The Doctors

So I got to go to the lake this weekend for a bass fishing tournament. Being any where near water is my absolute favorite, but when you compile that with trees, wildlife, and great people; well that is the icing on the cake. It was my current boyfriends family event and just like the previous year, it was wonderful. My son took first place in the youth tournament; I was so proud. We have been working on getting him over some fears of things and this was a big thing for him because we told him if he wanted to be in the tournament he would have to bait his own hook and get used to touching fish, which he did after some patience. My other half won Biggest Bass, and the only fish I caught was before the tournament and didn't count. :( LOL! It was the biggest fish I have ever caught though. It was some where in the range of 10-15 inches. (We didn't measure it.) It was nice to be able to get out of the house for the weekend, since the only times I really get out are when I have doctors appointments. I don't really feel I can do the things I want anymore because the pain can hit bad at any time, and I would have to go home anyway. Why should I ruin everyone's fun because of the pain I will have to live with for the rest of my life? Having the right doctors on your side is very important in these situations. I tell people all the time, “Interview your doctor”. They live off of their patients, and we are those people. There so many doctors in the world now, and we have so many to choose from, even on an HMO. You just have to be willing to do the leg work, and most aren't. I started with a Medicaid doctor.

 I thought that since my son and I were both on Medicaid through the State of Michigan I would have to go to a Medicaid doctor. It was three days after we got home that got in to see him. I seen this doctor twice and both times I was not happy with his bedside manor. He didn't seem to care; I was just another low class, Medicaid patient getting free medical from the state. He didn't stop and think that I was a single mother, working full time, getting NO child support from the father, and just getting by. And now I had a broken ankle and was going to be out of work for at least three months.

  He did not go through what I would have thought were normal procedures for this kind of thing, like an MRI, or a complete work-up since I had just been in an accident that was bad enough to fracture my ankle and I might have other things wrong with me, like a concussion, or what about simply following up with the hospital I was at in Ohio? None of this was done, so I starting looking for a lawyer after the first visit.

  I have to admit, for anyone who knows me and may be reading this, I am not the best patient. I have expectations, and if you do not meet them, you are no longer a part of my life. If I feel you are not giving me what I need as my doctor, I tend to get a little, oh,.....lets say, anxious. When I get like that, I tend to feel sorry for those who have to see my facial expressions. They look nasty from what I am told. After I called Sam Bernstein, yes, literally, I found out that I didn't have to stick with a medicaid doctor and I could choose whomever I wanted. So I called the doctors office I trusted most, and even though I had not been to his office in years, they remembered me and made sure Doctor Wright got my message.

 I simply asked him for a great ankle specialist because I was in an accident and fractured my ankle. They called me back and told me he recommended Doctor Schram. He has been my doctor ever since. This man has a wonderful bedside manor, looks at you as the human you are, is understanding, and thorough. He asked to be told my whole story up until him, and then started to do all the things I thought a doctor should do. He explained that he did not want to do an MRI yet either because it was too early to tell anything and the swelling was still too much at that time. (He explained why; he didn't just say no.) He put on my second real cast, took a bunch of x-rays, and told me to be patient because this was going to take a while. This was how I was going to spend the rest of my summer. Having patience and waiting. I am usually good at these things, but this was a completely different story. I was going to be in the new cast for at least another six more weeks, and then, depending on the fracture, I was to move to a walking cast. Dr. Schram answered all my questions and understood my fears and tried not to make them worse. He knew that stress of anything could be a bad thing, and did not want to cause me any unnecessary worries. So he answered my questions, and kept it at that, and tried to keep me from expanding the thoughts that would creep into my head from my knowledge of the human body.  

