Kathryn's Pages

I’m not a fan of talking about my pain or what I experience on a daily basis so don’t expect to read TOO much about that throughout this section. I’m a normal teenage girl in that I could spend a whole day in bed watching any movies based off of a Nicholas Sparks novel. BUT, even though I do enjoy a good chick-flick, the day in bed would not be a result of the teen-age lazies or a boyfriend break-up. It is because I can’t force my legs to get me out of bed.

Anyone with chronic pain will tell you that pain is something that takes over your world, as it has definitely tried to do to mine. However, early on in this experience I found that distraction helped me to ignore the pain’s growing hold over my body and mind. So because of the need for distraction, school and socializing have always been something I wanted to do. However, like many kids with CRPS, I had to have home-bound instruction at times and I hated it. I had great teachers and I loved them, but I need to be at school, even when it’s very hard to be up and moving.

Music has had an amazing influence on my life and has also played the role of distractor from pain. I have been playing guitar for 9 years and have been studying classical guitar for 5 years, and I think that the actual language of music will always amaze me and make perfect sense. My favorite bands are Fleet Foxes, Grizzly Bear and Radiohead. Certain intervals and genres of music emote different chemical reactions in our brains and cause us to feel certain ways, and I believe EVERYONE should find the sound that causes a chemical reaction they like the most, aka (what I call) “finding your groove”. I use “my groove” to help me feel better on a daily basis. And most importantly the person that has inspired me the most in music and has definitely helped me realize the healing powers of music is my big brother Joe. He’s my best friend in the entire world and without him, his literacy in music, and his loving, protective, and amazing personality. He’s the one person that I barely ever disagree with and I am more than lucky to have him as my mentor, and more importantly as my big brother.

I’d also like to give a quick shout out to the friend that has changed his life and daily routine to help me through everything I’ve been going through in the past few years and has been as much of a dependable distraction as a 17 year old boy could be 🙂 Derryk, you have been a Godsend to my family and especially me.. I love having you as my daily distraction and I hope that after this trip, you’ll be able to be less of a distraction from my pain and more of my bestfriend that I can have fun with, please always be my best friend even though we argue about the silliest things. My family and (especially) I, love you like you are our family, heck we already consider you a part of the family. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for my family and for me.

Also, I want to thank everyone that has helped me and my family in the past few years and especially everyone who is visiting this site, leaving extremely supportive comments and praying for me. It is overwhelming to see how many people truly do care about me and my family and how many of you are thinking about me. However, part of the reason I wanted to share my story is to raise awareness of this awful disorder. So many physicians have NO idea what this is and I want to put an end to that. I want people to know what this is and look for symptoms, because not getting treated right away can turn into years and years of pain that I would not/could not wish upon anyone else. So yes, thank you so much for thinking about me and getting to know my story, but use my story to educate yourself and others. I am hoping to do the same by 1.Sharing my story and 2. Going to MCV to (hopefully) become a pain management specialist, because no matter what type of disease, how it happened or the patient themselves, I know how pain can effect your family, your work/school, and especially yourself and psyche.