Eighth grade started with a bad pain flare. I spent the first week of school in tears because of the pain. I wanted to do something about it, but I was too scared to say something to my mom. I continued to take Tylenol and wear the TENS unit.
Some days, I would just sit in school and cry. One of my teachers felt particularly bad for me, and she was constantly asking me if I needed help. I couldn't talk to my mom about it, since she immediately changed the subject or told me to quit talking about it!
As if that wasn't bad enough, my friends decided to turn on me. The girl who had been diagnosed with RSD was moving, and she started being mean. My other "best friend" followed her example. They played tricks on me, laughed at me, and left me out of things that the group was doing. Another friend constantly criticized me because I couldn't run or participate in gym class! I felt totally rejected.
It was around that time when I first started researching RSD. Some of the symptoms fit, although some didn't. I figured that it was more likely that I had RSD than I was crazy! I started making e-mail pals. I became involved in an RSD listserv, and I kept what I was doing quiet. I didn't want my parents to find out, for some reason, even though I clearly stated that I was undiagnosed to everyone I met.
At some point, I started having pain in other places. A joint would hurt one day and another would hurt the next. It concerned me because I thought it was the same thing as my ankle and shoulder, even though the pain was much less severe.
In April, my family took a trip to Israel. It was really wonderful, with three generations of the Herman family: my grandparents, my parents, my brothers, and me. We spent a week in Israel, seeing all sorts of places. We visited my mom's cousin in Tel Aviv, which was really nice. At the end of the trip, we spent two days in Jordan, which was something my father had always wanted to do. I hated Jordan! It was scary and foreign...the people were a little scary, and it's a poor country.
My parents went to see Petra, a city carved out of red rock. It was a long walk, and my grandparents and us kids wouldn't have made it. Danny, the older of my two little brothers, was sick, Joshua was too little, and I couldn't walk that much. We sat in a hotel for a while, and then we went outside and walked around. We sat outside, across the street from the hotel where my parents left us. I saw them coming, and they were going to look for us in the hotel, so I decided to run after them. BAD idea! There was a stone missing from the sidewalk. I tripped over it and fell, scraping up my hands and knees and spraining my left ankle.
They cleaned me up a little and we went back to the van to go to lunch. My ankle started hurting more, and it swelled. I started having a hard time walking. My dad helped me to the restaurant. My ankle just got worse, although now I would have called myself a wimp!
We went and looked at a few more things, and then we drove to Aman, the capital of Jordan. We stayed in a hotel room there, for a few hours. Danny wasn't feeling well, and neither was I. My dad and Joshua (my youngest brother) went to look around, while my mom stayed with Danny and me.
Later, it was time to go for dinner. We tried to get downstairs, but the elevators were going nuts. It was like something out of the Twilight Zone! We finally got a working elevator to come, and we went downstairs. We got in the van, and started driving to this restaurant. Danny barfed in a bag...it was pretty gross! We got to this restaurant, which was supposedly King Hussein's favorite. I didn't really like it...but oh, well!
We went to the airport after dinner. I was having a hard time walking, so they got me a wheelchair. I'm thoroughly ashamed of myself! The airport was like something out of a 1940's spy film. We took a little propeller plane back to Israel...it was really rough and really painful! Then we flew from Israel to Chicago. A limo picked us up at the O'Hare, and we went home.
When we got back home, I immediately put on my air brace. The next day, I stayed home from school. My mom took me to an orthopaedist near my house. He took some x-rays, looked at my ankle, and said that it was a moderate sprain and the air brace was perfect for it. He wanted to see me again in three weeks, so we made an appointment. The sprain healed, but the pain sure didn't! I wore the brace for a week, and then I switched to an Ace pull-over brace for a couple of weeks. When we went back to the doctor, he said that my ankle was fine, but my medical history intrigued him. He talked to us for a while, and asked some questions. We found out that I never had blood work done, but I should have!
School was over in a few weeks, and my mom made an appointment with the rheumatologist at Hell. I was going to camp that summer, and we thought it was a good idea to see the doctor first. We asked for blood tests and got them. She also ordered a full-body bone scan.
The bone scan came back normal. My blood tests were all normal except for one slightly elevated test. At my next appointment, they drew more blood, and that test came back negative. She put me on a prescription dose of Advil, since I had never tried that.
I went to camp with Advil, a TENS unit, and no diagnosis. I spent the first week of camp in tears from the pain. It calmed down a little after that. I had an allergic reaction to the Advil the day of the Judaica bowl. I was the captain of my unit's team, and we came in second. Had I not been sick, we probably would have won! I was standing outside of the nurse's office after lunch when I noticed a girl with wires and electrodes on her leg. Another TENS unit! I went up to her and asked what she used it for. She said that she had RSD. I was amazed! I said that I might have RSD too. She lived only ten minutes away from me. We talked for a few minutes and that was it. I didn't even remember her name.
