Early on in PT, an event occurred that acted as an attitudinal "wake-up call" for me. It was my fourth day and my foot was extremely painful and throbbing horribly. After five minutes of exercise, I told Sherri that I was in terrible pain and could not do the exercises that day. I will never forget what happened next. Sherri looked at me and said, "If I EVER hear you say the 'P' word in here again, you are never coming back! We measure progress here NOT by your pain level, but by the EXERCISES you accomplish!" Shocked by this statement, I went home distressed. Not measure progress by pain relief? This could not be! Does this mean I have to live with this disabling pain forever? I was under the impression that the program was designed to help people get better, not simply learn to live with the pain! I thought hard about this and then realized that focusing on my pain level and discomfort was not productive. Sherri was right: I needed to focus on the positive, which was my increasing function. I recall Dr. Galer once saying that the only way to beat RSD is to physically work through the excruciating pain, but in very small steps, such as with the quota system.

So, increasing function became my focus. I still had periodic flare-ups, but I kept doing the daily exercises anyway. Yet, I found it impossible to ignore the pain, and it continued to rule my world - progress would come as one step forward, two steps back, followed by a little progress, then another setback. The pain had not noticeably improved, but after a few months I was able to do more physically.