At The Hospital

Ahhhh, so finally a small break in the weather and look what your eyes got to feast on. The exploding feeling in my leg that has plagued me all week has finally died down with the humidity. I am finding that there are different pains that come with the different weather patterns. I do not like that. Constant change is not a favorite of mine because it has shadowed my life on so many things. I get but small breaks in between each major change and the rebuild process that follows. I figure this is the same for most and it is normal. This change shows that when the humidity is bad my leg feels like it is swelling from the bone and pushes through all the tendons and muscles and tissues through to the skin and when it reaches the skin it is stopped. It builds but doesn’t push through, and only looks slightly swelled from the outside. On the outside is feels ice cold to the touch. When the humidity comes down it returns and isolates to the bone. This is a more focused pain and they are sharper and more like the lighting bolt feeling. Those are the ones that take your breath away but are easier to breathe through. A very large contradiction, but it is what it is. From what I have been told throughout this whole ordeal is that everything depended on how the bone and joint were set after the accident happened. However in my case all that was done “beautifully” and the bone set so well that even on x-rays you can barely see the fracture, which brings me back to the story.

When we got to the hospital it was just your normal procedures and policies getting information and asking questions and having x-rays and pumping pain medications. The people at the hospital were very nice and seemed to be on top of their game. I did not have to wait long before having the x-rays done and being told that I had a fractured Tibia. Now I have always been told that having a bone fractured was worse then having it broke. It weakens the bone and leaves it more susceptible to breaking down the road. So I figured I was screwed right from the get-go. They gave me the option of staying and having an MRI done there or going home and having it done at home. Well, at that point all I wanted was to be somewhere familiar and comfortable, and I do not feel that in a hospital. So they started the release process. They set my leg from the knee down. The guy doing the set had to push on the bottom of my foot to set it properly and that sucked horribly. The pain almost put me out. Once it was set they gave me prescriptions, had me sign some papers and sent me on my way. My ex wheeled us out of the hospital one at a time after stopping to eat in the cafeteria. I called my insurance company as soon as I got outside of the hospital and tried to make a claim, but their computers were down and I would have to try again the next day. We had to wait for my ex's cousin to come back and get us. He went with the van on the flat bed back home and was going to drive back down to get us. When he did arrive it did not feel like long until we were back in our area. I asked to stop and get my prescriptions filled since I knew it would probably be at least a half an hour before I would have them in hand, which we did, and then my ex drove to my house to drop me off so he could take his cousin and his wife back to their car so they could drive another hour back to their area. My ex said it would only take a few to drop them off and then he would be back with my pain medications.

By the time my ex got back from dropping them off two hours had past. I was going in and out from the pain and was pissed. I couldn't go to the bathroom without help, couldn't get up at all without help at that point and I had never felt so helpless in my life. I still felt the drugs in my system, they just weren't working on what they were supposed to be working on. They were simply making me stupid and too weak to move. The pills I was taking my body usually rejected anyway, so I didn't know what was going on in my body. So began my relationship with the doctors.

