JUST going out is a painstaking - and painful - experience for Donna Butler. She lives in a first floor flat, but the block has no lift, making the journey downstairs on two crutches a risky exercise.

But once she has reached the lobby and negotiated two lots of doors, freedom now beckons, thanks to her new electric power chair.

Life and Soul first featured Donna last August. The 34-year-old former care worker suffers from a condition called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy - RSD for short - which causes her constant pain.

The disabling disease can start from something as simple as a sprained ankle, but ends up affecting nerves, skin, muscles, blood vessels and bones. The main symptom is a burning, intense pain out of all proportion to the original injury.

If diagnosed and treated promptly, RSD - sometimes known as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome - can be reversed. Unfortunately it remains little known among doctors and other health professionals, even though it is thought to follow five per cent of all injuries.

When we first met Donna, she and her friend Lyn Place were organising a sponsored walk on the seafront to raise funds for an electric wheelchair and set up Dorset's first ever support group for RSD sufferers.

The seven-mile walk took place in September, and Donna managed to join the small group of walkers on her crutches for the last half-mile. "I fell over twice, but I wouldn't give up. I just kept going," she recalled.

Lyn said: "It was so emotional. At the end, she was hunched over in so much pain it was awful. I walked alongside her, helping to prop her up."

The pair had been expecting to raise £500 at the most, so were delighted when donations topped £1,000. But when they went to the shops to look for a secondhand chair, they found the money would not go far.

"The shops were extremely expensive. I thought we were going to have to do some more fund-raising," said Donna.

Then her mother met Joan Pinder through Broom Hill Methodist Church in Wimborne. Through her Donna obtained a wheelchair from John Loader of Wimborne RAF Association for the cost of new parts - less than £300.

"I feel like I've got my legs back. I've got my freedom back," she enthused. "I can go where I want, when I want and I haven't got to rely on other people to take me.

"It's fantastic.

"Now I go out most days, and if I do have the odd day in, that's my choice. I go through the gardens and along the seafront, I go to Westbourne and back - it's changed my head completely.

"Last year I was almost at the end of my tether. I didn't see any future, I didn't see a life at all. I used to get extremely fed up, depressed and angry because I was so frustrated. A lot of that has gone and I'm in a better frame of mind."

Not only that, the publicity from the original Daily Echo feature put several other RSD sufferers in touch with Donna, who has been working on setting up the first-ever Dorset support group.

She and Lyn have set up a website - www.rsdbournemouth.co.uk - which is going live on Monday and are looking for a venue to hold meetings. One of Donna's main aims is to raise awareness of RSD among the general public.

"It does get very tiring having to keep explaining. I want people to know what it is," she said. "When I'm on crutches, I get people coming up saying: 'What have you done, broken your leg?

"When I'm in the wheelchair it's almost a sympathy thing, 'poor young girl in a wheelchair at her age'. The most irritating thing is that because I'm in wheelchair, they assume I'm deaf."

Donna fears her RSD is getting worse. "I get good days and bad days. Before I wouldn't cope with it that well. To me, the sea represents freedom and to be able to get down there and look at the waves makes a huge difference."