to participate in your care, check out your dr.'s etc. i did that yet when i was under anesthesia, the surgeon chose teaching over my wishes. my patient rights were violated. no one offered an apology nor did they offer to pay my bills which were close to $400,000. my insurance didn't cover everything. at settlement i requested a private meeting with my surgeon where i could tell him how rsd has affected my life. it was at this meeting where he apologized. he said he wanted to before but his insurance company wouldn't allow him to.
my case was worth $2 million. i got enough to save our house. before my surgery i was very athletic, working full time. i am happily married with 2 children. they were 4 and 6 at the time this happened. i can barely take care of my family due to my pain and medication side affects. if you had done your research, you would see narcotics do not help all portioons of rsd pain...in many cases it doesn't help at all. you need nerve pain drugs like neurontin and lyrica but in high doses, antidepressants because when in chronic pain your brain becomes deprived of seritonin because your body is constantly trying to fix itself, vasodialators because with rsd your nerves cannot control the opening and closing of your vessels correctly....you have a blue splotchy, swollen limb...plus there are other meds to control other symptoms. try taking all of those together and see how badly an rsd sufferer functions. i NEVER chose this for my life nor would i wish this on anyone....not even my lawyer! it took 3 years to get SSD. i used to make $75000 a year and now receive $20000. psychological? no way!! i would love to have my life back prior to this surgery. i will not pass judgement on this woman who received $5 million. my case was based on that i was young and i would be working a certain amount of years, what benefits i would be losing etc. pain and suffering had a cap of $350,000...the rest was economics. i wanted so badly to fight at trial for every patient....my rights were violated. sure dr.'s have to teach but get PROPER informed consent!
please visit www.sorryworks.com.
BTW, when you sue, the lawyer gets a third, the plaintiff has to pay back the insurance company lein (if you win at trial they get dollar for dollar, if you serttle, they make a deal with you), you have to pay court costs which can be well over $100,000, and you pay your lawyer fees , which can also be well over $100,000. if it gets appealed you pay again. my settlement took 3 yrs. it didn't need to go on like that.
zap
now what's this i hear about the doctors making it up, and the pharmaceutical companies magically coming up with a cure...I'M WAITING! crps/rsd, causalagia, what ever you want to call it was first documented around the time of the civil war. if someone has the miracle cure they've had plenty of time to get it through clinical trials and on the market.
i've had rsd going on 4 years now, and let me tell you it isn't in anyone's head. i'm not an addict, and resent the implication, but even if i was, i shouldn't be embarrassed. hell, wasn't rush limbaugh caught with his hand in the oxcontin cookie jar? i have not sued a single person, though thinking back on the last 4 years there are a lot of people i should have. what i am is an average person, who sustained an injury, and wound up with a syndrome that most doctors don't know of, let alone how to treat. they through pain pills at it, they through electronics at it, and when all else fails they tell me i'm the problem. i'm a hystrionic, looking for sympathy and attention. what they don't take into considerstion is the importance of what the rsd has taken away from me.
crps/rsd is a very real condition, with very real symptoms,
that are in no way vague or ambiguous. the pain is very real, the constant bouts with skin ulcerations and resulting infections are very real. the bone loss is very real, the chemical changes that occur in the body are very real, the crippling nature is very real, and most of all the intractable pain is very, very real. oh yeah, and it doesn't respond very well to all those pills they give us. the condition isn't understood well enough for a any kind of cure. miracles are all we have to hope for right now.
people with this condition, are spending every penny they can scratch up to travel to europe for the express purpose of being put into a coma, for the chance of a remission. hoping to never, ever have to take more than an aspirin ever again. the only people who would do that on a whim have munchausen's disease, and even they may not be thrilled at the prospect of voluntarily turning off their brains so they can reboot. the rest of us take our "drugs" and live with the side affects, and try not to worry too much about what the future has in store. we actually try to find doctors who won't turn us into zombies. when we get there we sign the contract and agree to submit to
random unannounced urine and blood tests. we also don't take more than we're prescribed, or routinely ask for refills early. we are people with a condition who unfortunately require some pretty, hard core prescriptions to function, and would be more than happy to flush them down the toilet, without first having to pass them through our system. we even sometimes giggle when a doc says, don't worry it won't turn you into paula abdul.
what i suggest for you is that you do some better research on topics, before flying off at the keyboard.
if you want to blame somebody for our letigious society, start with the jury that awarded $40,000,000 to the woman who spilled hot mcdonald's coffee in her lap. don't attack a condition and the people who have it. if you must go on the offensive do so with the doctors who diagnose people with conditions like fibro, rsd, and adhd, for their own personal gain. that benifits everybody! put yourself in the shoes of people who had to sit across from a doctor, and hear, we don't know why anyone develops it, the syndrome isn't fully understood. treatment is trial and error, but we'll try to find something that works. at best we'll only be able to take the edge off the pain. it can have crippling affects. there's no known cure, and if you'd only been diagnosed sooner we may have been able to do more.
Ed,
I almost hesitate to post a reply, since it might be giving you the attention you seem to want. BUT, people like you are a big problem for those with RSD/CRPS! I wish it wasn't a real medical condition. I had cancer, my daughter has RSD. I've watched loved ones die from cnacer numerous times. Given a choice, I'd pick cancer over RSD any time.
My daughter has been in pain for 14 1/2 of her 29 years of life. She lives in awful pain,unable to sleep, isolated, housebound, forgotten by friends. When she tore her ACL playing basketball as a Freshman in high school, she was in the top 3 of her class, lettering as the only Freshman on the Varsity team, very much a people person. She certainly didn't ask for the life she has now. She desperately tried to continue on despite all the other health related effects that RSD has brought with it. She finished school early, though unable to attend classes her last two years of high school, and she worked a while until she just could not do it anymore.
You cannot imagine the pain a mother feels when she hears her teen begging the doctor to amputate a leg because it hurts so badly. Nor can you feel the heartache of hearing her child say that when she wakes up in the morning she cries because she prayed not to wake up ever again. No, my daughter is not having fun. Her disability checks are so small that they are almost a joke. Believe me, she'd much rather be pulling in a decent salary working a job-ANY job. Or simply being a mom, a dream that has gone up in smoke due to the RSD itself, the meds and the treatments.
The first year alone, her medical bills were over $100,000. However, she was not diagnosed until after 7 surgeries within 4 years, which caused her pain to continue to worsen, and her medical bills to grow with it. All because the doctors didn't know/understand RSD. In 5 monhts so far this year, her medical bills already total over approx $150,000.000. Not yet 30, imagine how much my daughter's medical bills will be over the span of her lifetime. No, ED, that settlement is not too large. That young lady will need the money. It won't make her happy, it won't be used for pleasure, it will only help to assure her of the ongoing medical care she will need for the REST OF HER LIFE.
You, sir, had better hope you never feel the pain of RSD/CRPS. Your view of what is real and what isn't would not save you from the hell of RSD. And it really is a living hell. NO ONE COULD MAKE UP SOMETHING LIKE RSD! Imagine your worst pain ever, and then multiply it by 100, then imagine living with it 24/7/365/for the rest of your life. You've heard of nerve pain, no doubt?? Well, RSD is nerve pain, to the nth degree. I challenge you to research and learn about the diseases you assume are fictitious before you start speading such incredible ignorance around.
ED,
and anyone else that thinks RSD isn't real YOU are the ones who need to stop writing things or even commenting on things that you haven't reasearched or know nothing about. I would like you to have RSD for one day and see how well you survive it..no , actually, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy, not even YOU!!! You are a horrible, bad man/person to write such idiotic posts about a disease you haven't experienced first hand and don't know anything about! I was in a terrible car accident in 2002 and had multiple injuries, 5 surgeries, 2 screws, a pacemaker, chronic pain and several objective tests to prove these things are real! Then in April 2007, I had surgery on my foot and ended up with RSD in my right foot after that surgery. I had never heard of it, didnt have a clue and I was already on pain medication so I wasn't looking for any medicines!! In that car accident, I acquired something called "Dysautonamia" where my autonamic nervous system got all out of whack..it means that all kinds of systems on me have gone berzerk b/c of this: my heart rate, blood pressure, gut and motility, short term memory etc..this RSD came from the body's own nerves attacking themselves and nerves gone crazy is what it is. It is purple and swells and burns as though someone has poured gasoline on it. THe pain meds I take don't touch the RSD so what do you think I want from this,ED? I already had enough Dr's and attention,thank you...I certainly didnt want or need anymore!! I was offered a intrathecal pain pump and i declined in hopes that someday this pain will go away. I think you should stop talking out of the wrong end of your body and start having knowledge of your subject before you spew junk and wrong information out of your mouth! I'm in so much pain, and it's real b/c I can SEE it and FEEl it!! It's swollen, purple, shiny and mostly HOT to touch even! It's spreading up my leg from my foot and sometimes it burns so badly I dont' want to move or talk or do anything but cry b/c it burns so very much. It's making me not able to sleep and it's hurting my short term memory and it's even locked up my toes and ankle on the RSD foot/leg!! YOu cannot make that up, ED!! I can't "lock" my own toes and ankle on will alone! You need to get some serious psycholigical help so you can pick on your own shortcomings and not find hurting people in pain, to put down and try to hurt!! YOU ARE BAD AND WRONG....GET A LIFE BUDDY! Oh and my husband's been a teacher for 30 yrs now and he doesnt like to "drug" kids either. He's the first one to say they are just "a boy" or just " a girl" or "just a kid" and they may be just a bit over active..But he gets the ones with ADHD and such...He knows the difference and it certainly does exist. Yes..shame on teachers and professionals who slap a kid on a drug to quiet them down or take their spirit, but thank God for the good Teachers and Professionals that know the difference and help those kids and people...Just same with RSD etc...there may be people out there just like anything else, who take advantage or who are "sick" and they want to pretend to be "sick" for some pyschological need...but thats not the majority ED and thats NOT RSD!! I wish you could just try it for one day...YOu'd be running for the hills in no time b/c you are a coward who likes to put down others to make himself feel like a "bigger man"...there are other ways to feel like a man, ED..go get a book and start learning intead of picking on us!!
You are such a stupid man, I was really upset when I read your blog - I can't believe you would say such nasty things. I have suffered from CRPS/RSD in my left leg and right arm and back for 2 years now, and some friends i have met online are alot worse and even children.it really shows your ignorance about medical conditions. Try educating yourself. It's ignorant people like you that make it difficult to be treated for pain or even to get a DX, YES BECAUSE OF PEOPLE LIKE YOU,,,IGNORANT>>>
I work in rehabilitation and can unequivocally vouch for the fact that not only is CRPS real, but the pain is extremely debilitating. The patients I see with CRPS are not seeking money in a law suit. In fact, they can't leave their houses to simply watch a movie because they are in so much constant pain. They are suicidal, they are desperate.
I've never heard of your blog before, and it's obvious you're using overblown opinions to bank on upsetting people and drawing visitors. That's just wrong...
PS: Hire an editor.
I'm not trying to drive hits by being controversial. I don't have any advertisers. What would be the purpose of that?
Look, I offended a lot of people by mistakenly lumping in actual conditions(I went back and did some research) with those about which there is doubt and mystery. And I apologized for my mistake.
That said, my larger point, which is that the abuse potential in which people claim to suffer from conditions which aren't disprovable, is huge. And there are plenty of lawyers, physicians, and "victims" who're willilng to conspire to fleece the system.
freeper wants to know what I'm going to do about it besides complain. Answer: the only things I can do....bring attention to the problem here, support and vote for candidates who are in favor of tort reform, and encourage others to do as well.
I understand your frustration with people like me, mistakenly not taking your conditions seriously. But, it's the people who falsly claim to suffer, the physicians who falsly diagnose, and the trial lawyers whose way of life is to sue the deepest pockets around, in order to cash-in in front of a jury who foster the scepticism among the rest of us.
The same is true for the ADD/ADHD kids. Sure, I acknowledge that they are actual conditions and in extreme cases Ritalin is appropriate. But bad parents, bad teachers, and willing pediatricians, and Ritalin manufacturers who'd rather drug a kid than deal with him are the problem. There are countless news articles regarding the mis-diagnosis and/or over-diagnosis of these conditions. Tort reform isn't the answer here, but stricter diagnostic guidelines would be appropriate. And that's coming from somebody who's almost never in favor of regulation of any kind.
There's a common thread in almost every comment so far, I mean besides that I'm a thoughtless jack-ass, and that is that you all are frustrated with people not taking your conditions seriously. Why don't they? It's because of the abuse, and that abuse is partially driven, I would argue, by pharmaceutical companies' sales.
I developed pain in my right side after back surgery and no one would recognize my complaint without contributing it to my back surgery. Two years after back surgery while I was trying to get my career going again as an ER nurse,I developed muscle cramps from my right axila to my right foot with some lasting more than five hours. After being admitted to the hospital; put through a battery of tests; all along having pain on and off of a burning sensation descriptive of having my right leg plunged into a boiling pot of water; doctors shrugging their shoulders when the tests came back negative and being treated as a "pain med seeker" by the nurses when I asked for a Lortab every 12 hours. I was prescribed morphine in between 2-5mg every 4 hours but each time I asked, I was given the spill on pain meds being addictive and was my pain really as bad as I proclaimed. I sat on the edge of the bed and cried most of my stay. It took almost 6 months to be diagnosed and by that time, I was in stage III and had nerve damage. I was unable to walk or stand without assistance. After some physical therapy, I was told,I would be in a wheel chair probably the rest of my life. I am now walking but with a limp and I still cannot go back to work. No one can really tell me how the RSD started or why. I am now using Lyrica two times a day and still taking paid medicaine when needed usually to try and sleep as my right foot hurts constantly. There have been remissions and I pray that I can be there some time.
Yes, Freeper, Freedom2learn. You wouldn't understand. You can't possibly learn anything because you obviously already know it all.
Isn't it hypocritical to say you won't disagree that ADHD is often misdiagnosed, yet you are irate because I believe your syndrome is also commonly misdiagnosed or faked? Your thoughts on ADHD are every bit as offensive to those people as mine are to you.
I don't care about statistics when I see people who supposedly can't work a paying job, but spend all day at the volunteer fire dept - or work "ünder the table" while collecting disability income.
Why don't you google allergies / ADHD and see what you find?
I'm sure I will get a smart ass answer, but are you completely convinced you suffer from fibro and CFS? Would you be surprised if one day a dr. found another problem that gave you the sympyoms you experience?
Ed: Perhaps you should update your original post to reflect your current beliefs.
I am often the one who alerts the referring physician as to my suspicion regarding CRPS. Patients are not aware they suffer from the syndrome but are in constant, horrific pain. There is often a visible difference, which is what I look for. Sometimes it's so bad, the palmar surface of their hand looks shiny and purple...like raw meat. Or the hair on one arm will turn thick and dark (on a woman it's a more stark contrast). One patient gave the analogy of having your body wrapped in barbed wire constantly...or being set on fire. So you can see why people are so upset about your original post.
Thanks, Jonathan! Wish all PT's were this caring and on top of RSD!
My Name is Carrie Deussing, I'm 30 years old. RSD/CRPS is very real. I'm going to Mexico for the Ketamine Coma Treatment. I'm trying to raise $50,000 to cover the hospital bill, travel and lodging expenses. It's a risky treament, but I will do anything to regain my life back. Please vist my website to learn more
www.carriedeussingrsd.webs.com
Tame The Flame
Carrie
The only pure justice here is if one day you break your leg and find yourself plagued with RSD for the rest of your life, or even god forbid get the kind I have, which stems from no injuries. Still, I honestly hope you are never subjected to pain so extreme, no matter how ignorant you choose to be.
I had never heard of RSD before I was diagnosed. I had countless doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with me. They thought Lupus, arthritis, anything that would explain why I would have such extreme pain and no ability to put weight on that leg (haven't walked for 8 months this flare up, still trying to get better) without any previous injury. Then a rheumatologist, who hasn't seen RSD himself in my state before me (has seen it before, so he does know what he's talking about), knew I had it the second he tried finding the points of pain in my leg. He didn't expect to see it at all, and was as blown away as his assistant to see it. He figured it out because the pain was in different areas along my leg each time he would put pressure there, and NOT just at the joints, ruling out every other option doctors had come up with.
If you are so brilliant, please, find what other diagnosis I have because I tried strong pain medication before we got a diagnosis and it didn't work. Only the anti-convulsants relieved my pain, which ironically enough are used to suppress your Sympathetic nervous system, which, also ironically enough, RSD is a problem with an overactive sympathetic nervous system.