In My Head

I was dozing in and out of a nap in the front seat of the van. I had my flip-flops off and feet up on the dashboard. I have always heard not to ride this way, but I thought it was for other reasons, not the air bag. So I rationalized doing it because when I sat with my butt all the way to the back of the seat and put up my feet, I did not have to scoot down to get them up there, my knees were extended but relaxed, and I could remain seat-belted. Plus we were in a better vehicle other than a car. I thought I would be fine. One of the times I was more on the awake side of the nap, I noticed a car acting funny in the median up ahead. It was far enough off that by the time we got close to it, it should be gone. So I was not concerned. I closed my eyes again. I couple seconds later I heard something so I opened my eyes again. My ex had watched the car in the median rear-end the car ahead of it and had been reacting to it. I then began to pay more attention and was now wide awake. It was one of those times when you are so close to falling in a deep sleep but then something happens and all of a sudden sleep is the last thing in your head. Like previously mentioned, the highway was two lanes on our side, then a median, and two lanes going the opposite direction. Where we were at on the highway allowed for vehicles to cross over the highway through the median to the other side of the road. This is something we have in Michigan, and that was normal to us. What wasn't normal was how the person in the car was acting in the median when I started paying attention. I watched as they backed out into a lane in the opposite direction, and stayed for a moment and then, just in time to get out of the way of an on coming semi heading in that direction. The car stayed in the median for another moment and then slowly pulled out blocking the left lane in our direction. We were in that lane. My ex being a professional tractor trailer operator; I was sure he had a plan. It didn't matter anyway, to ask him such a question would cause drama. His cousin was asleep on the couch seat in the back of the van and his cousins wife was in the captains seat behind me. As we approached the car I finally asked my ex what he was going to do and the plan was to stay where we were until the last minute and then to swerve around the front of the car. He wanted to wait until the last minute in case the car moved in anticipation of our actions. Because of the way the car was acting prior, we didn't know what to think, so we thought only the worse and hoped for the best. Within seconds my thoughts were all over. First I thought I took my feet down, then I remember having the fight or flight reaction and if wasn't for my seat belt I might have ran to the back of the van, but as I was getting ready to jump I felt the belt and realized I would be flung forward into the windshield if we hit. I turned back around, still seat-belted through all this, and watched as we got closer to the car blocking our route ahead. I knew I had my left foot down for sure because I would not have been able to turn the way I did in my seat if I hadn't. I really thought I had both down. Next I remember looking around and making sure my core was secure then preparing my feet, (so I thought), and then my arms. I tried to remember what I saw on shows about preparing for an accident if you have the time. I bent my arms and tried to relax them to be springy. I hovered them over the dashboard, and made sure not to rest them on there in case the dash came up into the cab. After that thought is when I heard my ex start to yell. Out of the corner of my left eye I saw the other female in the van get up and starting to head for the back of the van yelling for her husband to wake up. Another quick turn of my head and we hit, and I felt her get pushed into the back of my chair. I watched as we pushed the car across the road and down into the ditch. I was still properly in my chair, but remember feeling pushed forward. My hands ended up on the dash, and our windshield stayed intact but I watched both passenger side windows on the car explode, the drivers head snap sideways as his whole body was forced up with impact. I remember the image of the driver as a picture you would see in a drivers education booklet. The person in the picture is shaded gray, and you can see both hands on the wheel. That is what I remember seeing but with shards of glass going into them. When we hit the grass we rumbled over it until we stopped. When we did finally stop the air bags went off and I remember waking up again and looking over at my ex who also looked like was waking up. He asked if I was OK, and at that moment I thought I was. No initial pain, just woozy. I looked around and found my phone. I could feel the hairs starting to crawl up my back,...the signs of shock.

 I wanted to call my brother, since he was closest to the area and was a trained paramedic. I having a lot of background in various forms of medical procedures myself knew I needed to talk to someone to help keep me level so I didn't freak out completely, and my brother was perfect for that. When he answered I informed him first that we had been into an accident and I was going into shock and needed him to keep me calm. One thing my brother and I shared was when there was an emergency we focused very well. This was not one of those times on his behalf. He started asking questions in a frantic way and figuring out how far he was from me, as I told him I already understood that, and wasn't expecting that, I told him I wanted to let someone know who wouldn't freak out and could call my mother. I told him we were alright, but that I had been real scared and needed to be talked down. At that time I did not know I wasn't OK. He continued to talk and ask questions and as he did my ex had already jumped out of the car and was accessing the damage. He walked around to my side of the car and I decided to get out. I remember stepping down and starting to push on the van door which had been impacted so the firefighters that were there pulled on it from out side of the van to get it open for me. And once the van door was open I tried to step down and out of the van when the pain hit. At first it wasn't really anything, but it grew, and grew quickly. It shot up my calf muscle and into the back of my knee. When I looked at my foot the inside of my ankle started to swell and turn black. It reminded me of my feet when I was pregnant. I yelled out and my ex came over and took the phone from me and asked what was wrong. I told him I didn't know but thought it was my ankle and I couldn't step down. He spoke to my brother and informed him of what I had said, and that's when the other female yelled out. She had her foot completely crushed. As it turned out she broke somewhere around 13 bones in the top of her right foot. Both guys in the van walked away with only bruises and scrapes. In a few short minutes the ambulance was on the scene and and there was a female paramedic that was also real good at keeping us calm. Males prefer males, and females prefer females during those times. The paramedics and the firefighters lifted me out on a board that they had slid under me and had to rip the door off in order to have room to do so. They put me in the ambulance and the other female from our party followed. Once we were in the ambulance the paramedics talked to us to keep us awake and calm and warned us about bumps to keep things as lighthearted as possible until we arrived at the hospital. My ex had to stay for a few but soon followed with our purses and important information.  

