CPRS or Complex Regional Pain Syndrome is the most severe pain you can experience. It's worse than childbirth according to the McGill charts. So when you are in pain it is important to be able to Explain Pain and the NOI site is good for this. It is also very important to avoid anything that makes it worse. Stress and some medications like Tramadol can actually make it worse. The good thing is that your nervous system has the ability to change called neuroplasticity (Norman Doidge's book is an interesting read on this topic) and so there is help for anyone suffering from this. Having suffered this I can honestly say it was a mixture of knowledge (I needed to study neurosciences to understand how the mind and body are integrated), breathing (you don't when you are in pain), "pacing", Lyrica an antiepilleptic and meditation as well as my love of birds and my husbands support that has got me through. There were many kind people I met on the way, the strangers who gave me lifts from the car park to the door of the hospital, my doctor and my physiotherapist. To all of them I did not know what hit me but now I do.