If you are really so professional that people should even consider what you have to say, you will read each and every RSD patients story that responds to this, and do your research right because no 'scientific study' is legit without the research. If this is not a scientific approach that you are attempting, and just another 'dumb American' complaining, there are no legitimate claims to your ranting and nobody should be taking this seriously.
By now I'm sure you realize that it's going to take quite an extraction to resolve your own raging case of "hoof in mouth" disease. It really does pay to check your facts before you start making observations large groups of people with life-threatening illnesses. And whilst I do recognize your apology here, I must tell you that I still feel compelled to go on and share yet another very personal story of my own RSD/CPRS battle. It would certainly serve poetic justice if all of us did ... Maybe our sheer numbers will convince you that we are REAL people with pain that is altogether too REAL.
I am a 50 year old woman who has been suffering with RSD for nearly three years now. Prior to this I was a busy IT professional for a Fortune 100 company and a weekend athlete. Now I am virtually housebound and living on long term disability. My partner is a 30 year veteran critical care nurse who is also my caretaker.
How did I contract RSD? I tripped going over a baby gate and took a fall inside my home. And evidently I hit my knee on the way down because 2-3 days later I was in agonizing pain in my knee. That was the start of my RSD. Figuring out what was actually wrong with the knee took a lot longer. It would be about 18 months and along the way I’d go through 5-6 doctors before I actually got the RSD diagnosis. That’s fairly typical for RSD patients because there just isn’t good awareness of the disease out there. Along the way I had two arthroscopic surgeries and a full scale knee replacement – which was absolutely BRUTAL. That’s particularly problematic because recovering from knee replacement surgery and the getting through the required rehab thereafter are both already expected to involve tremendous pain. And I went through full scale rehab of the knee twice in the space of 10 months. But a year after the surgery I still couldn’t walk and I was in screaming burning pain that would eventually overcome me altogether.
Five months after the knee replacement I went back to work full time. I was in agony and exhausted all of the time. I used to have what we called “crash landings.” I’d work all day and by the time I drove home and pulled into our garage, I couldn’t get out of the car. My partner would come and get me and help me to my room – where I would crash and sleep until morning and then get up and do it all over again. During a routine business trip, I walked through the airports in both cities rather than taking my customary wheelchair. When I returned home I was exhausted and my knee was now producing pain that was off the charts.
Over the course of the next 12 months I saw 4 more physicians/surgeons - none of whom was able to help me - despite all the surgeries and medications - and one who actually made my pain dramatically worse. I tried anything and everything that claimed to help but nothing did. During this timeframe I was bedridden with crippling, unrelenting pain. There were weeks that went by when I couldn’t even get out of bed and woke up every day just wanting to die - not because I was suicidal but just because I was so desperate for pain relief. How much pain you say? On the McGill pain index RSD/CRPS rates well above the pain of childbirth, and slightly above digit amputation. That’s average RSD pain - not the flares that go right off the charts. Imagine someone pouring gasoline on your leg and then lighting it and having it continue to burn uncontrollably around the clock. Now you’re starting to get the idea ... There are levels of pain that most people don’t ever realize exist - levels so high that it makes you think its going to kill you because your heart can’t possibly keep beating under that kind of pressure and so you are just going to die on the spot. This kind of pain is indeed nothing short of pure torture.
In late 2007 I went to the Cleveland Clinic seeking relief. They recommended a drug called Prialt - made from the extremely poisonous venom of predatory sea snails - that would require an infusion pump that would deliver the drug directly into my spinal column fluid via an interthecal catheter. Thankfully I had some time to research the drug because I found out that there were no long term studies involving this drug and that there was a risk of neurotoxicity as well as reports of serious psychotic breaks by patients who had been taking the drug for more than a year. Then there was the cost - which was estimated at $40,000 per year. How was I supposed to pay for that?! My insurance sure wasn’t going to sign up for that type of recurring expense. Ultimately we decided to change course and proceed with a spinal cord stimulator - which consists of a large battery pack implanted in the buttocks area that is connected to electronic leads that are implanted in the spinal cord. The trial went well and the permanent implant surgery was scheduled for mid-December.
Unfortunately that surgery was not uneventful either. I was placed face down on a surgical table and given anesthetic. Midway through the surgery they woke me up so that I could verbally respond to placement of the leads and whether or not I was feeling the stimulation in the right area(s). I remember hearing that they had turned something on and in the next breath I was screaming at the pain in my spine and yelling for them to please turn it off immediately. This happened a couple of times and then I began to have what I thought was a Charlie-horse in my right leg. They administered more pain medication a couple of times and even sent an OR nurse around to massage my leg to try to get the “cramp” out of it. Eventually the pain subsided a bit but never stopped.
When the surgery was over and I was in the recovery room I began to try to “walk it off” as soon as I could balance again. The pain was still present but at a bearable level when I was discharged from the hospital that afternoon. I got back to my hotel room but hadn’t been there for more than an hour when the drugs wore off and the pain began to shoot down my right leg like lightning, I contacted the oncall physician for PM and agreed to meet him at the ER. Unfortunately I spent the next four hours in the ER with pain so severe that I screamed each time it went shooting down my leg - which was about every 30 seconds. I was in terrible agony and no one intervened or offered any relief. Finally in the fifth hour I was given a narcotic injection and admitted to the hospital for 3-4 days while the neurology department confirmed that there was no permanent damage - evidently they had just aggravated a nerve root during the surgery earlier that afternoon.
The spinal cord stimulator helped for awhile - at least enough that I could finally get out of bed, but over the last six months the pain has eroded back to its former levels. A “normal” day now involves pain in the 7-8 range (on a scale of 1 - 10). But it is also worth noting that in the presence of a significant barometric pressure change nothing is effective and the pain skyrockets back to levels that are difficult to just survive (9-10/10).
And as for the reality of this disease you should know that it dates back to the Civil War where it was first identified as “causalgia” and associated with phantom limb pain. These days even the Social Security administration has a formally defined policy on RSD for disability purposes. Within the content of that document you’ll find a statement to the effect that there is no such thing as a mild case of RSD. Even they recognize it as a completely debilitating and life-threatening illness for which there is no cure.
Think we’re just being too lazy to work and only want the disability money? Pull out your own most recent statement from the Social Security administration. Take a look at the monthly amount they project that you can expect to receive at retirement. Now imagine yourself trying to live with that as your sole source of income. For most of us that’s a level of income that is well below poverty. And by the way, that’s if and only if you’re fortunate enough to be approved. It could go the other way you know and then you have no source of income at all. Couple that with the fact that 18 months after you exit your job (and you will have to quit working because there will come a point when you won’t be able to physically do it any longer) you will lose your COBRA coverage and then have no health insurance.
As for the $5 million dollar settlement awarded the young woman, she’ll need every penny of it and as far as I’m concerned it’s not enough. What is a life worth? That’s the real question here. RSD literally robs you of everything - your former life, your friends, your family, your health, your hopes, your dreams, and everything in between. What do you think that’s worth?
Whenever people make the kind of ignorant uneducated statements that you’ve thrown out here it makes me wish that I had a device that would allow me to simply transfer the pain of RSD from me to you and let you just hold it and deal with it for about 5 minutes. Believe me, that’s all it would take for you to develop instant, total, and permanent clarity here.
Ed,
My llyrold daughter twisted her ankle playing basketball. The injury healed but the pain never went away. Because of RSD/CRPS the pain actually spread bodywide. Basically her nervous system is out of whack and sends pain signals when it shouldn't. She went from an active athlete to a being confined to a reclining wheel chair with tormenting pain in her back, shoulder, ankles, knees, wrists along with headaches, vision issues and hypersentstivity to touch and sound. All are things controlled by the nervous system. McGill Pain Chart is a 50 point scale that puts childbirth pain at a 30, RSD pain hits in at about a 42. Imagine that level of pain in an 11 yr old!! I don't have to imagine it has been all too real at our house and so many others. Just because you can't see the pain doesn't mean it's not there. Try putting your hand on a hot burner on your stove. You can't see the pain so it's not there...DON'T remove your hand...RSD patients can't just remove the pain.
PLEASE...do some reasearch...and become an advocate for those who suffer OR at least stop spouting off and making things worse!
Sincerely,
Momma to a now 15yr old who is learning to cope with the ever lurking RSD monster.
Ed, your last response here is reasonable, and a far cry from the attitude displayed in the initial post. For that you have my thanks, and respect.
But you're still arguing two points here that contradict each other in a fairly significant manner. You want tort reform...and you also want a stop to the unethical practice of pharma pushing doctors to flog their patients with potentially unnecessary medications.
In a perfect world, we could work towards achieving both of these ends, but, as I've noted already, this world is far from perfect. You can't pursue both of these with equal vigor, especially when you haven't explained how what you see as unethical relates to the law.
The same profit motive that drives not only potential overmedication, but also innovation (see my point upthread about the drug I take that controls much of my pain), is what drives the lawyers that are the best hope towards uncovering illegalities in the relationships between doctors and drug companies. So it's a little more complicated than ranting about these two things, as you have, because there's just a little more to it. Would you agree with that?
If you accept on any level, to any degree, my premise that it would be difficult at best, and more likely impossible, to achieve both tort reform & also clean up the ethics in the relationships between doctors and pharma: what do you consider to be more important, tort reform, or healthcare industry reform? I'm putting it to you that you can't have both, not under our current system. Honest question. Which would you rather see?
"my larger point, which is that the abuse potential in which people claim to suffer from conditions which aren't disprovable, is huge."
Maybe that potential isn't as huge as you think; and maybe potential doesn't equal actual waste of taxpayer dollars through fraud. I'll tell you what, though: much like, because of elements of the free market I personally don't care for, it seems lately that I can't sit through a sporting event on television without frequent airings of advertisements for drugs like Viagra. It's become quite irritating. What can I do about it? Not a lot: that's the free market at work. I long ago came to accept its shortcomings no matter how much they bother me. Now, also recently, late at night, the cable system I subscribe to has been airing commercials for law firms that work to procure SSDI for their clients. Perhaps some reading this will be familiar with what I'm describing; maybe you've seen it yourself, Ed. It's a trend I don't like one bit.
But it presents a paradox: how does the government guard against fakers & frauds, how can they be as vigilant as they should towards the parasites & leeches who are looking for a free ride? Now, as I stated upthread, in a point that was bolstered with numbers in a subsequent post from someone else who receives SSDI benefits, when you make a decent living, SSDI is a pittance in comparison. So the free ride isn't so great, unless it's a case where it's gravy for outright thieves who maintain work situations that they're claiming they're not capable of.
The answer is, the government can guard against this best with...larger staffs in the entities that judge medical evidence submitted with SSDI applications. More government, more oversight, more money spent to try to deter fraud. That's a paradox to those of us who actually care about smaller government, now, isn't it? Assuming that this is your position, and I'm assuming it is, so do correct me if I'm wrong about that.
So now we're dealing with two barriers to stated goals in two different areas. Which leads me to my position, which is that while the potential is huge, the reality is likely something less dire. I've already been reevaluated as to my qualifications for benefits once, and followup evaluations are done on an ongoing basis. In my case, I tried to go back to a part-time job. There's a program these days called Ticket To Work that's meant to transition SSDI recipients gradually off benefits if and when they're able to return to the workplace. I tried. I could not work even two days a week. Eventually I could not work even one day a week. So I never even reached the point with Ticket To Work where reducing and eventually eliminating my benefits ever came into play.
"I understand your frustration with people like me, mistakenly not taking your conditions seriously. But, it's the people who falsly claim to suffer, the physicians who falsly diagnose, and the trial lawyers whose way of life is to sue the deepest pockets around, in order to cash-in in front of a jury who foster the scepticism among the rest of us."
You've already apologized. But in this case, focusing on fraudsters to the extent that you come to actually doubt the EXISTENCE of documentable conditions is what I would charitably call a matter of taking things a WEE bit too far. Would you agree?
"stricter diagnostic guidelines would be appropriate. And that's coming from somebody who's almost never in favor of regulation of any kind."
It's interesting, isn't it, to find yourself in a position that is, generally speaking, the polar opposite of what you believe when it comes to many or most other issues?
It's being able to take issues like this on a case-by-case basis is where people's minds tend to open, and the result is an increased insight and even wisdom, which helps to transcend the destructive nature of partisan ideology.
"you all are frustrated with people not taking your conditions seriously. Why don't they? It's because of the abuse"
My position is that this is just not enough of a reason. At least not enough of a reason to take it to the extreme that you apparently did prior to this weekend.
Freedom2Learn:
"You can't possibly learn anything because you obviously already know it all."
Sorry you feel that way. I've learned quite a bit, actually. I was unfamiliar with RDS/CRPS until I read this post and the responses to it. From the sound of it, it makes my condition sound like a walk in the park...and I'm almost completely bedridden. But I knew from the beginning of my struggles with this condition that it was important to keep things in perspective, that what I had could be far worse. That's an attitude that can be difficult to maintain when you pass out from pain on a regular basis. I do what I can to think about suffering far worse than mine, and I believe it helps me to avoid the culture of victimhood, and the bitterness that mere complaining fosters.
On the other hand, it's also important to not be a Pollyanna. I've been dealt a blow that has removed from me my ability to make a living, and to live what I once viewed as a 'normal life.' Keeping both of these views in mind is to try to achieve an extremely delicate balance. If it makes you feel better to think of me as a know-it-all because I went to the trouble of exposing fallacies in Ed's posts, and yours, then I'm happy for that.
"Isn't it hypocritical to say you won't disagree that ADHD is often misdiagnosed, yet you are irate because I believe your syndrome is also commonly misdiagnosed or faked? Your thoughts on ADHD are every bit as offensive to those people as mine are to you."
Excuse me, but I'm not the one with a blog, and I'm not the one on a soapbox about fraudsters. Do you understand the difference between not seeing a reason to disagree and ranting about it? It's a complex situation that requires just a bit of nuance to keep the discussion from teetering on the brink of inanity. Hence my point about personal responsibility, and taking care with one's words.
So, no, it's not hypocritical, especially because I never said anything about ADHD being 'faked.' I KNOW people have tried to 'fake' having CFS, which leads back to my earlier point about how I would characterize my anger at such fraud as being stronger than that of any non-sufferer could be.
"I don't care about statistics"
Again, I can't believe I'm actually reading this. Come again?
"I don't care about statistics"
I'm sorry. I'm stunned. Earlier you quoted Ed's assertion that
"rampant overdiagnoses and hypochondria play a huge statistical role in how many people actually suffer from causeless, phantom pain."
and followed up with
"You can't deny that"
Now you don't care about statistics?
I fear any communication with you has been an enormous waste of time. I do hope someone reading this got something out of it. I'll be sure to not ask you to back up anything with facts from this point forward.
"when I see people who supposedly can't work a paying job, but spend all day at the volunteer fire dept - or work "ünder the table" while collecting disability income."
How many people have you seen doing this? You are aware that volunteers aren't paid? Anyone working off the books should be reported. Did you do so?
If you didn't, then who's the hypocrite exactly?
Please, do ALL of us a favor. Post the names of any persons defrauding the system. I promise you, I WILL contact Social Security, even if, for whatever reason, you may have chosen not to. Which I assume you have not, since you make no reference to having done so. Have you done anything besides...complaining about this?
It's apparent to me that there's at least one thing you've done besides complain...you've chosen to look at sufferers of conditions that some fake their way through with disdain...because someone out there may be faking it.
"Why don't you google allergies / ADHD and see what you find?"
You equated allergies with Fibromyalgia and "whatever" as well as ADHD, yet chose to read my response as only relating to any alleged relationship between ADHD and allergies. How selective of you. I'll make this as painless as possible. On the ADHD publication on the National Institute Of Health website, you will find the word 'allergies' ONE time. The page is at
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/adhd/complete-publication.shtml#pub4
The relevant passage states the following:
"In 1982, the National Institutes of Health held a scientific consensus conference to discuss this issue. It was found that diet restrictions helped about 5 percent of children with ADHD, mostly young children who had food allergies."
Consider yourself afforded the opportunity to come up with something else that suggests a connection between allergies and "ADHD, Fibromyalgia, and whatever."
"I'm sure I will get a smart ass answer, but are you completely convinced you suffer from fibro and CFS? Would you be surprised if one day a dr. found another problem that gave you the sympyoms you experience?"