The Accident

So, I have been having a lot of pain for the last few days. The humidity around here right now is horrible, and my whole right leg feels like it is going to explode. I had some shopping I had to do today and I had to ask the people at the store to load my cart and car for me. I find this terribly embarrassing due to the fact that I am only 33, and was raised to not need anyone,...”I can do it myself!”. And when the pain kicks in, the very thought of having to go out in public and get “the looks” is enough to make me want to cry in shame. So I haven't really been up for doing anything. But instead of sitting on my butt and watching T.V. and being mad about my life, I had to pull out the laptop and finish telling about the accident. Anything to get my mind off the pain and throbbing and feeling sorry for myself. When I left off, we had tried to go around the car when the car moved...

 My ex tried to swerve back out of the other drivers way, but it was too late. We T-boned the other car off into the ditch on the side of the road. Lucky for us the ditch was not one of those six-foot deep, steep ditches that you might imagine. It had a small area that was steep where the the roads met, but then flattened out. We took out two roads signs, and I will never forget the other drivers windows glass exploding in front of us or the rumble of the tires going over the ground we were ripping up. Well, lets face it, I will never forget any little detail of that day. Outside of the accident I was told there were a few people that watched the whole thing, one of which was a woman who was just rear-ended by the same person in the car we just hit.A couple of others that witnessed the accident were two off duty firefighters as well. These men I am still thankful for because they helped the paramedics lift me out of the van and into the ambulance.

  It wasn't long before the ambulance came which meant that one of these people made a call to 911 while watching the accident unfold. Most people would just watch in awe. I would sincerely love to speak to any of these people and get their version of the accident. I know what happened inside the van, I could only imagine what it looked like from outside it. In all honesty I would have probably been like, “whoa,....oh my goodness, is everyone OK?”, and as soon as finding out everyone was alive and OK with only a few bones broke, “that was so cool!” But you always have a different perspective when it actually happens to you. Even in my opinion the pictures look cool because you can tell that the impact was so hard and sudden that the front bumper of the van was lodged into the side of the car when they pried the van off it. 

  The bumper itself was in the place where the middle console of the car was. The passenger side windows had exploded, like I mentioned earlier, and when they did they sent shards of glass into the driver who was now bleeding from many wholes all over the side of his face and body. I don't know how bad the drivers condition was, but he lived, and I was only told that he had no medical problems and had a negative intoxication screen. At the moment of the accident, by what I had watched from inside the van, it looked like the driver was trying to commit suicide, and I was extremely angry that someone that didn't know a thing about us was going to try to use us to end their own life and didn't care enough to even think that he might take us out with him. I have had people in my life who are no longer with us today because of suicide, but they only wanted to hurt themselves, not others, and I have done a lot of research on suicide and understand it to a degree, but could not believe that one of those types of situations was possibly happening to me. Needless to say, I was very angry. I have copies of the police report and compared to what it looked like in the drawing they did as a scaled down visual, it was nothing like the drama that was going on inside the van when it was approaching the car.

No Luck Today

Today was not a good day. Usually Friday the 13th is a lucky day for me. But the pain is what it is. Talk later.

The Concert Trip

OK, so I already mentioned that I was in a car accident, but I feel the need to explain the beginning as well as how I was before the accident. I think it will better paint a picture of why I am having so many problems, not just physically, but mentally as well.

