11/1/15. The post where it catches up with me.

11/1/15: if I told you all the things I've done since my last post without a major flare up, you wouldn't believe me.  But I'm going to tell you anyway. I've survived two business trips.  Hours of driving in the rain. Hours of flying in the rain.  Hours of sitting on a tarmac in the rain.  Miles and miles of walking.  Thirty degree temperature swings.  Three major storm fronts.  And through it all, HAL has been humming away and my foot has felt remarkably good. Nothing over a 5, even when I had to turn off HAL to go through airport security, and more often in the 2-3 range.  Yesterday, I felt good enough to walk a charity 5K and go to a costume party.  I was feeling invincible.

Well, it turns out I am vincible.  I woke up early this morning feeling like there was a knife sticking out of my foot.  (Maybe it was the power of suggestion. After all, on Halloween I saw lots of people with knives sticking out of various body parts.)  Surprisingly, my foot color looks perfectly normal.  But recently, I've discovered another method for convincing myself I am not imagining things when I have a flare up.  You probably don't keep up with the symptoms of RSD, but I do, and one of them is fluctuations in body temperature at the affected area.  Recently, my patient, long-suffering husband bought an infrared temperature gun for measuring specific spots in the oven while baking. But guess what it can also measure?  The temperature of specific spots on your body.  And this morning, as I suspected, the temperature of my right foot at the exact point the "knife" is sticking out is more than three degrees colder than the same spot on my left foot and the rest of my body.  While fascinating from an intellectual perspective and satisfying from a mental health perspective, it doesn't make the knife go away.

Fortunately, today is a pretty easy day.  Singing in church, making a dish for the neighborhood block party, attending the neighborhood block party, rehearsing with my scene partner for acting class.  I've got this.  As long as my character in the scene has a knife sticking out of her foot.  

p.s.  Tomorrow (November 2) is Color The World Orange Day, a day for raising awareness about CRPS/RSD.  Various cities, states, and even countries are planning awareness activities, local landmarks will be lit orange, and people are encouraged to wear orange.  Yeah, I know, you just wore orange for Halloween and orange is not your best color.  It's not my best color, either.  But I'm willing to make a fashion sacrifice if it raises awareness and helps in any way to find a cure.  Because pain is also not my best color.