Category Archives: Lady Penelope Strongbow

CRPS, Lady Penelope Strongbow

Lady Penelope Strongbow’s hand. A day in the life of . . .

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Poor Lady Penelope Strongbow. The twitches continue. Great shuddering nervous tics at the most inopportune moments, like when there are slippery peas on her fork or a mussel is half hanging out its shell. Worse, when the glass of Merlot is full. Correction: was full. You get my drift.

Full days at the CRPS clinic continue.

It’s coming up two months now – everyday, all day. Before that, I had February and March at the physiotherapist every day for two hours. Ouch. Four whole months now of therapies coming out my ears and my hand still looks like Lady Penelope’s. Double ouch!!

But I’m riding in style. My chauffeurs come to collect me each morning.

Ambulance for Lady Penelope
your carriage awaits, m’lady!

We rattle along in fine style to the clinic.

First therapy of the day is what they call Bains Écossés, but I don’t think the Scots ever had any say in that. Anyway, hot and cold treatments. Very hot and Very cold.

Lady Penelope hand baths
fill one with hot, one with cold

New thinking says don’t ever use ice for CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome), so it’s difficult to know who to believe.

Next is Physio.

Lady Penelope treatment room
50 Shades of ouch!

After all that bending and stretching, it’s time for the pool.

Lady Penelope pool
33 degrees . . . heaven.

After my hour in the pool it’s time for the next therapy which is a bit like Occupational Therapy in UK where focus is on small motor movements.

Needless to say, I drop things all the time, due to the fact that I have no grip and I can neither close my fist nor stretch my hand out flat.

There is a rest room at the clinic. But not for me. My days are full on. I squeeze another five minutes on the pulley wherever I can.

no rest for Lady Penelope
no time to rest!

Then it’s off to the Robot chairs.

Les Robot-Chaises is what I christened them and the name has amused some. Not all, but some.

 

CRPS Robot Chair
you stick your arm in it.

Like this.

Robot chair
upwards and outwards . .

And after all this, it’s lunchtime. I’m hungry and thirsty by now. My breakfast yoghurt feels like a lifetime ago. So, the welcome sight of the lunch table is something of a highlight in my day.

Lady Penelope lunch
we’re even allowed wine!

Then it’s back on the CRPS treadmill to repeat all the morning’s treatments and exercises. Is there any wonder all I want to do when I get home is fall asleep?

Lady Penelope Strongbow

CRPS treatment. A personal account

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Treatment for CRPS varies. I think I’ve been lucky here in France that my condition was recognised and diagnosed fairly early. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, but it gives me abetter chance of recovering some of the use of my left hand.

When the lower part of my cast was removed Dr B wrote Algodystrophie on a prescription for 20 sessions of physiotherapy.

CRPS fingers
CRPS had already set in

I’m going to call him Doctor BonnyBones because he’s the bone man and I like giving people nicknames.

By some strange quirk, all the doctors I have seen have surnames beginning with ‘B’.

Physiotherapy for CRPS

physiotherapy logo

In my opinion, physiotherapy isn’t enough on its own. My therapist did a great job of desensitising my hand so I could bear someone touching it.

Non-sufferers find it hard to understand why something as simple as a change of temperature can cause the CRPS patient even more pain.

I had physio every day. I feel sorry for sufferers who get to see a therapist only once or twice a week. It isn’t enough. I had 20 sessions, but it wasn’t enough. It was a beginning and I’m grateful to M for pestering me to go back to my general practitoner for better pain relief. Without adequate pain relief, therapy sessions are unbearably painful.

Is there a cure for CRPS?

No.

Watch this brief video for an explanation.

So, all we sufferers can hope for is an improvement in mobility and a means of controlling the pain.

After my 20 sessions of physiotherapy showed only minor improvements, Dr BonnyBones referred me to to the nerve specialist. I’m going to call him Dr Bazooka. It unnerved (pun intended) me a little to see that Dr Bazooka operated out of an annexe tacked onto a geriatric hospital, but he lived up to the nickname I’ve given him. He blasted through French bureaucracy, picked up the phone and spoke to a colleague.

I was booked into a day hospital.

I arrived on April 1st. I didn’t know I was booked in for 8 weeks! Some April fool, huh?

To be continued. See how Lady Penelope Strongbow gets on at the clinic.

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Lady Penelope Strongbow

CRPS and Lady Penelope Strongbow.

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Lady Penelope Strongbow has her very own CRPS mission.

It’s a personal mission. Things tend to be on a personal level when you suffer from this disease.

