Imagine if the mere breeze of an air conditioner were to send you into excruciating pain. For those suffering from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), historically called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD), this crippling neuropathic pain is an unrelenting reality. With symptoms such as swelling, hypersensitivity, stiffness, burning pain, and temperature abnormalities, CRPS can develop at any time and quickly leaves its victims disabled and isolated. This book explains CRPS in an accessible style, featuring modern self-help techniques, complementary therapies, and holistic strategies for maximizing the potential for healing. Readers with CRPS will find a wealth of tips on life modifications to help better manage their condition, along with a list of "dynamite distractions" to refresh the pain-wracked mind and help them rediscover their imagination and humor. Patient testimonies on techniques for transforming the pain and discomfort of CRPS provide hope, and interviews with practitioners, including pain specialist Edward Carden and occupational therapist/neurological acupuncturist Sheri Barnes, offer insights every patient should know. There's even a chapter addressed to loved ones with advice for their difficult roles as encouragers and caregivers. CRPS remains a mysterious, poorly understood condition. This book provides the information and positive options everyone affected by CRPS needs.

Battle for Grace is about a seven-year-old girl who sees Funny Girl and has a dream. To act, to dance and to sing. It's also about how she becomes a woman whose life is virtually destroyed by a crippling mystery illness and how she fights the institutions that failed her. A woman who has lived an almost impossible love story that began before her illness. Somehow she and the man who is her reason for living, her caregiver and her partner in life have managed to stick together for more than thirty difficult years. Battle for Grace tells how she reinvents herself and turns tragedy into triumph for millions of women worldwide. At the same time, she transforms her life into something more beautiful and meaningful than her original dreams of stardom. Ballerina Cynthia Toussaint's promising career ended abruptly when a rehearsal injury that caused excruciating pain remained undiagnosed for thirteen years. This left her bedridden for a decade, unable to speak for five of those years and often reduced to uncontrolled violence. Throughout all of this, Toussaint's claims of pain were discounted by her HMO as being all in her head-a frequent occurrence with women and their doctors. Many people with her illness-sometimes called the Suicide Disease-take their lives instead of contending with the pain. Toussaint's story is about her refusal to be a victim. She not only fought to survive, she has taken on the role of activist and aggressively challenges the HMOs and pharmaceutical companies that put profit ahead of patient care. Wheelchair bound, she founded a nonprofit and entered the political arena as an advocate for women in pain. Toussaint's memoir takes the reader on the roller coaster life of a woman who sees every no as a future yes. Despite pain, setbacks, abuse and betrayal, she holds her ground, finding in the process the spotlight she'd always coveted. And a deeper meaning in life than she ever expected.