Day Four ... Roll the Credits

As with every story, the ending must give way to a new beginning. First I will start with the ending of the Ketamine therapy. Today ( 4-8-2011 )  we had been called into the office after the first breakfast Michelle has had since Sunday morning. Today was Evaluation day! Dr. Kirkpatrick had taken her pain thresholds from 4 specific areas and laid out the pain threshold papers from the days prior, and allowed everyone to see that there have been increases from the 1st treatment. Although she is still to be very ginger on her feet, it showed that if she can continue with his next requests of exercise, there should be a consistent increase of pain tolerance over time.
The Dr. used a great analogy of the Splint. We know that when a bone is broken in half, the two parts are realigned and a splint is used to hold the two together. You cannot immediately start using the bone for support as it needs to heal the connections. Only when all the connections have healed to form the two pieces into 1 supporting unit will it work properly. The Ketamine is the splint. The nerves from brain, and the nerves from the foot need to be separated and then the ketamine lets the brain restart and put the two ends together, but it isn't so simple that everything is miraculously better. The nerves need to be re-blunted and learn again all of the pain and stimulation receptor signals.
That is where the new beginning starts. There is the necessity for hydrotherapy and water exercise called Watsu. Strange name, but it holds the ability for the bottom of the feet to be walked on where the body has almost no weight. The water also holds a lot of healing properties as everyone knows, and now it holds the key to my lovely wife to walking on her foot under the buoyancy of water.
I would love to say that everything has ended, and this Blog was the final stages of Hell that is RSD, for Michelle . We are already looking to Hydrotherapy options for the continuation of increasing her pain threshold and let her mind remember what it was like to walk as normal as it was the many years before.
We were instructed that this should be done for 6 months and since there are ups and downs, we were told to document how long exercise was done for, and anticipate the " exercise hangover " to prove the muscles were being worked and strengthened. One more evaluation after that will determine if the the mind / foot nerves need to be " re-splinted " with another infusion. Another infusion would only be determined after the Dr. sees the improvement made and observes that it would be of benefit.

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in this time of trial...