Did you get the answer you wanted so far? I wouldn't care if the doctor told me I was suffering from a stubbed toe, it still wouldn't explain the myriad diagnostic abnormalities that have been consistently present in the medical testing I have undergone for many years now. And it wouldn't help me get out of bed, either. I was diagnosed with CFS because that's the name for the condition I have.
I'm not especially interested in divulging my medical history on this blog, but I'd be happy to contact you offline and provide you with details if you're not satisfied. I suspect the information I'd provide wouldn't supply the answer you want to hear.
I'd be thrilled if the doctors found there was another cause for my condition, because there'd be a good chance it'd be easier to treat. I'd be surprised, but my priority is to treat whatever it is that I have & not be bedridden, not get emotionally caught up in identifying myself as a "CFS patient." People do tend to get caught up in identities...that would relate to Ed's point about the culture of victimhood. You'll have to look elsewhere to find such a person; I can't help you.
I will reiterate that I've learned something this weekend, and I think it's better to know about conditions like RSD/CRPS, than not. I would hope Ed would agree with me. I recently read some information that compared my condition with the effects of chemotherapy, with regards to the extreme fatigue and pain involved. I found that hard to believe, only because I'd never thought in terms of those sorts of comparisons. It's not a contest. That said, RSD/CRPS sounds FAR worse than what I've been dealing with all these years...and I think what's gone on on this page over the past couple of days has largely been productive, hopefully, at least for those individuals some of us might refer to as 'fair-minded.'
Claudette says you have no idea about RSD, when a nerve is crushed the nerve overreacts ant the PAIN is excrutiating, fingers cold, skin red, electrical shocks, numbness, and PAIN keeps you up at nite. I exercise, take vitamins and am positive thinker. The RSD is beyond control. Read American RSD Hope website. Pain drs are trying to get a handle BUT THIS IS REAL. PAINFUL and you don't know what you are talking about
you are clueless, ive had chronic fatigue syndrome for 8 years and its totally screwed up my life. Its a pretty serious problem, and most people dont realize it.
I agree that people sue for every stupid reason and that its a big problem, but dont be so narrow minded about people illnesses and put yourself in someone else's shoes for a second.
Anyone who knows how to have a good debate at least has the brains to be able to back up their arugument,,,,I ,like many, love a good debate....but you didnt even know what RSD was you goof...
Was that the point? To ruffle some feathers because I assure you, you did.
Did u know that many medical condtions result in pain?...bone cancer is extremely painful but here is some food for thought for you...RSD is not just pain...pain is not the disease....the dysfucntion of the nervous system is the disease,,,hense it is a neurological conditon...pain is a symptom of, and pain is the body telling one that something is wrong.. it is a symptom much like the multitude of other horrendous consequences that come with this conditon that i would hope if you saw, you would have thought twice about your little tantrum here on the net...
I have RSD and I saw an RSD expert who told me that he correlated it like this....'RSD is right up there with the pain of bone cancer but without the relieff of immediate death'....lovely huh?
Do you know the meaning of Dante's Hell or purgatory?....Welcome to the world of RSD.
Yes that is what we live with...
So let me start by saying that you couldnt have been more off the mark when you referenced us as addicts....addicts to what? No drugs work..the side effects to the ones that barely touch on the multiple symptoms over above the pain like the tremors and shakes and sesitivity to touch come with such horrendous side effects that I have chosen not to take them as my mind is not for sale and those who do take anything in terms of meds are simply trying to get thru another day so who are you to use the term addict?...we have not earned that title!
further more you obviously didnt know that RSD can result in open gaping oooozing skin ulcerations and bleeding of the internal organs and behind the eyes adn stroke....I would love to hear the physcho symmatic explanation for these visable symptoms....humor me please...
Moreover, this condition causes the sympathetic nervous system ( which is the autonomic one which we do not consciously control like blood pressure and circulation adn heart rate and sensory) to short circuit, therefore when nerves are fired, blood vessles to the limbs and all your wee bits constrict...now any educated person knows that blood carries O2 adn hemaglobin and with lack of blood flow comes dystrpohy and atrophy and hypoxia and death of cells and tissue...the consequences are unimaginable..
and so the change in the bones is seen on my bone scan, infared imaging has detected the more than 1 degree C difference in skin temp between my limbs and my brain scan performed by a well known US neurologist in the realm of intractable (incurable) neurolology and brain injury has read my brain scans and concluded that the RSD shows that this dysfucntion has travelled to involve the cerebral hemisphere of my brain and hypothalmus on film...there is no way a patient can purposfully produce such results´...Oh, if only I was that powerful!...
I lost my dream wedding, everything i worked for, dream job that had me travelling all over the globe, barely able to walk now and wake myself up in the night making noises even i do not recognize..u get the idea?..who would choose this? and here's the kicker....where I live there is no WC for this, no SS and no compensation, in fact the drugs that come with side effects are not covered by even disibilty...Ï have sold my precious belongs to travel for the above tests and diagnosis...
Lastly, in terms of you suggesting that RSD suffers are basically nuts...let me assure you that you wouldnt last a day with this with such a weak charachter, those with RSD are among the strongest group of men and women you could have the priveldge to know...living with this takes courage and human spirit..
and so based on this blog you started, if i met you on the streets I would deem you not interesting enough to make me sick but having said that..I still would not wish RSD for you. That should tell you something smarty pants.
Thanks for retracting some of your earlier comments and doing some research. I have had RSD since 1997. You are right about a common thread that you are "a thoughtless jack-ass" and that there is a lot of frustration in our voices. For many years, doctors pretended that the thousands and thousands of us didn't exist. I guess it was because they couldn't help us. Things are changing now, but they still can help only very, very few of us. At least they aren't ignoring us. The frustration, I believe, is that there is little money for research, therefore, little research. People in the RSD community have frequently stated that although they wouldn't wish RSD on their worst enemy, until someone famous gets it, the money for research won't come. (Paula Abdul does not count, there are many who think that she does not have RSD. That is a story for another day.) As for the pharmaceutical companies, the answer is not always a pill.
Good grief, freeper! You're nearly hysterical. Get a grip.
You are seeing what you want to see.
Golly, does volunteer mean you do it for free? I didn't know that.
I guess I should carefully spell everything out in long boring rambles so you understand my point.
You are the one who paired specific causes with specific conditions - not me. I listed several of each in no particular order.
I was simply stating that people tend to neglect their bodies and then wonder why they feel terrible.
And if you don't know that allergies, sensitivity to gluten, pesticides, toxins of all kinds, junk food, etc. are suspect in the ADHD epidemic then you haven't looked beyond the ONE website.
When I said you can't deny that, I was referring to the comment about widespread hypochondria and misdiagnosis. Obviously, I should have been more clear about that.
Your apology was lacking in substance.
My son has been in a baccalaureate placement program and will have college credit after 8th grade. Highly intelligent and could probably teach you many things. He has also had ADHD for the majority of his life. He has never been a victim.
I had a nasty slip at a store which admitted the painted ground was slippery because it had almost no sand. There isn't much that wasn't injured in my ankle and leg. I put off surgery for six months because I tried every conservative method no matter how much it hurt. I didn't sue the store. I asked for them to not let that happen to another person.
I wish you had an idea what it was like, just for one day only, to have to apologize to your child if he accidently touches your foot. It's all I can do not to scream, so I apologize to him. We have a cat, the mere brush of his tail against my leg is like a brush full of needles scraping. Water in the shower feels like it is bruising my body.
Then it went to my other foot. Then it started in both my hands.
I wish this was all in my head, because then I could stop it somehow. If there becomes a cure... I'd find a way to pay and it would not involve your money. Unlike others, I DO wish you could feel it for a day.
WHat kind of doctor RE YOU? NOT A GOOD ONE AT ALL. YOU NEED TO GO BACK TO SCHOOL AND START ALL OVER, YOU ARE A NUT CASE. I HAVE HAD RSD FOR OVER 10 YEARS, I WISH I COULD GIVE THIS TO YOU, YOU WOULD CHANGE YOUR MIND, WITHIN 12 HOURS. I WOULD NEVER WISH THIS PAIN ON ANYONE, BUT I DO NOW AND THAT IS YOU, I ASK GOD TO FORGIVE ME FOR THAT, BUT THE ONLY WAY YOU WILL LEARN IS TO GET IT OR GO BACK TO SCHOOL.I HOPE ANYONE THAT COMES TO YOUR OFFICE LOOKS AT YOU AND TURNS AWAY. LET ME ALSO TELL YOU THERE IS ALSO FIBROMYALGIA, I ALSO HAVE THAT. YOU ARE THE MOST UNBLEIVEABLE PERSON, THAT I HAVE HEARD OF. GO BACK TO SCHOOL, THE LAST THING IS YOUR DAY IS COMING. DO THE PEOPLE A FAVOR AND GET ON THE RSD HOPE SITE AND READ, IF YOU KNOW HOW.
Only someone who is absolutely ignorant would dare write such atrocities, regarding a rare neurological condition affecting millions worldwide, and SHOW that they are absolutely clueless in regards to what this disease process is or how it affects the lives of those inflicted by it! The great majority of people affected my RSD are in fact type-A over-achiever personalities, whom have worked extremely hard their entire lives to accomplish something, only to have everything they have ever worked for be stolen away by this unspeakably horrific illness. The very last thing these people (myself included) would have wanted in life is to end up disabled by pain that is never-ending, victimized by medical professionals who too often are under educated and too eager to judge us as 'drug-seekers' when they in truth have no clue what to do to help alleviate our suffering. I should hope that you have not brought down heavy karma upon yourself with your most unfortunate remarks, as I should never want to inflict this kind of pain and suffering not even upon my worst enemy. I suggest the next time you choose to pollute the web with clueless and most offensive trash such as this, you do some research first. You are a most pitiful individual, and I feel sorry for you.
Valium, anyone?
Is anger a symptom?
He said he was sorry! Sheesh!
I was simply stating that people tend to neglect their bodies and then wonder why they feel terrible.
freedom2learn,whole nother subject.
dont catagorize,
that is what started this.
most of us have stated we were very athletic and didnt neglect our bodies.please refrain from using that,you sound ignorant.
RSD is so real. I was in a car accident and had relatively mild injuries (simple broken wrist). I knew 3 weeks after the injury that something else was wrong. I just happen to visit a surgeon for a consult on another injury that told me what was wrong. He knew because his son also had RSD. He said he had considered amputating his son't foot to relive the pain.
One of the worst symptoms for me is the burning. My skin burns like you have sanded several layers of skin off my arm and then poured acid on it. There is nothing that will relive the pain. I was convinced when they took my cast off my arm that I would have a hole in my arm. Another problem I have is with the blood vessels in my upper arm spasm and my upper arm gets freezing cold to the point it hurts. At the same time my lower is burning and I can't stand to have anything, even a bedsheet, touch my skin. Now imagine you never know when you will flare or for how long. It lots of fun, you should try it someday. No, I wouldn't wish that on anyone, even you.
I SEE NOW YOU WANT TO SAY YOUR SORRY FOR MAKING THE STATEMENT THAT YOU DO NOT BELEIVE THERE IS RSD AND OTHERS. WELL SORRY DOES NOT WORK FOR ME. MOST WHO HAVE RSD HAVE BEEN TO A SHRINK, GUESS WHAT IT IS NOT IN OUR HEADS. YOU ARE THE ONE THAT NEEDS THE SHRINK AND BACK TO SCHOOL. I WORKED 27 YEARS AND THE LAST 10 WITH RSD, UNTIL THEY HAD ME DO MORE AND NOW IT HAS SPREAD, WITH PAIN YOU WILL NEVER KNOW.YES I AM ON SS, IF YOU WOULD TAKE THIS PAIN, I COULD GO BACK TO WORK, HOW ABOUT IT. I WOULD BET ON IT, THAT YOUR ONE OF THESE ONES, THAT CRY WITH A HANG NAIL. I HAVE MET SOME NON CARING PEOPLE, BUT YOU BEAT THEM ALL. GO TO RSD HOPE SITE AND READ, THEN GO BACK TO SCHOOL,MAYBE YOU WILL LEARN SOMETHING, I DOUBT IT THOUGH, I CAN'T BELIRVE YOU EVEN HAVE A PRATICE. I SURE HOPE I NEVER HAVE A DOCTOR LIKE YOU. YOU ARE A SAD PERSON, FOR BEING A DOCTOR.
anonymous, check your "caps" key.....and STOP YELLING!
Read some of the annoynomous posts, there are so many people here that either know so much more about it than you, Ed, or actually put that knowledge to use by accepting RSD isn't a pill-popping disease. Let me sum it up for you from recent posts:
RSD is not pain, its an over-active or basically messed up Sympathetic Nervous System(reflex SYMPATHETIC dystrophy) which is not under the control of our concious being, an involuntary system. Pain is the result of this, not the cause. Also, as you said earlier:
"Jim, in the absence of physical cause, what is the source of the pain? The only answer is psychological, no?
In your opinion, can RSD or CRPS be caused by an injury? These "syndromes" sound eerily neurological to me, if not a little bit hypochondriacal."
Type II is brought about from a previous INJURY to the affected area. Type I is basically the same without an outside physical injury, the only difference is it is not understood what causes the SNS to become screwy.
Spend a little less time on computer chat rooms, buddy. Nobody is yelling in here, they are TYPING. Caps are usually showing frustration or to give someone dim enough to not get the main point of a sentence a bit of help bringing that point to view.
Unless you are hearing screaming in your head. Sure you don't have some made up disease? I hear Schizophrenia is a mental disorder, is that fake too? Because my buddy with half the skin missing on her hands begs to differ.
Anyway, your apology was mocking and so half hearted that you can not blame anyone here for not accepting it. So stop whining "I apologized already" because it would appear nobody here buys it. Of course, thats just my assumption by the continued personal and diagnostic attacks on you. Would you say thats accurate?
ed, you still don't get it. your comments remind me of something i read off a key chain. "i'd like to come around to your way of thinking, but i can't get my head that far up my ass.
tort reform, may possibly hinder people abusing the system, but it will most definitely hurt the people who need the system to get some form of justice. we're not looking to cash in, but we are wondering how we'll pay the staggering medical costs. medications alone can run several thousand a month, just for generics, and the meds we buy may just take the edge off.
most surgeons are savy enough these days to include the possible development of rsd on their release forms, and rightly so. rsd is a crap shoot, they don't know who's prone. it's close relative causalgia/type ll crps is another story, a surgeon can be directly responsible by cutting a nerve, or allowing an inexpereienced resident
to get some practice in on a simple common place surgery. tort reform will only succeed in taking away those individuals only real form of recourse. it's not just rsders. every person who has to see a doctor runs a risk of being treated by one who has a history of making life altering mistakes. our legal system is the only way most of us can get justice from a cadre that insists it can police itself, but takes every oportunity to lay blame on the patient.
a semi interesting aside. those doctors who come out and say, yes there was a mistake and we'll do everything possible to fix it, are less likely to be sued. doctors who follow the lawyers advice to distance themselves only succeed in throwing gas on the fire. maybe just maybe it's the lawyers who are responsible for the mess our legal system is in.
one thing i will give you, people like you are not responsible for the actions of medical proffessionals. if they're taught about rsd at all, they're showed pictures of individuals in the acute phase. that's when you show some very visible and very dramatic symptoms. often these visual symptoms subside, returning often, but not always with really bad flair ups. the person that stands before the doctor may look as if little or nothing is wrong with that limb which seems to be causing so much pain. the doctor in question only knows, redish/purple, swelling, sweating, hairiness in excess, skin ulcers, and hot. the person going to them may be grayish, cold, dry, maybe clammy, shrivelled, with contractures. they may also see someone who's had acute visible symptoms for 5 years, but may have been taught that that phase only lasts three to six months. the doctors who know about rsd take it upon themselves to learn all they can. the one thing you do find pretty early on is there's significant ignorance within the ranks of medical professionals, to the point of " what's rsd/crps, i've never heard of that?". more often than not, it's the physical therapist that picks it up and reports back to the doctor. in the end, for us rsders at least, our most debilitating symptom is pain,
and it's invisible. it may show in your eyes, perhaps in a furrowing of your brow,. but lets face it, how many doctors actually look at you when your talking to them.
as far as your audience goes your preaching to the choir, but when it comes to any medical condition, it is totally inapropriate to use a disease/syndrome as a means of fanning the flames of a
conservative witch hunt.
anon, I've never been to a chat room, not a single time. CAPS, in my world, is yelling....trying to force the reader to accept your view by saying it louder.
penarden1, I do get it, but you seem unwilling to accept what I said in the spirit in which it was offered. I'm no longer your adversary. Is that what bothers you now?