Before May 24^th 2010 I was in full steam. I was a single mother busting her butt every day doing the things that take two people to do. I had a fast-paced full time job as an insurance agent at a financial firm that I had intended on making a career, I owned my house and car, and I took care of it all. I had very little help, but what I did receive was from my sons family. His grandparents and father took care of him while I was at work and they took him every other weekend so I could have time to breathe. At the time of the accident I was in an uncomfortable relationship that was on the rocks, and all I wanted was to go to the concert we had planned for a year to go too. It was a two day concert in Columbus, Ohio and it had a few specific bands I had wanted to see for a very long time. The trip was already paid for and I was not about to give up my well deserved vacation. It was only supposed to be for four days and when we got back I intended on putting all the focus I could into my career and son. If the relationship continued and got better,... great, but I was not going to kill myself if it didn't. That is another long story, but lets just say I was done being used as a door mat. So on to the concert.

Rock on the Range was the concert and I could not wait. I had been making some wrong life decisions and was using the concert as a way to relax and prepare before putting my head down and getting into some serious work. And that is exactly what I did. I have not gone to many concerts and I was getting to see Rob Zombie who is one of my favorite people, he is so creative. I got to crowd surf for the first time, and now last, and got to do some other things I have always wanted. (Being a single mom means you don't get to do much of the things you want too, so every little thing seems more important even in the smallest fractions.) I was out of Michigan, where I am from, away from home, no little man to worry about, so I just let loose as much as I could. For two days straight I walked around a stadium full of people from all walks of life, drinking beer on two of the hottest days of what was the beginning of summer, and at every turn there was a crowd standing around a stage with a live band I have been longing to see play.      

 You see, I was a singer and still am, but I have never been able to get out like my friends and see the bands, so, I was in one instead. So seeing these bands really meant a lot to me. I felt I was surrounded by kindred spirits. I will be honest, I do not remember a lot of the concert now, but I remember the parts I wanted to go for, and that still makes me smile to this day. It makes as a good memory to the beginning of what some days I feel was the beginning of the end of me. On Monday morning we packed everything up and headed for home.
     

We had just crossed over the point where US-23 turns into OH-15. I had been nodding off in the passenger seat of my ex's Ford full conversion van. I am only 5'4”, so to put my feet up on the dash was just the perfect length for me. I didn't have to scoot down to reach, and I could still stay seat-belted. My flip-flops were off, and I had not been nodding long when I seen this car acting funny up ahead. It was in the cross-over portion of the median and I watched it pull into it's spot in the median, back out again like it was going to head in the opposite direction, almost got run over by a semi before it pulled back into the median, and then pulled out in front of us and just sat there. There were only two lanes on our side of the median, and he was blocking one of them. The ex was a semi driver his self, so I felt that he would do the right thing, but what I thought would have been the right thing is not what happened. As we approached I asked my ex what he planned to do, I was scared, but stayed smart. I looked behind us and only saw one car back in the far distance so I knew he could stop and not cause bigger problems, but he did have a chance to keep going and go around the car, but the ladder would only work if the person in the car did not move. Needless to say, as we started to go around the front of the car, it moved and positioned itself dead center in front of the van. I now know that a full conversion van is a little more then two car doors wide. I watched the whole thing in slow motion and am still haunted by the visions of it. But that is just the beginning of my life with RSD.

Hello and Welcome!

Hello, my name is Lacey. In 2010 I was in a car accident that left me disabled at 31. I did not find out until a year after that I have R.S.D.S. or Reflux Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome. This syndrome also has another name, C.R.P.S. or Chronic Reactive Pain Syndrome. I prefer to call the syndrome by it's first name, R.S.D., and will do so throughout this blog. No matter what you call it, it is painful and can be quite ugly. Some people who have RSD have had their limbs turn black and have had to amputate. I am one of the lucky ones, however, to look at me you would not know anything was wrong. I try to hide my facial expressions and the urges to scream at the top of my lungs when I am out in public. On the really bad days, I simply do not leave the house. Unfortunately this is not healthy. The only way I could think of to keep myself from going insane inside my own head was to get it out; but I didn't just want to write it down and stash it away for no one to learn from. As cliche as it sounded, I needed to blog. Someone out there is willing to let me vent and explain the horrible different pains of RSD. So here it is, I hope you find my story enlightening and entertaining.