To "The Blanket Lady"

You said it best when you said we met when we needed each other most.

I don't know what I've brought to your life, but I hope it's something positive......I hope it's something good.

You have brought your miracle to my life--your soft, flannel blankets, and your warm, friendly charm....

Linda, you were right: you said we met when one needed the other.

I met you, as you said, driving for CCS,

You are forever hurrying about

even in your “golden years,” trying to help,

as many people as you can..

You are forever hurrying about, working so hard,

giving so much of yourself.

My friend Linda and “her special blankets.” 

Why, one would ask, are such normal seeming blankets, 

so very special, so important...

short of them being so lovingly hand-stitched? 

I have to tell you a little about me, and about RSD for you to understand. 

I live in a whole new world.....

I now have the sleeping schedule of a cat, the hearing of a dog~

a screaching child in a store can send my pain into fever pitch....

but many other things can as well. 

A normal bedsheet, for example,

and when her blankets,

so soft, so finally comfortable on my

now hypersensitive skin...

calming, soothing, and so lovingly hand stitched....

A lifesaver for me!!!! 

Medically, RSD is an “odd duck” even amongst neurologists who one would think could treat this odd disorder.

But my right leg and left foot have the sensitivity that would take your breath away if you felt the pain; the pain can reach a fever pitch in no time flat. My primary symptom is a burning pain that feels like acid experiments on human skin, you are the guinea pig. My sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system are at war, and are truly causing pain: causing the nerves to fire repeatedly and over and over, and to the point where most would screaming in tears, walk away, and say they've had enough......but I have no choice, and I can't walk away and say I've had enough.....

That is the skin sensitivity

The allodynia, or defined as what causes pain that would not normally,

That would just take the skin in the above situation,

and rub it with sandpaper.

But Linda's blankets, her “magic blankets” are something I can tolerate on my skin, and now I have (almost) three.

And it is the love with which they are made that means so much.

But really that the material, so soft, so soft on my skin doesn't send the pain to fever pitch like it normally would.

But the love in her heart...

the love that goes into her home-sewn blankets...

and she loves that someone finds such help

with her normally home-sewn blankets...

ones that go to church bazaars....

she wasn't prepared for how her blankets

would help someone with RSD...

Loving the feel, I got one of her blankets;

and found how when I put it against my skin—

for the first time,

I had something to protect me and keep me warm,

that did not cause me breath-taking pain.

And to someone with RSD, that is a gift above all else.

And Linda goes about, hurrying around, driving her clients from CCS, that she is going from one place to another; and she wants to make sure that her clients get the care they need. She loves so many, she spreads the love in her heart, and she has a big heart because she just can't stop spreading her love from morning to night....