It looks like you've received some education on complex pain, RSD/CRPS and hopefully a lesson on how to discern if what you're writing truly expresses what you mean to say. Perhaps you'll find something to say that's not just kicking those who're already down. Perhaps you can direct your energies at a better "culprit" than the disabled. I'm all for "fighting the good fight", and that includes my stance as a self-proclaimed "bully's bully". You certainly had it coming on this one. Get it together, man. You've got the energy, and the will, so try to hone those thoughts and skills to really make a difference, eh?
"CAPS, in my world, is yelling....trying to force THE READER to accept your view by SAYING IT LOUDER."
I see that trying to teach you what a disease really is would be pretty fruitless at this point since you don't realize how stupid you sound from something so simple. CAPS is a text. Text is the written (or typed) word. Nobody is yelling to you. They are writing to you. Again, if you're hearing voices, you may really want to get that checked.
Ignorance is bliss, I suppose. Enjoy your happiness, just don't try to ruin other peoples lives with something that has no relevance to you. Oh, and thats me talking about the RSD, not typed up messages, in case you couldn't tell.
Freedom2Learn,
You keep putting your foot in your mouth. You need to pay more attention to what you say, then again, perhaps that is intentional, meant to stir up emotions. When you stated that people tend to neglect their bodies then wonder why they feel terrible, you in essence blame all the real sufferers for being sick. How about all those who neglect their bodies and are never sick? What you said is equal to saying bad things happen to only to bad people. It just isn't true and it's not fair to lump all together in that way. Most of those who suffer feel guilt already, so you don't need to add more. They feel guilt because their families suffer also, they feel guilt because their family must struggle financially, due to medical costs. They feel guilt because they feel they are holding back their spouses, family, friends, from enjoying life.
You asked too, if anger is a symptom.....it's a symptom, not of the diseases, but of having to deal constantly with imbeciles who judge the ill based on what they THINK, not what they know, because most of the time, those we deal with do not have a clue, and know next to nothing about RSD.
ED,
Your apology is noted, but somehow still lacking. Because you see the problem, but can only fuss about it, not do anything to change it. First, though, you might consider changing your original rant, because anyone coming to your blog will read that and probably not go much further, thus not learning a thing and never seeing your apology.
Chronic pain is not fun for the person in pain, it's not funny to those watching people we love suffer. Chronic pain is real, it's costly, it's misunderstood by anyone not directly involved with someone in pain. Invisible disabilities are the hardest, because people can't see pain. If someone has a cast on a leg, they get sympathy and understanding. If someone has pain enough to cause the wish to amputate, but no one can visibly see that pain, no understanding is offered, instead it's thought to be 'all in their head' or else 'pretending for whatever attention/benefit they can get'. Without the online communities, people will never learn about such things as RSD unless it strikes close to home.
And lest anyone think that the online communities are spreading hysteria and causing more people to believe they are sick with these syndromes, consider that there is a large group of children who suffer this misery. And they didn't get together online to collaborate their stories and symptoms, many of which drs don't attribute to RSD because they are so varied and strange, but which are strangely familiar to others. These 'non diseases' as you called them, sure do cause a lot of misery.
I think you will continue to be 'under fire' here until you put a retraction/apology at the top of your blog, so that anyone who logs on will know that you truly have reversed your thoughts about these diseases. How about doing just that?
I don't know why my last message was posted as anonymous, I put my name on it. Lest anyone think it not legitimate if sent anonymously.
And I had one other point to make....
ANYONE can get RSD. Yes,ANYONE, even you who don't believe in it. And you can get it from the most trivial injury, one you might not even think about normally. So now that you know about RSD.......be vigilant to any injury which hurts more than it should, longer than it should. And if it should happen, at least you have been educated as to what RSD is and can find help. Most of us never heard of it before it hit, and struggled through long searches to even be believed.
i wont even say what i think of you and your simple mind. i bet your one of those men who tell women that giving birth isnt painful.. god makes me proud to say that my husband is fighting for your rights to be a jerk.
victom, you say is the game i am playing. ok i want to ask you how the hell you think i am a victom. I am 30 and i have fibro, myofasical pain sydrome, add, depression, and chronic mirgraines. Nice list, would you like to take it? I have also had two organs removed in the last two years. But you want to know what? ALTHOUGH I HAVE THIS ILLNESSES, THEY DONT OWN OR CONTROL ME. I went threw more than 7 years, test after test, from shrinks, to doctors, being on so many meds that i could even begin to think about before i found out what i have. from being told everything from i am a nut to a wanna be junkie...
Here is what I do daily and I want to you say if you could handle a hour in my shoes. I am a air force wife, whose husband has been deployed for the last 6 months. I am a very proud stay at home mother of two young kids. I wake up everyday at 6 am and dont stop moving till 7 pm every day. I dont take breaks, I cant afford to. Why? b.c if i stop moving i wont be able to get back up. If i cant get back up my family, my house wont function. I play mom, dad, maid, cook, tutor, vet, doctor, nurse, and about 100 other things every day. I do this so my family, my kids can have a safe and as close to a normal life as we can have right now.
i wake up crying and fall asleep crying b/c my body is in so much pain. i have to sit in a very hot bath at least 2 times a day so i can move. so i can get that last load of wash done, the yard work kepted up, cook supper.. i am not on pain killers, and i dont have outside help. i do this all on my own...
so i ask you.. could you handle a hour in my shoes? can you honsetly say that you could do this all with out hurting?? and could you even think of how much it would hurt someone that has chronic pain to do what i do?? SO YOU TELL ME HOW THE HELL AM I A VICTOM???
people like you make me sick.
wendy B
Hi Ed,
Bottom line here is that your apology is hidden in the middle of thousands of words on this site. How about a retraction of your story since your apology basically nullifies what you said, notwithstanding the fact that you still stick to some of your original premise. The tone was nasty and aimed at attacking people, lumping them in one basket with an ugly black bow. If you really want to bury this can of worms, then how about owning up to it at the top?
I am lost for words---it doesn't happen too often, however I will perhaps ask you a question.
Would you swap an annual income of $150.000 and a 30 year old career in medicine for weekly allowance of $400 just to be able to get a pain pill?
What an idiot you are, telling people with RSD/CRPS that they are making up their pain...have you ever met someone with this condition...do they just think about their leg or arm swelling and changing color and it happens ...wow what a gift thinking about something and actually making it happen...maybe if I think hard enough I can make my body beautiful...how stupid are you ?? my daughter was diagnosed in 2002 aged just 14yrs old after a foot operation caused a DVT. she went on to have RSD in her left foot and leg and pain killers dont help this condition,don't you think at 14yrs old she would rather be out with friends running around or going dancing,Ive just got one more thing to say to you.....'What goes around comes around' I hope the RSD never comes your way because then you would have nothing to write about in your Blog you stupid man.
Diane
mother of Natz
Edinburgh
Scotland
To all concerned. After 31 years with uncontroled pain I have this to say about your comments. I have been to every type of doctor I could find.. been to the srinks.. been to faith healers. surgeons (11 operations) Phy. therapy for years... heck if I could find a witch doctor that could help I would be there.... I avoid medication as much as possible as they would keep me from being able to pass the drug test that I need to take to be able to work... So, I suffer in silence. No one wants to hear about the pain. I have lost friends and family over this wrong headed thinking. RSD has caused me to Lose the ability to do the things in life that make life enjoyable. As far as the millions of dollars of compentation.. I was 18 when I got hurt. At the fault of the employeer and his lack of concern for OSHA regulations. Voilations That he had been sited for several times... My workmans comp claim was settled for 2400.00 thats right.. 24 hundred dollars.. Didn't even cover the lost wages for the year I was under their care. I was drug from one doctor to another, had 3 major surgeries.. during that year with injuries that they could find and dx... But the pain remained. Now some 31 years later. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket to try to regain what was taken from me. I couldn't dance at my sons wedding. or go for a hike or ride a horse or run with my dogs. all taken away from me. for what.. a savings of a few hundred dollars by a greedy employer. The laws do need to be changed.. I never expected millions of dollars as the money could never make me whole again. What I would like is for someone to have to say they were sorry for the accident that changed my life forever.. and for that person to have to help out with all the things that I now have to hire someone to do for me.. Having uncontrolled pain effects ever aspect of ones life. Medications do not help control my pain. Neither did the shrink whom tells me that I am the sainest person hes have ever known. I suffer every day and will for the rest of my life. don't tell my children that this isn't real, they have paid the price also.. or my husband, Don't tell my folks that watched my limbs turn blue and me pant to breath as I was in so much pain that I couldn't take a deep breath. Some of us are out here trying to make ends meet with out all the millions that this one person got. Your update is appreciated.. but maybe you should go spend a couple of days with someone that deals with this everyday of their lives. You will then see that just because you can't see a disability doesn't mean it isn't there. I wish you all pain free days and gentle hugs.
Thanks, and you have my respect for updating your blog!
anon@10:33,
What, are you blind?(no offense to blind people) Take a look at the top of my post before you demand a retraction.
ED I SEE YOU SAID FOR SOMEONE TO CHECK THEIR CAPS AND STOP YELLING, MAYBE THAT IS WHAT IT WILL TAKE TO MAKE YOU LEARN ABOUT RSD. YOU WANT RESPECT, NOT FROM ME, WHEN YOU MAKE SUCH STUPID STATEMENTS ABOUT NO RSD. WHEN YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT,AND SAY IT IS A PERSON FAKING PAIN, COME ON, WHO WANTS PAIN 24-7, I DON'T BUT HAVE IT WITH RSD. SINCE YOU THINK YOU KNOW SO MUCH HOW ABOUT COMING UP WITH MAGIC PILL, AND TAKE AWAY THE RSD.
Ok people, i think you all are missing the bigger picture here. The woman should not have been awarded five million dollars. Yes he fell on her foot and broke it, but that doesn't mean she is entitled to that sort of money. And what Ed's point was that these diseases are over-diagnosed. Many kids are just hyper kids, because of too much sugar, and a doctor diagnoses them anyway. Alot of that goes on, and that is what Ed's main point was. If even the most trivial of injuries could make this woman feel this pain, than it was likely to happen whether or not the doctor broke her ankle. Awarding her that sort of money for an accident is ridiculous. Many of the people who commented on this post missed the main point of this story, which is pretty sad. Ed misspoke, he apologized, so please focus on the main point here. Stop telling Ed he is insensitive, and moronic, and idiotic, and whatever else, and actually argue a real point here. The point of blogging isnt to tell Ed he is wrong, and stupid, but to argue what you believe and attempt to change his mind, something no one has tried yet.
anon, do you think that if you type in all caps, it makes your point stronger? That you can force readers to accept your points by stating them loudly? When you engage in virtual yelling, it just makes the reader less likely to accept your position. Try using normal-person text and maybe somebody will listen to what you say rather than how you say it.
Kevin, my friend YOU are the one missing the bigger picture here. I certainly don’t pretend to have all the facts and details of the case at hand, and I suspect that you don’t either - which means that you’re behaving as irrationally as Ed by jumping to wild conclusions with no factual basis. The one thing I do know here is that the young woman was indeed entitled to every last dime of the award if in fact she contracted RSD as a result of the injury - no ifs, ands, or buts about it. That’s the reason that you’re seeing so many folks afflicted with RSD jumping in here. You just continue to insult us by summarily dismissing the impact this disease has on those unfortunate enough to be afflicted with it when you decide - all on your own - that this woman couldn’t possibly have a case that would merit that magnitude of award. And then we come full circle again don’t we? Now BOTH you and Ed are campaigning for tort reform on the basis of blind unilateral conclusions drawn with no basis in fact - a movement that would sweep up not only the abusers, but also those that genuinely deserve such compensation - which includes the vast majority of RSD patients.
There is indeed a MUCH bigger picture here my friend.
I know you have been inundated with responses to your blog. One thing you should understand is that this (RSD?CRPS) is real. As a father of 5 children and someone who has all his life worked and paid his own way. I would give anything to have my life back.
I Agree the DR's are in bed with the Pharm. companies, I also encourage the medical community to do more to help the 1000's of people who are afflicted with this. The Drs. do not know how to treat something they can not physically see. As people like can not understand it. The Medical community as a whole would rather treat us with some new Drug to mask our pain rather then try and treat the pain Cover it rather then heal it.
I would give anything to have my life back as would any of the other posters here.
My wife and My children would give anything to have their father and husband back the way they remember me. Please before you decide something is not real or is a choice of the victim, please do some research on the matter.
I do invite you to contact me if you have questions about RSD/CRPS
Sincerely Mr. Fouts
Ed -
Rather then waste our time explaining how big things like the health care industry and climate change work I thought I would just point out the obvious.
It is merely a coincidence that Mark Radzicki was a doctor. He could of just as well been a garbage collector.
Anyone who gets hurt on your property can attempt to sue you so you shouldn't worry yourself about this deterring highschool students from wanting to become doctors when they grow up.
And since you have now done some reading about RSD/CRPS you not only know that it has been in medical journals for over a hundred years, but more to this point it is NOT curable and odds are ~99.99% that it isn't going to get better.
So if you take a 24 y.o. and calculate out what she likely would have earned for the next 50+ years and add to that the health insurance and other medical costs for each of those years the $5M really isn't that much (it is called a Net Present Value calculation if you care to learn another thing today).
And given that the "court awarded another $1M in interest" my bet is that this didn't happen yesterday and I would take a look at the tactics his attorney must have used.
Finally since there is no indication that even one dime of this was for punitive damages and that $5M NPV could easily be actual damages any TORT reform would NOT touch these monies.
I hope this helps....
Does anyone know if Ms. Elizabeth was also under the influence that night?
anon, anthropogenic climate change is as imaginary as Courtney Love's parenting skills....it requires no explanation. You cannot deny that there is an industry of victimhood in this country in which citizens, lawyers, and juries award huge sums of money for wholly made up damages. Those are the things about which I rant.
Criminals regularly claim insanity....should always believe them? Rapists claim childhood abuse....should we always believe them? Car crash "victims" claim whiplash....should we always believe them? I'm just saying that there is a money motive for all parties to over-dramatize their injuries and/or resultant conditions. Mysterious pain conditions invite this kind of fraud. Once again for those of you not paying attention, I'm sorry for disparaging those of you who actually suffer. Your cause is not being helped by our legal system.
Hey freedom, I don't remember anything about that in the article, but it's a good question. Based on the article, it sounded like this girl saw her shot at somebody else's wealth and took it. I'd be curious to know if she had already applied and been accepted to med school, or just claimed that to increase dramatically her "lost" earning potential over a career. I guess it's possible that she actually had one of these conditions, but it just didn't pass the smell test with me. Too convenient.
Kevin said...
"Ok people, i think you all are missing the bigger picture here. The woman should not have been awarded five million dollars. Yes he fell on her foot and broke it, but that doesn't mean she is entitled to that sort of money. And what Ed's point was that these diseases are over-diagnosed. Many kids are just hyper kids, because of too much sugar, and a doctor diagnoses them anyway. A lot of that goes on, and that is what Ed's main point was. If even the most trivial of injuries could make this woman feel this pain, than it was likely to happen whether or not the doctor broke her ankle. Awarding her that sort of money for an accident is ridiculous. ...."
*** You are missing the point altogether! ***
Its not that ANY injury would cause this woman's pain and disease- that's an outrageous and completely ridiculous remark! Seriously, think about what you have said. If you had learned anything about this disease before throwing yourself into this forum, you would see those statements lack common sense.
*This* injury caused the disease. And if you understood the disease, you would know that they are still working desperately to find out why some injuries cause the nervous system to react this way and RSD/CRPS to develop. Its not as if this woman felt the severe, horrible nerve pain of RSD from any slight hurt. It was *this incident*, this guy breaking her foot, that triggered the disease for her. He is liable if the injury caused by his drunkenness triggered the disorder for her. Period. Doesn't matter if he is a doctor or a welder, a bartender, whatever. Rich or poor, boyfriend of mom's or not... doesn't matter.
