One of my favorite things in life is discovering new things about myself; It’s as if you’ve found a little piece to a puzzle… and it’s incredibly fucking gratifying. Sometimes you look for the puzzle pieces, but other times, they just happen to come into your mind because circumstances have forced you to think about things differently. Well, this is exactly what happened to me the other day while watching trash tv.

And before I tell you what show I was watching and you begin to judge me and my addiction to mindless drama, please know that I also enjoy intelligent shows. I love tv and will watch everything from Real Housewives to The Newsroom. I admit when shows are awful and staged, but I’m only human and find it incredibly addicting. Anyway, I was watching ‘Dance Moms’ on Lifetime and found out something that led me to, well, writing this article I suppose. One of the girls on this show revealed she had a neurological disorder, RND (reflex neurovascular dystrophy), and as her mother described her pain and symptoms, it started to sound nearly identical to my neurological disorder, RSD (reflex sympathetic dystrophy). The only differences were that all the people with RND were children, while those with RSD were old (I was told I was very young to be diagnosed with such a disease). Along with that, a high percentage of children with RND were high achievers, or “perfectionists”. That last bit of news was shocking to me, mainly due to the fact that no one really made that connection with RSD, until the two disorders started being compared.

As I began looking into the connection between the two, people have now started thinking that these are the exact same disorder, only pediatricians have coined another term for children who seemingly have RSD, which is RND. So, RSD or RND, they both are the same. After realizing this, it seemed to me that I should start looking into RND to gain more information on what I believe I have (because like I said, they seem like one in the same). But now, I can’t help but feel that somehow I created this disorder and inflicted it upon myself. Many people believe that it’s as much psychological as it is real. Clearly, the pain I feel, the swelling and discoloring that can occur, those ARE real; but what if the onset of RSD was actually a consequence of something internally that I couldn’t handle? What if I never felt capable of succeeding 100% and in turn created something that I could use as a crutch, my psychological mind forced to not feel like it couldn’t achieve something because I wasn’t good enough, but because I couldn’t? Or what if I have some mismatched wires that led me to believe I was trying to fulfill perfection, but then turned into this, RSD?

Obviously, my discovery isn’t really a puzzle piece that fits perfectly…yet, but, I’ve found the piece. I haven’t yet fit it into my puzzle, but it’s opened my mind up to trying to make sense of something that seemingly came from nowhere.