CRPS takes over your life.

Complex Regional Pain Syndrome changes your life. However, Lady Penelope Strongbow would like to think that somewhere along the line just maybe, perhaps, her story might help others, or at least give them a moment’s amusement when they read her story.

(You can read why I call myself Lady Penelope Strongbow in my previous CRPS post.)

It began last December. Just before Christmas and all the stores were full of pretty things. She had just returned her shopping trolley to the bay and was walking back toward her car when she heard a lot of shouting.

trolleybay
safe in the car park?

I wonder what people are shouting for? she wondered.

Then, blackout. Just like that. The lights went out and there was pain like you wouldn’t believe.

Someone had reversed his car into her making her fall and causing two breaks to her wrist and forearm and a very sore head where it had bounced on the concrete parking lot.

The cast was enormous.

CRPS origins
trying to write a post for my website

CRPS began almost immediately. When the upper part of the cast was removed, the Lady Penelope fingers were already in evidence and the pain affected the whole arm, elbow and shoulder.

CRPS fingers
bent and twisted fingers already painful to touch

CRPS had already set in, but the diagnosis wasn’t given until the rest of the cast was removed.

Three painful CRPS months later

It took three whole months to work out pain relief that didn’t cause me to vomit or give me diarrhoea or space me out so far I didn’t know which way was up.

By this time , we had various test results. The echograph (like ultrasound) showed no serious tears in the soft tissue, but lots of inflammation.

The scintigraph (bone scan) came next. The bone scanner machine is as futuristic as Thunderbirds used to be.

scanner for CRPS

Lady Penelope was suitably impressed.

Results of the hand/wrist scan show where CRPS is affecting the bones.

CRPS dark spots on bone scan
dark spots show CRPS activity

You can see how every part of my wrist and fingers is affected.

That’s why I have a Lady Penelope hand.

That’s why, like her, I can’t open doors.

CRPS hand
no chance!

 

It’s why when I put my left hand on top of my head, it looks like this –

CRPS hand
this is far as it goes!

And when you’ve got a CRPS Lady Penelope hand, you’d better forget about opening that pack of doughnuts.

CRPS hand can't open packet of doughnuts
even opening packets is too difficult

Squeezing the packet between my thumb and forefinger is all I can do with my Lady Penelope hand.

In my next post, I’ll have information about the treatment I’m receiving.

There’s a lot of treatment. Every day. As I’ve already said, CRPS takes over your life.

Please feel free to leave a comment, and do please Share if there’s someone you know who might like my posts.

Till next time,

 
Lady Penelope Strongbow

Lady Penelope Strongbow. On a mission.

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Let me introduce Lady Penelope Strongbow. Her name is going to take some explaining. Bear with me.

Remember Thunderbirds? Of course you do and of course you’ll know who Lady Penelope is.

Lady Penelope
look at her hands!

Oh, but she was elegant, wasn’t she?

Not a hair out place.

Makeup perfect.

But hands as wooden as they could be. She might have that left hand on the door handle, but I can tell just by looking there was no way she was ever going to open it.

Now have a look at my left hand.

Lady Penelope hand
see the difference?

My left hand can’t open doors, either.

In fact, my left hand can’t do very much at all.

Lady Penelope Strongbow was conceived on December 14th 2013 when a car reversed into me and knocked me down. She was born six weeks later when the cast came off my broken wrist and arm and I learned I had developed a condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome.

I knew before the cast was removed that something was very wrong. My fingers were twisted and swollen and the pain in my arm was excruciating.

From time to time and without warning I get spasms that make me shudder. It feels as if I’ve been shot by an arrow. Himself recalled the Strongbow  cider advert with arrows landing with a thwack.

Lady Penelope Strongbow
Ouch!

Here in France, the condition is still called algodystrophie. It has other names too, but no matter what you choose to call it, it ranks among the most painful conditions a person can suffer.

I’d never heard of it. I had no idea how many people suffer with it and, once I began to research, I realised how little coverage CRPS is given.

I’ve seen a bunch of specialists and not one of them can give me a definite prognosis. The latest one has, at least, been more open. He took my good hand and looked me in the eye.

‘I’m the doctor,’ he said, ‘and I don’t know how this is going to go. We have a lot of work to do.’

I’m in this for the long haul. Dr Bruno is the first one to use years rather than months in his estimate for improvement of mobility in my hand, wrist and arm.

We have a lot of work to do?

It sounds like a lot of painful physiotherapy and other tortures.

It’s time to call in International Rescue.

Lady Penelope is on a mission.