Tell me this- if the injury resulted in just a fractured/broken foot, and all the bills, lost wages, etc. were, let's say randomly, $5,000, would he have been liable then? Would you be more accepting of his responsibility then? If you say yes, then why is it any different if she developed RSD/CRPS from the incident? Oh, well, is it because you don't feel its a really bad condition, it sounds made up to you, or its too much money for you to accept, or what? What is your argument for this woman not receiving compensation for a real injury and disease? Because it was an accident? Sorry- not good enough.
RSD/CRPS can be triggered by a major accident,(such as my husband's case), a gun shot wound , or a smaller incident, a broken bone, or a sprain. It can be triggered by a heart attack, a stroke, surgery, or even a vein puncture! The original trigger for the disease may heal, but the disease remains. Many people start out with one doctor, who treats the original disease, like an orthopedic, who treats the broken foot, but cannot treat RSD/CRPS, so they refer the patient out to the pain management specialists after the bones have healed. The nervous system goes wrong, and the disease remains, despite every effort to heal the triggering injury. *Whatever* the cause, if someone caused an accident that triggered the RSD/CRPS, they are liable.
The woman will need every bit of that award to take care of the amount of medications, surgical procedures and treatments, assisted devices, home care, doctor visits, loss of income, and loss of life and pain & suffering she will experience. Those of us who have loved ones with RSD/CRPS or those with it can tell you the costs are astronomical. You have no idea. What's sad is that at 24 yrs old, she will probably need more than that to cover her life long medical needs, loss of potential earnings, etc.
According to whom is RSD/CRPS overly diagnosed? To Ed? To You? I am not talking about the other conditions mentioned on this blog- argue them out if you wish. * I will not debate conditions I do not know.* But I know this pretty well- I see this mean disorder every day that I care for my completely disabled husband. I mean RSD/CRPS. Please, show me some stats. I mean it, because I haven't found them. I've never seen them. I never knew about RSD/CRPS until my husband was diagnosed. Not one of our friends and family knew what it was. We were thankful as hell there were a couple of web sites and groups out there fighting for research and support out there. Your responses show no understanding of the disease, its pathology, the costs, or the complications and financial difficulties living with the disease brings. Prove your own points as well- change my mind and I will continue to bring our arguments to "change his mind" and any others that think this disease is not real or is undeserving of an award to compensate the torture it brings. It seems to me that many people have brought valid arguments to the blog, but that you don't want to grasp them. I'll wait for your response. --- donna
Okay Donna, First things first. I never said the disease is not real, and Ed posted an update apologizing for saying that. Take a moment to understand that. I never said the disease was fake. I agree its a real disease that is very painful. To tell me that I believe its not real is putting words in my mouth.
You asked me if it made a difference if the payout was 5000 or 5 million, well does it make a difference if the guy was drunk or sober? Is that what the difference in the money was for? Because he was drunk? Being drunk is not illegal, and yet the court system is making it out to be illegal. The way our court system works nowadays, you can get seriously penalized for an accident, something you have little to no control over. The man fell! It was an accident! I am almost 100% sure he didnt want to break her ankle, and its unfortunate that it happened to her, but it was an accident. The court system made him out to be a criminal. That is what i find ridiculous.
I also wonder what kind of proof they had that he was drunk. I looked at the article - he claims he wasn't drunk. But a drunk never is ;-)
I think kevin and Ed your missing our point. Every person that suffers with these illnesses have been told at some point we are faking it. Think about the worse pain you have ever had in your life- now think about how it would feel if you where told you just want meds, or your lieing. Now just think about how you would be able to handle that kind of pain 24 7.
I could never put a price on having my normal life back. I would pay all the money I had to be a normal mom and wife to my family. My illness was caused my a doctor, a freaking doctor. Have I sued no, have I thought about it omg yes.
I all of our points are to make him rethink before he opens his mouth about something he knows noithing of. Maybe some others will learn more about what we have by us all venting here. The golden rule I have always lifed my life by- never judge a person till you have walked in their shoes.
Wendy, you misspoke. Your doctor did not cause your illness. He may have misdiagnosed, but it apparently is a difficult illness to diagnose. It is not malpractice if he does everything to protocol. People often make up symptoms to get ahold of medication, and unfortunately the repercussions affect someone such as yourself, people that have these illnesses. I feel sorry these people, but you can't blame the doctor, which is what so many people want to do. This is why malpractice insurance is through the roof, which is why healthcare is so expensive. People who are constantly suing doctors when something unfortunate happens. If you want to blame someone for expensive healthcare, blame the people who take doctors to court. Just look at what John Edwards did in his illustrious career. There are so many things wrong with this woman getting awarded that much money that her disease is almost a moot point. For instance, why did she go back to get more x-rays weeks later, and did she break her ankle in some other way and decided to blame the doctor on the night that he fell. Or was the doctor actually drunk? Does it even matter? We shouldn't be getting mad at Ed for saying that the disease is made up, however wrong he was about that, it was 1 sentence in a 5 paragraph article. How are you all so tunnel visioned on that one point? You don't even have anything else to say about the rest of the article.
ed, the thought of you being an adversary never crossed my mind. i'm still dealing with worker's comp, now there's an adversary.
with all the civil lawsuits that pay out exorbitant amounts of money, basically rewarding people for their own stupidity, i have to wonder why this one got your goat.
the pay out really wasn't ridiculous high, say like the first few for viox. it seems your knickers were already in a twist about those diseases that aren't diseases, and that's why you latched on to this story.
a few years back a woman tried to sue mcdonald's for making her fat.
all she ever ate there was mcnuggets. now a first grader can tell you dipping chicken in batter and dumping it in hot grease defeats the purpose of eating chicken. also the average portion is six mcnuggets, but this woman thought it was mickey d's fault that she would eat more than one serving, because she thought chicken was healthy. now that kind of story would make your point of everybody being a victim.
five million isn't a hell of alot when you realize that between doctors and meds could run about $250,000 per year. there are a number of newer treatments showing good results, but the insurance companies still adhere to 30 and 40year old treatment plans. some of those treatments have been found to do more harm than good. insurance companies may have the newer drugs in their formulary, but refuse to authorize off label
use of these medications. the exceptions are generics, they will authorize a generic in a particular class of drugs. many rsders are taking neurontin when lyrica may work better. both are being used off label. the insurance companies only real concern is cost. that leaves rsders, even the insured ones paying out of pocket for a good portion of their treatment. 5 million doesn't go as far as it used to.
i understand you ammended your statement, but i think a lot of people, including myself are still
responding to the underlying tone of your original diatribe. we're responding that way because we have the conditions, we know they're real, and we're sick and tired of all the people we deal with who think it's all a sham. how can you be in that much pain, and on so many drugs and function. we've had to learn, adapt, and mourn the loss of our old life. things still have to be done, we still have responsebilities, and we have no choice but figure out how to meet them. home, kids, ederly parents, bills, none of it stops because your sick.
Like others have said- these types of illnesses are brought on by major events= car accidents, a injury, and in my case a very shotty surgery. I wont go into details b.c that would be a 4 page artile. From where we(pain clinics, my doctors,etc) can trace back- my illness started right atfer I had that surgery. So no i didnt miss speak- he didnt do everything under protocol.Just to make you understand a little more- during my surgery there were other doctors and nurses screaming at one doctor preforming it.
I know there are jerks that just play the victim. So that they can get money, who knows maybe this person did. I wasnt there are neither where you- so we cant honsetly say. and yes those are the people who do screw the rest of us that have this.
Yes it is hard to treat pain- I cant be on pain meds now. My husband is deployed and I am rasing my family and do everything else. I have been turned down for a opertaion that would help at least ease my pain. The reason I was told- we wont approve you b/c the pain was cause by my illness. So my next move is getting nerve blocks and I am only 30.
tunnel vision? no, sorry i dont have that. so i addressed the issue you wanted me to. Could you reaspond to this? Think about the worse pain you have ever had in your life- now think about how it would feel if you where told you just want meds, or your lieing. How would you feel? Now how you would be able to handle that kind of pain 24 7.
As the mother of a now 23 yr old young woman who has suffered w/RSD since she was 9 yrs old I take exception to your apparent ignorance. I must agree with those who suggested you do the research and get the facts before you comment on a medical condition you obviously know nothing about. No amount or type of narcotic can even touch the pain that is present 24/7. The mental and physical strength it takes to get thru the day is heroic. In 2004 my daughter spent most of the year in a hospital, in a wheelchair. Thank God we found a dr who was able to successfully implant a spinal cord stimulator to control the pain, swelling, and hypersensitivity that is symptomatic of RSD. Although the SCS has gotten her out of a wheelchair it too has complications. 9 surgeries in 3 1/2 yrs to repair snapped wires and malfunctioning batteries. I wouldn't wish this on anyone but do think that anyone who believes this is psychological or a way to make money via frivolous lawsuits, should endure one day of the overwhelming, consuming frustrating pain a patient has to endure. May it never happen to your child or loved one. Believe me you would move heaven and earth to find an answer and relieve their pain....
Ed,
It's me again....I wouldn't have sued for that much money either. It's just against my nature, especially in the case of someone stepping on someone's foot accidentally. I have no real idea how my daughter's RSD started but she had a break in the leg prior, but the RSD actually started about 2 years after the break that we surmise may have happened after a "tap" of a bat on the playground. I just couldn't sue over that because I suspect that any little bump would've set off the RSD at that point. I think we are such a litigious society, and as much as I despise, hate, & wish to eradicate RSD, (and I do badly!!!!), I don't think I could've sued for 5 million from an accident such as this. I'm not in her shoes, so I'm certainly not judging her, and her bills will be high with RSD that severely and loss of wages, etc, but at what point do we as a society quit suing everyone over every little wrong move someone makes. There but for the the grace of God go all of us. We've all probably stepped on someone's foot at some point. I know that in tort law, there is a presumption of an "eggshell" victim, meaning you take the victim in their state of health which in this case was possibly a predisposition for RSD, so I can see why she was awarded that much. Just seems like a missing component of this case might be forseeability, but I wasn't on the jury. I'm sorry for the rambling and I know that I might have some of my fellow RSD'ers (whom I of course love and will defend to the end) upset with me, but it's my personal feelings in regards to all the torts out there. I write this in a very humble tone. I don't wish to offend anyone here! This is a very tough subject for me!
Amanda's RSD was caused by another 3rd grader who slammed her to the ground during recess. After that she would suffer from "bouts" every couple years - pain, tremendous swelling, hypersensitivity to even the slightest touch. She lost friends who were too ignorant to understand and whose parents didn't teach them compassion. She had to be tutored at home b/c the school didn't want to risk the liability of her being on crutches! She endured nerve blocks, varying pain medications, etc, physical therapy. What was a promising school softball career ended. And yes the truth is RSD is caused by an injury, surgery, trauma of some type, and sometimes for no apparent reason. It's a misfiring of the sympathetic nervous system (everyone has one, even you) and there is no known reason why this happens in some people and not in others. I would give anything to take RSD/CRPS away from my daughter and let her have a "normal" life. She is an emotionally strong, focused young woman. She has to be. Just as everyone else with RSD is. Ignorant people like you continue to make it difficult for people w/RSD to get proper treatment, or at least some small amount of pain relief. Because there is no narcotic out there that takes the pain completely away. Ever. And don't make the assumption that anyone who suffers from chronic pain is just trying to get high. You couldn't be more wrong. My daughter's social life has suffered. She knows her body's limitations and cannot be with her friends as much as she would like. She doesn't drink. She is focused on getting her college degree which is taking longer b/c of the limitations caused by the RSD. She educates people like you who have no idea what they're talking about.
Kevin said ...
"Wendy, you misspoke. Your doctor did not cause your illness. He may have misdiagnosed, but it apparently is a difficult illness to diagnose. It is not malpractice if he does everything to protocol. People often make up symptoms to get ahold of medication, and unfortunately the repercussions affect someone such as yourself, people that have these illnesses. I feel sorry these people, but you can't blame the doctor, which is what so many people want to do."
OMG you don't even know what you're talking about here. OF COURSE a doctor can cause RSD (by cutting a major nerve for instance) and would be perfectly liable in the event that he/she does so. The rest of this rambling doesn't even make sense so I won't comment further on your wild assertions.
I am glad that there is an apology. I just acquired RSD/CRPS from a minor foot sprain that the ER Dr told me to stay off of for 48hours. I have been in constant pain since.Yes, I have been given drugs, but most are not the "good" kind that you are talking about.
It is medicine to coat my stomach and the nasal spray to prevent osteoporosis and I am only 26 years old. I have had 3 Nerve blocks into my spine which I assure you are not fun. I have another on Friday and I would not do this if I had any other choice.
No one knows what I have, people bump me and have no idea that I have to go home and suffer through pain from the smallest brush.
I was just given percocets 4x day and my Dr was shocked when I told her that it wasn't even touching the pain. I asked for a cream to numb the area instead.
Maybe I would have had a skeptic look at this disease if I didn't experience it first hand. I wish that I thought it was totally made up. Unfortunately it is not and this is my life. I have only had it for 4 months... I can't imagine how people would feel hearing your comments after years and years of pain.
RSD/CRPS is very real and I hope that you NEVER have to experience it.
I have CRPS and I have to pay all my medical bills myself. To make matters worse, I cannot always work. So.... how does that work out? If I had been at work and the CRPS developed out of that injury or a car accident I would have HAD to sue. You see the option of no choice. However, from my experience in talking to others about their experiences, people like you don't believe that they really have a condition at all or they are faking it.
Just think. How would you feel if you suffered from something but looked normal and everyone didn't believe you..... How do you think that would affect you? And to be told it's "All in your head!!!"
Just imagine....It is one frustrating thing to deal with.
Ed
Can I just say..this is what happens when someone opens thier mouth without thinking, you open a whole can of worms..instead of trying to defend your actions why not just retract your article and apologise to all the people you have upset with this rubbish Blog you call the RightRant....sorry but the name say's it all ...you want people's comments and oppinions about the rubbish you write then moan when you are pursued by other Bloggers telling you how it really is.
Be a man take it on the chin accept defeat on this one and give us a proper apology
Diane
Scotland
I thought I did.
Yes you'r right Ed, you did post an apology...only it was so short
'My sincerest apologies'
I believe I must have missed it in between all the Rabble you wrote after those few lines.
so here's my short reply
'Thanks'
Diane
Scotland
Ed,
I think if you would put your apology before your rant, it would maybe help to deter all the anger. When someone with RSD, or any other disease, reads something like your WRONG rant, it's hard to see past that to your apology. And in my opinion, anyone not knowing about those diseases will simply read your rant and never get the idea of what hell RSD and other illnesses can be. Your apology still seems lacking to me. If you want to be friends with the RSD community, make it a heartfelt apology with the goal of helping us out in getting the word out!
And for those questioning the dr or young lady's sobriety/drunkenness.....I trust that the jury was convinced that things were as stated, or else they wouldn't have come to such a large settlement. And besides, when you question her sobriety, you are once again blaming the victim of this accident. People are not to blame for these illnesses anymore they are to blame for other illnesses.
I, like you, am not prone to sue anyone. But if I were, I would have sued several people, coach and drs, over the way my daughter was treated. I actually regret we didn't at this point. They got away with things they shouldn't have.....but worse than that, they did not learn a thing and are probably still doing those things to others. They are still in practice/coaching. Thinking of that is scary.
Charlotte
Kevin,
you must have missed my earlier post because if you had read everyone you would have seen that 5million dollars will not cover a life time of medical expencises that go with this illness.
We have surgical and non surgical proceeders done and meds that cost a bundle.If she even did have private insurance the majority of time they deny claims.Where did you get your medical degree/
before you start opening your mouth about the situation,do your homework!It is not a frivilous lawsuit.It is a very costly illness!!!!
Anon, I don't care if it is a costly illness. The court system made the doctor out to be a criminal when what happened was a very unfortunate accident. The doctor shouldn't be held responsible, sober or drunk, for that. He did nothing wrong. Yes it is sad, but what is more sad is that people are so quick to sue people over tragedy and misfortune. In America, you now have to walk on glass, because if for some sad reason you trip and bump into someone, and that person develops and disease!!! you are responsible! That is ridiculous. Americans aren't perfect, yet these lawyers are expect them to be. Has anyone thought of how this money will affect the doctor? His premiums are definitely going up, and if not that, he will lose his insurance. Now what is he supposed to do? How will the girl get paid then? Ruining one person's life to save someone else's is what is so terrible about this. You people seem to only see that the girl developed a disease, and that the doctor, me, and Ed are terrible people. You keep telling us to walk in her shoes. Well walk in the doctors! Good Grief, this is the tunnel vision I talked about.
funny, it seems like you have the same tunnel vision also. we can agree to disagree then on this lawsuit.
