Patient & Family Testimonials
On January 23, 2007 our son Nathan had the Hepatitis-A vaccination. He was twelve years old at the time. About 30 minutes after Nathan received the Hepatitis-A shot he began experiencing a strange kind of burning pain in his arm. The next day the burning pain had spread to both arms. It was so severe that he would scream if you touched him. Three weeks later it spread to his legs.
Two months after the shot Nathan was unable to walk or write and was in constant screaming pain. No doctor or hospital in Houston seemed to have any idea what was wrong with Nathan. Consequently we ended up taking him to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. It took about a month for us to get him into Mayo. And by the time we arrived he had already started getting better on his own.
After running every test imaginable, there was still no diagnosis. But after 3 weeks of intense and painful physical therapy, Nathan seemed to have recovered. And we were more than happy to put this nightmare behind us.
Nathan is a very bright student. He is a self motivated high achiever with a thirst for knowledge and a kind heart. When Nathan started back to school in August, he picked right up right where he left off. He also got back into his Boy Scott Troop and he rejoined the school orchestra where he was fulfilling a dream he had of learning to play the violin. And that is how round 2 started.
In early October, for no apparent reason, Nathan was practicing his violin one afternoon when the mysterious burning pain reappeared. The pain started in his left arm where he got the shot. Then it mirrored in his right arm. Three days later the pain mirrored again in his legs. It was happening all over again.
This time the pain was far more intense and it moved much faster. And after another round of doctors and hospitals and even another trip to the Mayo Clinic, we still had no answers. Even though we are nice people, it just seemed like no one in the medical community wanted anything to do with us. Cruelty, busy schedules, and indifference to a suffering child were the answer we received. If a blood test didn’t show anything, then there could not possibly be anything wrong.
Every evening Nathan would lie on the couch and cry because he was in so much pain. My wife sat beside him and cried because we didn’t know what to do. He could not even stand to have a blanket touching him.
And after having spent countless hours on the internet researching Nathan’s condition, I decided to try a new strategy. I started posting Nathan’s symptoms on medical neurology forums. Most of my posts went un-answered. But one evening we got a reply from a woman named Diane who said it sounded to her like Nathan had RSDS (Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome) and we should go see Dr. Donald Rhodes in Corpus Christi. She said that he is a genius.
We researched RSDS on the internet and Nathan certainly had some of the symptoms, but not all of them. I answered the post and thanked Diane for responding, but I told her I didn’t think that Nathan had RSDS because he did not have all of the symptoms. But Diane was adamant. She replied back and said it was RSDS because not all of the symptoms present themselves initially.
From Houston, Corpus Christi is much closer than Minnesota, so we called Dr. Rhodes’ office. They told us that they would see him as soon as we could there. This was much different from what we were hearing from other doctors. Even with begging and pleading, most doctors refused to see us for several months. Dr. Rhodes told us later that if a child is in pain, they see them immediately. Children come first.
During our first visit to Dr. Rhodes, Nathan was finally diagnosed. A simple x-ray of Nathan’s legs and feet revealed something that tens of thousands of dollars worth of sophisticated tests using the best science known to man failed to catch. Nathan had major bone loss in his leg bones and cysts on his feet. The bone loss is caused by a lack of oxygen and it is the tell-tale sign. Nathan had RSDS.
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