It was a long night of travel with no sleep. Flew SFO to Charlotte, 1.5 hour layover, then Charlotte to Fort Myers. Picked up the rental car then headed straight to Bonita Springs to the Calmare Pain Therapy place. We filled out paperwork, watched a video on Scrambler Therapy, and then met with Dr D’Amato who examined Genevieve. It ended up being a 3.5 hour appointment. Genevieve was hooked up to the Calmare machine for 50 minutes. She experienced a tiny bit of pain relief, but that went away shortly after being disconnected from the machine. Dr D’Amato has treated a lot of CRPS patients. He feels her response to the treatment was positive and thinks she will keep responding to it. We are cautiously hopeful. The treatment itself isn’t painful (he hooked it up to me too so that I could see what it felt like). It’s tingly and kind of pins and needles like. Genevieve experienced some pretty intense itching with it which he said some patients do. I don’t understand the science behind it enough to explain how it works, but it is interesting when he explains the different nerve receptors and how they respond. We go back tomorrow at 1:00(EST) for another hour of treatment. I will also be looking for a PT place, or at least a warm therapy pool to do in the afternoons.
After the treatment we drove to the Ronald McDonald House in Fort Myers where we are staying. The people here couldn’t be nicer and we feel beyond spoiled. Apparently some big designers from New York remodeled it a few years ago and didn’t hold back. It’s luxurious and stocked with everything we could need.
We tried to push through and not sleep until tonight but we couldn’t make it! We slept from about 6-9pm and just woke up and ate dinner (prepared by volunteers).
Genevieve is experiencing elevated levels of pain tonight. Dr D’Amato said this would probably happen. It’s not excruciating but more than usual when at rest.
It feels good to be here, and I am just holding on to HOPE.
{Sorry for the sideways pic and possibly bad formatting. I just discovered that I left my laptop at security in SFO (because of course I did) and I’m doing this from my phone.}