Yes there are people who play victim. People that would sue over anything and everything.. Do I know for a fact if this women is playing it up-No, and either do you.
When do you think a person should sue? Maybe we could see your side a little better if you talk about that.
I wish I could walk in the doctors shoes who did my surgery that lead to my illness. I would love to walk in his shoes, not b/c of money, but b/c I would give anything to be able to be normal- not for myself, for my kids.
My point as well as the others posting is that we wanted to let people know how it feels to have these illnesses. How much we go threw daily, just to have the most normal pain free life we can have..
I dont think we are victims at all- we are fighters and we are brave.
Wendy, I am sorry that it is a painful disease. But this woman should not have sued the doctor for an accident. He fell. People do it every day. That doesn't make them a criminal. I am not tunnel visioned. I have yet to deny the fact that its painful. I can see exactly why you would be upset. But you haven't looked at this in any other perspective other than your own. The man that broke her ankle, did nothing wrong. It isn't like a car wreck where someone doesn't obey a traffic law, and injures someone else when they hit them. This was a man that fell. He shouldn't be punished for that. If your doctor committed malpractice, then you have every right to sue him. This guy did nothing wrong. That is the point I want you to try and grasp. I know you would do anything to have your pain go away. I understand that. But please try and understand that what happened here was not fair to the doctor. The lawyers made him out to be a criminal. He isn't! Bottom line.
Wendy - have to agree: anyone with RSD has to be brave to get thru each and every day, pushing yourself thru the pain to do what you have to do; to do the things most people take for granted. Yes there are other people who suffer from other diseases/disorders as well. They do what they have to do get thru. No one questions the person w/cancer, heart disease, etc. Not everyone w/RSD has every symptom such as the swelling which is visible and recognizable. People can't see pain therefore they think it cannot possibly exist and question the validity of the disease. They are ignorant. All you (patients with/RSD and their families) can do is educate them. So once again I applaud you - women, men & children with RSD - who get by each and every day battling not only this horrible disorder but doctors, medical professionals and the public who just do not understand and who do not have the compassion to learn.
A couple things happened today that pertains to this topic. Remember, as I write this that I was very upset about Ed's wrongful statements about RSD and other ailments (most which affect my family) I saw red when I read that blog and could barely contain myself. Please let me tell you a couple items that are aside from the RSD that do relate to the torts problem in America though.
I live in Florida where a few years back there was a mass exodus of specialists due to the exorbitant cost of malpractice insurance. This rise was due to the huge awards in lawsuits brought by the smooth tactics of trial lawyers. My neighbor has looked since Friday for a neurologist to see her son who suffered a concussion in a car accident. Guess what? None could do! She couldn't find one...not one...who would see him because it was an auto accident. My guess is that malpractice insurance may have played a part in their turning him down. I helped locate some names of good pediatric neurologists to try, but she had tried calling all of them already.
Then, my mom's PT came over and we were discussing the plight of healthcare and this particular situation and also the one here on the blog. She used to work for a pain management Dr. who was in cahoots with an attorney. She had to quit because of the tactics used. Fibro was one of the ways they can get the cashcow. They just deny any improvement at all whatsoever period. (called coaching) I wonder how many of them were diagnosed by the doctor in cahoots with the attorney?
Let me say again, that my daughter has RSD and it has been costly and will cost us more. I have had fibro since high school (diagnosed at Mayo in the 90's) and guess what...my son has ADHD.. They are all legitimate diagnoses in my family. But I do think there are some smelly rats who can use them to get clients a big settlement. It is truly the saddest for the true sufferers because they are the ones who suffer in the end.
I don't know the solution to this. As stated here on another posting, tort reform goes to punitive damages and there are some that deserve them when the act is malicious. Not knowing the facts of the case of this girl with RSD being awarded 5 mil without punitive, I feel like I can't really comment to her personal case...although as I said in another posting, it goes against who I am personally to sue for something someone did like stepping on a foot accidentally. Kids play games like this all the time. Heck, my daughter had a girl jump on her back after being told to not touch her because of the RSD risk of spread. I was upset, but I think we need to have a little common sense about when to use the courts. No one can deny that our society is way too litigious...well, except for maybe P.I. attorneys!
Kevin, yes I agree the man who happened to be a doctor should not have been sued for $5 million. Its a difficult situation; it's if you are injured at a friend's house and sue under his homeowner's insurance (that I could see perhaps) but not necessarily suing a friend who happens to be a doctor and getting more money. The rant was a two fold issue. I agree we as a nation are perhaps litigation happy. But I can agree with holding doctors responsible for malpractice. This particular case was not that type of situation; I agree with that. However, you have to understand how MISUNDERSTOOD people with RSD/CRPS are. In addition to my daughter I personally know 3 other people with RSD who would gladly give up any amount of money to have a mostly pain free life; a life where they are able to perform simple tasks w/o unrelenting pain, swelling, discoloration, temperature changes. My daughter is petite but when her SCS is not working her left leg swells tremendously, as if she weighed 300 lbs - only her left leg. She has stretch marks from the swelling; she suffered from blisters that became infected b/c the fluid had nowhere else to go. Her leg becomes extremely cold then hot then swells some more. One autoimmune disease usually leads to another. She now suffers from a bleeding disorder that developed when she was 15 - not something she was born with, not something genetic. So if people with RSD seem to have a chip on their shoulder, its understandable. Because so many people think they're making it up b/c they want narcotics, or its psychological. Amanda lost friends who could not fathom what was going on with her - even though her left leg was literally 5 times the size of her right - they thought she was "making it up." She was better off w/o those "friends" but that didn't make the loss any less painful. Emotionally she set up a wall and has a small circle of friends who are protective of her. The SCS has gotten her out of a wheelchair but is not totally problem free but its better than the alternative.
Dory is so right! RSD patients are living in a hell, so your apology might not be taken so well. Of all diseases to have, I've heard many say they'd take anything over RSD.
I feel like you did the research and have apologized so something was accomplished here. But I can understand their emotional pain continues as this is torture to have so much pain and not be believed and it happens to them on a daily basis. I'm just the mother of an RSD little girl and my daughter has but a fraction of pain (still can't touch her leg though) that other children and adults I've personally met, and it was hurtful to me (plus the fibro and ADD was an added fuel to the RSD fire) These responders to the blog live this hellish existence in many cases, and that probably is the case of this woman which is why the award was quite large. They are defending her as if it were them or their child. RSD is a small community (as this is rare) and we would probably all go down in a blaze of glory for each other! I couldn't disrespect not one of them because I've seen it and I know what they live everyday. It's like nothing you could know and hopefully never will.
Ed, it's just a tough one! I'm for some of the tort reform, but I can't slam this woman with the RSD. Just gotta know more facts, but I seriously doubt that this woman is faking the RSD. That is nearly impossible to do! Finding an RSD Dr worth his/her salt is next to impossible too. But I won't go there!
Once again Kevin get the facts straight.Criminal court is for just that Criminals.This would be held in civil court.
Where is your brain?
You obviously are so closed minded there is no talking to you.
There are several statements you made that make me question your iq.
Let us accidently break your spine.Develop RSD. Have no way of paying the rising medical bills.Not be able to pay your morgage.Explain to your kids why there is no food in the house.Or why they have no new clothes.
Why the electricity is turned off,why the car got repo'd.
Should I go on??
You obviously forgot a factor,
the jury.
They heard the evidence.Did you?
If not I suggest you do your homework once again.Which I know you will not.
Why,you think you have all the answers.You are looking just to argue.You look at nothing else.Oh the poor doctor.He still has a life.
Not an RSD patient! You have no clue.Karma my dear,Karma.
Its not like a car accident? Give me a break.Usually the drunk walks away with no injuries on that one too.While the victim suffers.
Explain to everyone why they lost their life as they knew it.
You seem to have all the answers,
come on hot shot,here is your chance.
it is people like you who would hit a dog and leave it in the road because you certainly have no compation for anyone but your self centered self!Once again you will not even hear a word that was said about losing everything.Are you homeless from a disease?
Hmmm doubt it.
By the way would you let a drunk doctor work on you?
He chose to be intoxicated.she didnt choose to get rsd.
once again the jury decided this award and the court.walk 2 min in an rsd pts shoes and tell me you dont agree.
Anon, my first thought on your response is a response to this passage:
"Oh the poor doctor.He still has a life.
Not an RSD patient! You have no clue.Karma my dear,Karma.
Its not like a car accident? Give me a break.Usually the drunk walks away with no injuries on that one too.While the victim suffers.
Explain to everyone why they lost their life as they knew it."
The poor doctor. Exactly. He is now out 5 million bucks because of an accident. How do you know he still has a life? Did you do your homework? Karma?!?! What are saying exactly? The doctor deserved it? For what? Its not like a car accident. Because it isn't! People disobey traffic laws. Then they get into accidents, and they get sued for it. This doctor broke no laws, and did not disobey any traffic rules. He is in his home, he is entitled to drink. The court system punished him for living his life in a civilized manner. I really take pleasure in you telling me that I am close minded. I would be interested in knowing your IQ. Was the girl that broke her ankle drunk as well? That would certainly hold bearing on the case. Furthermore, civil suits aren't heard by juries. They are heard by judges.
"By the way would you let a drunk doctor work on you?
He chose to be intoxicated.she didnt choose to get rsd.
once again the jury decided this award and the court.walk 2 min in an rsd pts shoes and tell me you dont agree."
The woman visited him on a social occasion at his home. He was not on duty. Read the article before you try and argue. And again, Juries don't decide civil suits. Your argument has more holes in it than you claim mine has. Why don't you better educate yourself before you post on here again.
you are as close minded as I suspected.
Juries DO sit in on civil suits.
You have no clue about the law.
Rsd pts have to know the law.
Regarding comp and civil suits and everything else.
My IQ is quite high thank you.
Your story is the one with holes in it.
A Cop has to know the law.It comes with the job hot shot.
So like I said sit and pass judgement on something you cant even dangle your feet in.
I am very well educated so dont tell me where to post.
Poor doctor,like I said,his life will not change drastically.
Hers forever gone the way she knew it.You still didnt answer the questions which I knew you would avoid.
kevin like i said before- i dont know what happened i wasnt there. none of us were. thats why i cant pick a side. but there was a jury- and they seen it her way.
i can see both points though..trust me i dont have tunnel vision..if i sided with totally her i would be calling this dude doctor everything under the sun.
but what i am saying is accidents is a lot of the reasons a lot of us have this. i am sure my doctor didnt go in thinking i am going to do a crappy job on my c section. as much as i would love to smack him- it would do nothing. it wouldnt take my pain away or make me normal again...
i guess what really hit me about this blog and made me post was these two things= that ed said these illnesses are fake(yes i know he said sorry and i am glad he did).
and the comments made by ed, and freedom that treating pain is easy. i really got me upset.i wish treating it was easy- if there was a magic pill i would be the first in line to try it- but there isnt one. fact is pain killers only work so long and only help so much. after time they dont work much at all and who wants to be on pain meds for life besides junkies? so other options for us- surgery and nerve blocks. i am going to hopefully get a nerve block soon- its the only thing i have left to try. it scares the hell out of me- so lol i wouldnt call that the easy way..
wen
Okay Anon, if your IQ is so high, explain why you said a Cop has to know the law. I am just not seeing the relevance in that. Why do RSD patients have to know the law? Juries don't sit in on civil suits. You aren't entitled to that right in a civil suit. Want an example? Look at EVERY SUPREME COURT RULING! Those guys are judges. And it doesn't really matter what you claim your IQ to be. You haven't made a single argument yet. All you continue to do is tell me that I am wrong, without attempting to disprove what I have said. An intelligent person might actually try, oh i dont know, proving his case. Furthermore, you didn't ask me a single question worth merit. You asked me if i was homeless, and immediately answered your question, correctly too ooh look who gets a cookie. You asked me what I would tell my kids when I couldn't get them food because my spine is broken. Well, I don't have kids. You say you are very well educated, yet you didn't tell me how. What level of education? High school? Some college perhaps? Who knows, maybe you have a degree in finance or something. And how do you know that the doctor's life won't change? I said it before, his premiums will go up if he doesn't lose his insurance altogether. That would certainly affect him. And all he did was fall. Why should he be punished for falling? Anon, you better watch where you walk. Don't step on the crack or you'll fall and break someone's back, and wind up having to give them alot of money.
Also, Wendy, again I am sorry that you are in such tremendous pain. I think you are brave for raising a family with RSD, i understand that it is a very serious illness.
ok i did a little looking on my own about this case. i found more than a few sites that stated this doctor has had issues in the past, ones that he had been put on probation for- having to do with drugs. maybe there is more to this than meets the eye.
http://www.masslive.com/news/topstories/index.ssf?/base/news-2/121144052387280.xml&coll=1
http://bostnbilly.com/PDF%20FILES/AN%20MarkRadzickiDecision&Order.pdf
ty kevin, for your kind words. i have fibro and mfps- both are chronic pain illnesses. it has been a very tough 6 months for me- with my husband being deployed and me taking over everything, lets say i learned a ton about myself. i learned ny winters hate my body and i wanna move to flordia.. lol but on the serious note- i finally do feel like i am brave and a darn good mom.
Ok, I would like everyone to know that, at first I was quite taken a back by this unknown to me blogger and his ignorance to what RSD/CRPS was and how many people it has afflicted. now as the days go by and post after post continue to pile in on this mans site I am seeing the same argument.
I must say that I do see the point he was trying to make.
There are a great deal of DIRTY lawyers as well as Dirty DRs. out there. There are people who just for the sake of money will lay down in front of the bus and sue.
This Man, Kevin was simply trying to make a point.
His using RSD/CRPS was a result of what the case was based on.
SO therefore it became his example.
Yes if he knew how large the community on line was with those of who are afflicted with this. Yes he might have thought about the repercussions. We can not educate the public by ramming what we now know down their throats. By our continuing to berate this man for his misstep, it also belittles our fight for recognition.
Everyone who has posted here who has RSD, has at one time or another ran into a DR who did not or does not believe RSD to be true. I for one have. Last yr I took a fall on the pavement, thought I would be fine. My arm started swelling and so did my leg, so off to the emergency room I went, youall know the docs want to what you are taking and why, I gave my list of drugs (one was an experimental drug) so the ER DR had never heard of it, THe Nurse as well as the DR asked what RSD was. THe Dr finally came into my room and asked me What type of prescription I wanted. I explained to him that I had more then enough Meds I just wanted to get ex-rays.
Anyhow I feel as though enough Berating has gone on. I would Like to see a Positive effect on the public come out of this Blog and all of the posts here in. I do not desire to continue to see the hate and spitefulness from both sides .
Kevin was attempting to make a point. His point has been made as well as ours.
I do hope and wish everyone pain free days, and I thank Kevin for keeping his Blog open and allowing us to air our differences in an open forum.
Marty Fouts
You do not deserve to know my level of education.Nor is any of your buisness.
How can you call someone brave raising a family when you are arguing about a settlement for an rsd suit???
It says in the article a JURY and the judge awarded her the money.I can certainly see with your attitude why you dont have kids!
Rsd like I said a million times,if you need it spelled out slowly I will is a costly illness. Which over her life span will use up that 5 million faster than you can argue with me.
Re read and see it says jury.
From personal experience,a jury does sit on a civil case.
You are not worth the time or the words of this blog.you are obviously a self centered person who you believe the world owes you.
They do not.
If some day you get this illness and even for you I hope you do not you will see how much money it costs when insurance doesnt pay for you medical needs and you have a family to support.
Not living in moms basement!
A doctor can rebuild a practice.
A human being cannot get back a life they once had prior to RSD!
SO,with that said I am no longer wasting my time on you.You obviously are a drinker and love to argue.I wont give you that satisfaction!
Wendy there are many wonderful support groups out there for rsd pt.
your kids also would have other children to talk to whos parent suffer from this illness.
I know first hand how hard it is to even get up and moving in the morning.Do yourself a favor if you havent and join one and get the love and support you need and deserve from fellow rsders.
best wishes
Marty,
It was Ed that started the blog and Kevin who is fueling the fire
with that said I do agree with what you are saying.
You are a very kind wise person.
It is disturbing to see the public treat rsd as if it was railroading the system.that is the fight the people with rsd have been fighting.We raise money just to be able to send someone a wheelchair or cane who otherwise can not afford it.
My hat is off to you.
i wish you a speedy recovery!
Marty I appreciate your support. I was simply trying to prove that simple fact. It was one of the original points Ed wanted to make with this post, and never in his wildest dreams did he think or want to cause this much controversy. I am sorry you have this terrible disease, and hope that one day there might be a way to cure it.
anon,
ty for your words.. i do have online support groups that i belong to. i have even found a military wife one- i love. all had deployed supposes and many have fibro like me..they have helped me a ton threw this deployment, they understood totally and it helped me so much.
my kids do know about my illness. my wee one knows mommy can hurt but thats about it. my son is 9 and has grown up with me having it so he knows what i have. i dont talk about my pain much to my kids. If they ask whats wrong- i am honset and say mommy's back is hurting today, so I am moving a little slower, or about we cuddle and have movie time so mom can laydown. things like that..i dont want to add extra stress on them b/c their dad is gone.
wen
wendy
just so you know we say a prayer every night for our soldiers.
my son went up to a soldier in the airport on his own and said thank you for keeping me safe,he is your sons age.
please send our love from the states and say many thanks from us.
anon,
thank you so much. right now we are lucky- my husband is deployed but is in the states-in Mississippi.
We are in ny- so we cant hop in the car and see him. My husband is a vet from the first gulf war and after 14 yrs of being out he wanted to rejoin as reserves. We couldnt have been prouder...My sons always tells everyone my dad's boss is the president.
my brother just got home from the sand not to long ago. he was stationed there for 4 years.
tell your son I am very proud of him. He sounds like a great kid and I know he made that soldiers day.I know first hand that it dose...
wendy
wen
Kevin,
Just a quick one here! Civil courts can have jury trials. Appellate courts do not. The burden of proof is different though.
Kevin - Caymantime is correct. In a civl trial, you have the option of having your case heard by a jury or by the judge alone. Believe me, I know. I was given that choice. So, you are wrong on that point.
True, but when they are appealed, they eventually get to supreme courts, and those are heard by a panel of judges.
Ed-
I'm not sure whether anyone has made this point yet or not, but her it goes anyway.
5 million may seem excessive, but, RSD is a disorder with no cure. I have read that is more expensive to treat than cancer. Even if you hit on a combination of medications that work, it will most likely be temporary and the game starts all over again.
I have RSD in both knees and one foot. My prescriptions for one month are $720. None of which are narcotics, by the way. I have to see my doctor every two months which is at least another $200. Nerve blocks are over $2,000 a pop.
I had a successful career which has been reduced to nothing. Between the medications and the disorder itself, my memory isn't very good anymore. Someone who continually repeats themself doesn't inspire confidence in their clients.
My point is, I'm in my 40's and I've only had this 19 months, depending on this person's age, 5 million may not be too far out of line.
I might agree with a 5mill. verdict/settlement if 1. the girl can prove that she has RSD or whatever and that it was caused by this injury, if 2. she can show through documentation that med school was in her future and not something she made up to increase damages, if 3. it can be shown that it was negligence on the part of the guy and not just an innocent accident. Maybe the floor was slippery, or something tripped him.
Anyway, why shouldn't her health insurance cover all this? Could it be that the smarmy lawyer went after the doctor for his malpractice insurance regardless of actual culpability? Could it be that like a lot of young people who think they are invincible, she chose not to carry insurance? Could it be that she was a shiftless sponge and a frivolous law suit was her only remedy? I'm just saying, after this verdict, this family of conditions, while very real for some, may turn into the basis-du-jour for slip-and-fall lawsuits.
sorry i miss read what you ment by made up. i had a long day between my back just wigging completely out and we buried my aunt this am..
wen
Ed another thing I would like to know about this case, if the girl was intoxicated. The doctor was, so might the girl be also? It was a social visit. That would change alot about this case.
ed,
your health insurance is only as good as what you can afford, and what the insurers are willing to pay for.
i lost my health coverage, when the rsd made it impossible to work.
even if i still had it, it would only cover problems that weren't work related. that's what workers comp is for.
hade my injury occured on my own time, i'd still be faced with the insurance companies excepted treatments for rsd, which still include amputation. well it's been found that amputation doesn't help,
and in many cases can make it worse. the treatments they except are 30-40 years old and the odds are 50/50 at best. i was denied one drug because it was ony fda approved for end stage cancers. when the drug recently became approved for other pain conditions, it was denied again with no explanation. i found out why when i tried paying for it myself, the nearly $1000 for a months supply.
insurance companies have to be bullied into approving drugs not in their formulary. they reserve the right to only pay for the cheapest form in a particular class of drugs, and they won't approve drugs being used off label. for rsd, that's pretty much everything that's prescribed. insurance companies are also under no obligation to pay for anything "compounded" like the topical creams doctors suggest we use. as for procedures, most newer
treatments for rsd are considered experimental, so the insurance company gets to decide whether you get a procedure or not. we can require extensive therapy, but are often limited to 12 sessions or so.
you may be fortunate enough to have a great plan, but it will be maxed out very quickly if they do pay for everything. if you get a settlement, in many states the insurance companies can sue you to recoup money used to pay your medical bills.
truth is we need a hell of a lot more than tort reform to put things right.
I cant believe how you can say such things about RSD. I have full body, have been in hospitals for the last 5 months, all from a foot surgery 4 years ago. I am not taking a single pill, like many other with RSD have said there is nothing to help with the terrible pain. I graduated with an associates in school but can no longer continue with my dream because of this horrid disease, I cant even hug my mom. How would you like to have such a disease, to know there is no cure and you will have to face this the rest of your life. It is comments and blogs like yours that has turned so many against people with RSD, no longer believing they have an actual disease. My dad doesnt talk to me nor does a lot of relatives, thanks to reading such ignorant info such as yours. As for the woman getting RSD not even 5 million will help the pain, and I feel bad. No one should have to face this disease as so many are. What you wrote just shows another cruel, idiotic, person that doesnt get the facts straight before shooting out a bunch of lies, and believe it or not your words hurt more than you know. So many with RSD are working very hard to get the awareness out about RSD, how its real, and people need help with this disease, I know I sure do. People like you is what makes what there doing so much harder.I done know what else to say, but that you better hope you or someone close to you never have to go through the hell many of us are living with.
Anon, did you read like any of this article. Ed has apologized. Please refrain from dogging Ed, and if you have positive input about the point Ed was trying to express, then respond.
kevin did you get a chance to read the links i posted about the doctor?
just wanted your take on that...
Yes I did, one problem I have with this whole lawsuit was that the jury found him negligent. Negligent of what? Gracefulness? Second thing, how can they determine that sort of thing? I just see a lot of wholes in this whole lawsuit. Wether or not he has been in possession of drugs in the past, he wasn't either a.) tested for them or b.) tested negative for them, so thats a moot point.
Oh my god I cant believe what this person is saying! I have RSD in my right arm my arm has shrunk in size it is purple and red it burns as if somebody is holding a lighter on it. I work like this!!!! I am not sitting around waiting for the huge workers comp settlement that will never come. I am one of the lucky ones that can still work but there are so many people out there that cant the children that suffer with this disease I wish you could feel what they feel for one day and then have you make the statement that this is not a real condition. I do the best that I can to keep going but ask my husband or my three children who have watched me suffer with terrrible condition. It is people like you who know nothing about what it is like to have this that produce the igonorance that other people have. This is real I think you need to educate yourself before you say something like this what a @#$##
ok when i read it i thought it said that he wrote these scripts for one of his co owners and then payed the co worked to get it filled and give them back to him...i didnt see that they drug tested him- but i could have missed it...of course that doesnt mean he took them(but i would find that hard to belivie)...
i thought that it would be at least something that may have added to what swayed on the jury's mind.
i will have to reread them when i can sit down for a longer period of time..i went to the doctor today and about my back some muscles are really swollen. she doesnt want me to sit, stand or lay down for long periods of time.. that should be loads of fun.. .
Anon @ 3:12, please actually read the post in its entirety before posting stuff like that, good grief you are behind the curve.
kevin,
this blog is really being talked about on chronic pain illnesses groups and sites..
so a lot of these peeps are new comers and its up over 120 posts.. so its hard to read it all. cut her a little slack...
i was the same way walking in and now you and me are kinda seeing each others point- mildly but we are getting there...
dont make me get out the whip boy..
please you better smile lol i need a laugh tonight.....
i also wanted to throw out my yahoo id. if anyone ever needs a shoulder to vent on, cry on, please hit me up.. it takes groups to move mount ions. bladeskissofdeath is my id..
Wendy, which sites are talking about this post? I would like to take a look at them, I am curious.
kevin,
why is it you just dont want to hear what anyone is saying that has rsd? You just dont seem to be listening.First you argue you cant have a jury on civil cases.You were incorrect.You never said you were incorrect, now you question the jury,your were not there.None of us were.Yet you still seem to what to drag this on.
Until you get rsd,I really dont think you are going to listen to anyone.You have not heard one word on the cost of this illness which many stated it is not covered by insurance.It is not the job of the plantiff to prove she was going to go to school.She was not on trial.He was.Why cant you just let it go at that? Help me understand why you are dragging this on?
Then to leave rude comments to ill people like 312 what is with you? Are you a right fighter?You have to be right about everything?
Ed please retract what you said,
rsd is and never will be a "slip and fall lawsuit".
Saying that is very hurtful.I thought that was settled.
You can argue about frivolous lawsuits,I agree some are out of just plain greed.I really do.RSD is not one of them,
Please just change the coarse or wording it may make a lot less people angry and have a more negotionable discussion.
Have yall not been reading what i have been saying lately. RSD is a terrible disease, we are sorry we used the words we did. The fact of the matter is that what was an unfortunate accident has made a doctor out to be a criminal, and the woman was awarded money. Im sorry she contracted a painful disease, but my point was that she shouldn't get money for it. Its this idea in America that if some accident happens, where no one is to blame, somehow the court system finds someone to blame. Its the reason why RSD patients cant find people to help them. and Anon at 3:12 didnt even read the entire post, or else they would have realized that Ed apologized for the words he used. And quite frankly i dont have sympathy for people with RSD because the majority of them are people attempting to have a normal life. I applaud that. Having sympathy for them is only going to make them want more sympathy. Instead of just giving them what they need, help them cope with their illness and be able to help them get back on their feet. Americans these days just want everything handed to them , much you like you guys Anons. Look at Wendy, she has a painful illness, and is still able to take care of her children, while her husband is deployed, and she still finds time to get onto this site and post. Stop having pity for her and applaud her. She is stronger than anyone else on this site.
OK Folks here is the deal.
Ed I do not know if you can make a post a "sticky" or not on this blog. But if you would like Make this one.
RSD Folks, this is my third post.
ED has given an apology. Ed has said so has Kevin that neither of them knew how RSD has affected those that have it nor how it affects those that get it.
The Point he was trying to make and that Kevin has repeated over and over is that of frivolous Lawsuits. People, Attorney's, and DR.'s alike.
RSD was the example of the day , BECAUSE, that was what her Dr. and Attorney said she had. We all know how hard it is for Dr.'s to diagnose, or we would not be here, we all know how many Dr.'s do not believe in RSD, or we would not struggle to find care.
Kevin has asked for links to RSD boards, in my mind and heart it is to learn more about our cause, and NOT to continue to stir the pot.
If we all spent as much time writing to our Legislators and Congressmen and women we most likely get the attention and treatments we are looking for.
YES I am an RSD'er. I was diagnosed in 2001, after re-injuring myself, My initial injury was in 1986. I spent years in pain not knowing what was causing it. I spent months after being diagnosed learning as much as I could about and in most cases knowing more then the Dr who was treating me. I was in a 2 yr study on a Trial Drug to treat RSD.
I have lost my job because I can no longer perform my duties. I have told my story here once already but as I can see people do not take the time to read just attack, I will continue with my story. I would give anything to be able to run and play with my kids again, I would love to be able too take family walks in the cool summer eve's, I would to be able to be the husband my wife once knew. I would give anything to be the man I once knew.
Please take a little of the effort you are using to attack Kevin and put it towards good
Marty
Marty many hours of my days are spent talking to reps and legislators.
So,i dont sit around having"Pity" parties.
The thing that bothers rsder's is the fact that it is not agnolaged that we are not having pity partys.We are having fund raisers.
All the other work we do.
They are healthy and take that for granted.
If the day came where they couldnt support there family because of someones actions would they feel the same way?
You can never judge someone until you walk a mile in their shoes.
Once again Kevin is talking with hostility about pity parties.
I dont recall anyone here saying they are having one.
How bout this,ed and kevin go to a fund raiser and raise money for rsd.call insurance companies and ask if they cover blocks,meds,painpumps,ketamine.mri,the list is way to long.
As I stated there are frivalous law suits.just like comp was frauded and ss.We are the ones paying for that having to prove we have a non curable illness.I am one step out the door and I still find time to talk to my legislators and write to congress.
Do they do the same?
No,because it isnt happening to them.Just as we can sit and judge people for lawsuits,we can judge for healthy people not getting involved to help their neighbor.
Kevin,
you dont even know me so dont sit there and judge about handouts.
rsd people are alot stonger then healthy people.we fight for a cure.we raise money for people who can not affort treatment or medical devices that are necessary to get around.
so before you judge someone think about what you are saying.i certainly hope you help those less fortunate then yourself.
www.rsdhope.org
there is your website
kevin said
Americans these days just want everything handed to them , much you like you guys Anons.
Marty where do you not see an attack on this person?
I believe that in that same post Anon, i said that people with RSD, specifically Wendy, are much stronger than anyone on this post will probably every be. Do you have selective reading? You are the ones attacking me. I am merely defending my words. I am not the one you want to be arguing with. If you want to pick a fight, fight the lawyers, they are the ones making it nearly impossible for people with RSD and other painful illnesses to find doctors. That is the real issue here, and the one i am trying to make.
ANON.....
If you are going to use someone else's words Please use them in the Context they were intended.
What KEVIN SAID WAS .....
"And quite frankly i dont have sympathy for people with RSD because the majority of them are people attempting to have a normal life. I applaud that. Having sympathy for them is only going to make them want more sympathy. Instead of just giving them what they need, help them cope with their illness and be able to help them get back on their feet. Americans these days just want everything handed to them , much you like you guys Anons. Look at Wendy, she has a painful illness, and is still able to take care of her children, while her husband is deployed, and she still finds time to get onto this site and post. Stop having pity for her and applaud her. She is stronger than anyone else on this site."
his attack was directed towards all people who want to not help themselves. People who have decided to find ways to beat the system the same system that we try to get into everyday
Out of all this stick poking going on Wendy and Kevin have been able to come to terms with each other. It just makes life difficult for everyone.
As for walking a mile in your shoes
I do every day.
The point I was making was to try and educate others rather then beat them down or turn them completely against you.
Anonymous My last letter was not just directed toward you it was to everyone here. Both sides of this argument.
Everything I do in my outside life and as well as in my personal life is geared to educate others as to what RSD is and how it affects others.
But thank you for taking the time to post your concerns and thoughts directed towards me.
I do hope your week end os a pain free one.
Marty
to all
yesterday during my 10th ann my dogs ran away. my oldest came back but my boston hasnt. my kids are heart broken and i am too. we walked about 10 miles threw woods road tracks you name it.
so i wont be able to post for a few days...
kevin ty for your kinda words it made me stop crying last night..i try my best- but even i had to learn i cant do everything. thats how i hurt my back so bad this week...
to all kevin is a nice guy- me and him didnt see at all eye to eye at first. i think he learned a lot about chronic illnesses and the pain we have. i for one am very proud of him.. still dosent mean we will agree on everything but he is a good guy..with me and others talking so much about our lifes and our illnesses i think we did bring light on this blog.
just to everyone know i dont have rsd, that i know of. i do have fibro and myofasical pain syndrome. in the next few weeks i am going to ask if i have other things goning on as well b/c of my back issues have gotten so bad.
i hate asking for anything but if you all could say a prayer for my pup return i would be thankful..
and please to all what i learned these last 5 fews from this was. i have fibro and it sucks..but it will never own me. love yourself, dont give up and always be able to laugh about the little things thats what gets me threw the most painful days. like larry the cable guy says get r done
wendy
Wendy, so sorry about your dogs! I also have fibro and my daughter has RSD.
Marty, I think Kevin was unkind to Anon as he did say, "Americans just want everything handed to them, much like you guys, anons." To me that placed him back at square one. I was trying to be fair also and see both sides, but the banter has gotten ridiculous here. I think Kevin's words were a low blow. He also said one person here was stronger than anyone else on this site. Well, thank you for your expert opinion, Kevin.
I'm done with this blog. And Anon, I think it's futile really. Ed seems to be pretty reasonable, but there's no reasoning with Kevin although at times, I thought there was a little hope! Also, as to Kevin wanting to become more informed on RSD being the reasoning he wanted to know sites talking about this blog......well I kinda doubt it. I think he loves to be antagonistic.
None of us have all the facts in the lawsuit. However, I doubt the doctor personally paid the $5 million - homeowners insurance, liability insurance, etc....so really he's not out anything other than he probably has to pay higher premiums. I do believe in tort reform; however I doubt he was sued under his professional insurance, more likely homeowners - thats what its for....
And yes, Kevin, Juries do decide in civil lawsuits, at least they do here in NY state....having sat on jury for civil lawsuits personally I can atest to that. And when you cause an injry to someone in your home who is visiting, yes you can be held responsible. Again that's why people have homeowners insurance....
Some of us were injured on the job,some need to be on disability for this illness.With out lawyers helping us we would be no where.
Lawyers are not the evil.Yes some are ambulance chasers.
Workmans comp will turn down every treatment your doctor asks for.They deny it.They also dont pay us.So with out lawyers we would be in a world of hurt.
SSD has rsd on the list of debilitating illnesses.once again with out lawyers we would not get disability.So there is no arguing with a lawyer from my perspective.
They have helped many people get treatment and money they need to survive.
That is again lumping in a catagory.
you cant put a price on health treatment.there are other factors.
like groceries,morgage,gas,utilities.
These other companies are playing with peoples lives.
that is what is not fair.
I have no problem with what my lawyer has done for me.Having to go to court so i can get medical attention for this illness.
I still dont understand why there is an arguement.
Unless a healthy person walks in the shoes of an rsd patient,how can comments like the ones posted be made? It is not logical.
Just goes to show you are so igonorant and also I think you posted this just because you need attention no matter if it is negative or not people like you dont have a life so you sit in judgement of people that are ill and let me add this is a real conditon what a peeon
I don't know if you have ever had any type of severe of chronic pain, but judging from your ignorance you probably haven't. I have but one thing to say May God have mercy on your life and you never have to experience such horror. I have been emloyed by a fortune 500 company for 10 years and passed several random drug tests and haven't had any discrepencies. So to say I am junkie looking for a high is severe mischaracterization.
After an ankle ligament repair I set up RSD/CRPS in the ankle and haven't been able to return to work since Sept. 2006. I would give all that I own to rid myself and my family of the pain and disruption that RSD has brought to my home. All of the "in your head" symptoms, skin color changes, temprature changes, extreme pain, and lossof limb control are present in this hypochondriac, in your head diagnosis. You need to be educated and for your self I pray sincerely that you NEVER have to become acquainted with RSD/CRPS.
Thank you Alan.
Check out WebMD
PS Oh and by the way Social Security approved my case solely from reading my medical reports and seeing the accompanying photos of the disfigured foot... No lawyer involved. They don't do this for a nothing diagnosis.
I have a very hard time with IGNORANT People like YOU !!! Educate Yourself before You Open Your Mouth .. People like YOU DESERVE to have RSD !! Craig
I am not sure if you can even understand what RSD dose to not just someone that has this
but to there family's and friends?
I lost almost every thing I work for, and would give anything to have that back, I am not on any pain med's! but there are day's of sleepless night's that I wish I did take something
Then there are the day's I can not get out of bed due to my body just will not take it,
There is not a day I wish I would of died when I was hit by that car,
I am a Mom of 3 and one I Adopted
on my own, And put 2 though Collage on my own!
And a Grandma, now but I can not hold her due to this, now do you think I enjoy this?
Do you know what it's like not being able to hold your GRAND BABY!
You think this is made up! Then let me ask you why it is you can see the damage that this RSD has done to my body?
I would just like to ask you where is your proof?
One more thing, for the family's that have kids with RSD and have no choice but to put them in a Coma in hope to save them, You really think they would try this if this was not real?
SHAME ON YOU! and may GOD HELP YOU!
I am not sure if you can even understand what RSD dose to not just someone that has this
but to there family's and friends?
I lost almost every thing I work for, and would give anything to have that back, I am not on any pain med's! but there are day's of sleepless night's that I wish I did take something
Then there are the day's I can not get out of bed due to my body just will not take it,
There is not a day I wish I would of died when I was hit by that car,
I am a Mom of 3 and one I Adopted
on my own, And put 2 though Collage on my own!
And a Grandma, now but I can not hold her due to this, now do you think I enjoy this?
Do you know what it's like not being able to hold your GRAND BABY!
You think this is made up! Then let me ask you why it is you can see the damage that this RSD has done to my body?
I would just like to ask you where is your proof?
One more thing, for the family's that have kids with RSD and have no choice but to put them in a Coma in hope to save them, You really think they would try this if this was not real?
SHAME ON YOU! and may GOD HELP YOU!
Seriously, new folks, read the article, Ed apologized for stating that RSD was fake. Stop calling him ignorant! Good Grief, so many people read that one sentence in the entire article, and are so angered by it that they don't read anything else in the article. He apologized! Leave it alone.
Hey Kevin,
Apology or no there needs to be some sort of accountability b/4 such an asinine statement is uttered, for example as I mentioned b/4 I have this dreaded disease and my son has ADD and I am a terribly lazy father that is an employee of a Fortune 500 company that had my son in pravate schools all of his life and was at every football, basketball, and baseball game he played. Not to mention was an assistant scout master for most of his scouting adventures. This child was medicated b/c of a necessity; went from a strugling C+ student to A-B honor roll for the rest of his school years. This Mr. Ed seems to think as much b/4 thinking as the horse that bares the same name. This isn't said to be insulting but to draw on an anology concerning Ed's comments and the "facts" that surround them, or the lack of research and thought that went into the rants he uttered. Thanks for taking the time in reading this, Alan.
Kevin; I am not sure I understand this but you keep saying this Dr was made out to be a criminal?
did he get jail time for this? NO
did he get arrested for this? NO
did he get probation for this? NO
but YES he was found to be negligent! for his act,
Also he was intoxicated, Not that that's a crime but when you cause harm to someone then you must be held uncountable for this.
Even if its in your own home,
That is why he (we) have home owners Ins, and laws like this,
Let me ask you this, if the Dr had a pit bull (I love pits) and it had hurt someone and then they won some money for that would you be as upset about that as you are about something you can not see?
Living everyday with RSD may not be something you can see, But it's real
There is something more you do not understand, some of us have hide are pain, from are family's like are little ones, so they do not get sad, due to why can't mom or dad or even like why can't are sister or brother play with them as much or not at all, that part is painful also,
the pain list is just to long to go on and on about,
The Jurors and her Lawyers did there job's in finding for the VICTIM! no matter how much money she did get,
And for us to say how much her case was worth, well I feel that is not up to us to say!
But you keep saying the Dr was made out to be a CRIMINAL! THAT IS NOT TRUE!
I really wonder what the VICTIM was made out to be?
She was not just once the VICTIM,
But in a lawsuit like that I am sure she was Victimizes all over again!
Ed apologized, only came out after,,,, he seen how upset he was making all of us out here WITH RSD!
I think its a little late for that, and yes this blog is allover web sites for all that suffer every day with some type of pain,
its a slap in are faces,
There is a story from a girl with lupus that maybe you should read
who was ask by her best friend about what is feels like to have Lupus, that is a painful one to have also,
and one of my best friends pass away from it,
that was course by a trauma, at the age of 16,
she made it to just 22 years old,
But it is called (The Spoon Theory)
You can Google it and just maybe this will help you, see just what living with pain is like,
From a Mom a sister and a daughter,and Aunt, with RSD that is who I am,
Anonymous....I can empathize with how you feel, just from a parent's perspective watching my daughter. She was able to apply for SSD based on her father getting SSD for a back injury he suffered as a police officer (no, this is not in his head - its legitimate!). However, she was turned down because they said she was not disabled before age 22 which is untrue. She has her appeal hearing in a couple weeks and we too have provided reams of medical documentation going back years and yes, photos of her swollen, red, huge left leg. She has a lawyer who does not collect a fee if she does not get SSD. Not all lawyers are ambulance chasers. Someone who has never been thru this cannot comprehend the frustration felt when you end up going to the ER because the pain is so bad and still they doubt you. Despite a hot, or cold, extremely swollen limb that does not look like it belongs to your body. They doubt your sincerity, whether you're young or old. We have encountered a few drs who do know about RSD and they are compassionate and do not hesitate to provide the necessary pain meds. It still amazes me that there is such ignorance in the medical field. And if there is ignorance in the medical field there will be ignorance in the general population. People knock what they don't understand. All we can do, as patients or family members of patients with RSD, is educate them one at a time. She has a SCS implant that helps but everyday is a possible day when that won't work and life will once again be a neverending hell of pain, meds, frustration and encountering ignorant people. Good luck to you and your family. I pray for all those afflicted with RSD that a cure comes soon.
Seeing as how alot of people don't think that i am educated enough on RSD to be able to comment on it, i decided I would read up on it. Here is what I found.
Doctors don't know what the cause of it is, because in so many cases, the causes are different, however it is usually prompted by some sort of injury.
Doctors aren't exactly sure how to treat it. For some patients, meds seem to work fine, for others they don't work at all. This is the reason why it is next to impossible to find a doctor to help treat it, because if the meds don't work, or make it worse, then the doctor could find himself in the middle of a malpractice suit.
There is no clear cut way to fix this disease. Doctor's can't even figure out exactly what is wrong. There are specific symptoms for the disease, which is why they are able to diagnose it, but there is no clinical way to treat it. It is all sort of trial and error for each patient.
If you want to still call me ignorant now, go ahead, but don't tell me i didnt do my research.
Ed,
or should I call you GOD?
You say and I quote ,Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy? Complex Regional Pain Syndrome? You've got to be kidding me! Those are no more real medical problems than Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or Hyper Active/Attention Deficit Disorder. It's a diagnosis dreamed up entirely in the deranged imaginations of self-absorbed doctors
Then you UPDATE THIS BY GIVING YOUR sincerest apologies,
Only because of the out pore of firestorm of criticism regarding YOUR wrong characterization of RSD, CRPS, and ADD as made up!
Witch is it? Or are you sorry that you are WRONG? or just looking out for yourself because of the out pore of criticism you are getting?
And you go on to add
bad parents
in the mix
May I ask where this fits in?
Maybe you should think about giving your sincerest apologies to the 12 jurors that you insult also by calling them 12 stupid jurors!
You also talk about what Miss Nelligan Lawyer will get, 30% for doing there job, They should be paid for there work,
Do you know that Miss Nelligan, most likely will have to spend most if not all of her money to pay for her medical bill's out of that? Did you know that most of her treatments are not covered by the Ins Co? Even if she has to go on Medicare and Medicaid.
So the Dr's and the pharmaceutical companies will get the moneys back one way, and all she will be left with is a very painful RSD for life with no cure, Not to say that she may not be able to live her dreams to become a Dr. or to have kids someday because of this. WOW what $6 mil can buy you!
I am sure she is just jumping for joy over this! oops I forgot she may not be able jump no more, SOUNDS LIKE SHE IS A BIG WINNER TO ME!
I think that the Jury should of also added that the Dr Mark Radzicki should pay for all med bills for life also,
You are right again, The Dr was not practicing medicine at the time this happen, just because he is a Dr and was not practicing medicine at the time of this dose not make what he did right, She did not sue him for malpractice,or practicing medicine on her, She sued him for coursing her harm, So this has not a thing to do about a becomes a doctor, or being a Dr
What if she was in the home of a Lawyer? I think you would of said the same thing about becoming a Lawyer,
(it's a wonder anybody becomes a Lawyer)
One last thing about the commit you made about Paula Abdul, I hope that someone from her staff of LAWYERS will read this and give you a call,
For the way you accuse her of being some kind of an addict, (Quote) Of course Paula Abdul claimed to have RSD. That way she gets access to all the pain-killers she can inject just before each Idol show. It's why she's always so loopy on the set. All addicts love these nebulous, non-specific pain sources to claim, so their doctors will write prescriptions for pain medicine.
WITCH she dose actually suffer from RSD
MAYBE YOU SHOULD GET READY TO GIVE YOUR sincerest apologies to her also,
How Paula Abdul deals with her pain is none of yours or anyone's biz-ness! And how her Dr's are treating her RSD! is none of anyone's biz-ness
HOW DARE YOU! JUDGE OR ACCUSE ANYONE LIKE THAT
THAT WAS JUST A CHEEP SHOT! She came out with this and I am sure that was not very easy for her to do,
At least she is out there doing her thing in her way!
GOD BLESS HER!
I hope you know that RSD can make you feel as you are on fire and much much more and that can play on your mind,
she is not loopy! she is in PAIN! and she is not LOOPY from the med's that you clam she is getting before each show!
we may now know where the next predatory law suit maybe,
Also do you know that with real pain, Pain med's do not get you high? they work on the pain, so someone in pain is not looking to become an addict, They are looking for relief from there pain, there is a differences, That is why you hear from almost everyone that has RSD that none of the pain med's work, Like myself I do not take any,if they do not work I feel I do not need to take them I feel they can do more harm then good this is just my choice, and I did get SSDI the 1st time without having to use a Lawyer!
Kevin,
Do not tell me to read the entire post and not to be angered or to get over it, just because Ed gave his sincerest apologies, I am beyond being upset the harm has been done, to all that had to fight for years to have there Dr's believe them, not because this is not real it is real
its the lack of information, education, understanding,research, and so on of this,
something Ed should of done before posting
His lack of education on any of this,
THIS IS THE HEADING OF THIS WEBSITE
Even Ed is fair game to this
THERIGHTRANT
An irreverent take on geo-political and cultural current events, where all things, and all people, are fair game and nothing is sacred.
But in a way I am going to thank you for saying what you did, you did get us more attention for /Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy / Complex Regional Pain Syndrome / Fibromyalgia/ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, or Hyper Active/Attention Deficit Disorder,
BUT IN THE WRONG WAY!
YOUR
sincerest apologies
Not accepted
I do not think you meant it
If you if did
then you would of gave your
YOUR
sincerest apologies
to the Victim
for calling her
the lazy, shiftless daughter
Who happens to have RSD
see this is what you where giving
Your sincerest apologies
for
your wrong characterization of RSD, CRPS, and ADD as made up conditions.
So your sincerest apologies.
should also include
the victim
and just maybe her Lawyers
for calling them
grease-bag lawyer
unbelievable!
You know, im really not a violent person, but when im in so much pain and i cant even use my leg,arm or hand or i keep my husband awake at night because my leg and arm are in spasams and jerking around everywhere, i blame people like you. I scream in pain, and last night i seen your mugshot up here and could of put you light out. Sorry but you really deserve it for been sooooooo stupid. Just remember what goes around comes around you to could have pain one day ,,,,,if so dont ask for our suport..Go and read about this RSD and educate yourself and take your pic of the site as you look as silly as you are.........
O bye the way your sincerest apologies
Not accepted, you have hurt to many people with you statments,and another thing People with RSD have to take special medications, and they are far more expensive than what druggies take. OOOOOOOO you are such an idiot...get a life. or get some pain...
Kevin
I am not sure where you found that Dr's that is trying to find a way to treat someone with RSD and made it worse, then they are in the middle of a malpractice suit, are you just that IGNORANT? for all of us that have this know going in to getting treatments from are Dr's know the ricks of this, and when they know it did not help they know to stop that type of treatment, I really do not know who would sue there Dr for trying to help them besides that what do you take us for a bunch of
dumb A** out here, we all know that it would be hard to prove that are Dr made are RSD worse! It can get worse just from the weather, or stress a pin prik,
that is just like saying someone with some outer illness one that is new and not easy to treat and there Dr made it worse, that is just not the case no one is thinking that way that I know of, I know a lot of people that have had a med that did not work and made them worse but never one case did I hear that they took it out on there Dr and took them in to court for malpractice suit!
Now that is one weak excuse, to justifies your way of thinking
why don't you just stop trying to make excuses for your narrow minded thinking
I really feel sorry for you,
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