Pain Isn't Alway Torcher

• Sarah Cosgriff, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2018

Do you know that feeling when you know something is wrong but you do not have any idea how to fix it or how to make it better? Well that is what my parents had to go through in year 2014, I was in “pain” from what is known as CRPS, chronical regional pain syndrome. It all started when I had a too higher of a goal for myself and I didn’t know how to reach it, this pressure on myself is what started CRPS. It is a part mental, part physical/internal problem, in the nerves and brain, their connection.
Most statistics show only females that are the eldest child, that have very high expectations of themselves and are prepubescent have CRPS, that is what makes it so unknown, so interesting and so rare, only 1 in 100,000 people or in most cases children, get it . One of the reasons it was so traumatising for my parents was because it took forever to figure out what was wrong, I was in so much pain, but no one knew why, many scans that were attempted didn’t show any signs of physical damage. At that stage a doctor finally figured it out, but unfortunately one of the two medicines I received had a bad effect of my body. I did not know what I was doing and was saying crazy unexplained things like wanting to kill myself and trying to run away from home, and was being violent without knowing or remembering what I did and why.
I was taken off this medicine and I slowly started to improve. It took a physiotherapist and a phycologist for me to slowly start to improve. Now my only lasting symptoms of CRPS is a low pain threshold meaning my pain it worse that anyone else’s. when I try to explain what this is no one seems to understand me or why I reacted so bad to a little stub to my toe. It makes no sense because it is very complex. Your nerve and your brain connect and send messages to each other to tell you are hurting, but me on the other hand get told an over dramatic message like I think I could burn to death or just it hurts to much to stand.
Now I ask you, what is pain does anyone in this planet even know? Pain is different in anyone’s case, and no one should be judged because of that. I still go to my day to day life but doesn’t mean it still isn’t there.
With the help of my family, and everyone else, I left for London were I experience many amazing things, like seeing Big Ben and traveling on an underwater train to Paris and go on the Eiffel tower, my mindset changed and I set smaller goals for myself. You can’t choose whether you get CRPS, it is effectively your body saying do to things at once.
I guess the moral of the story is to love life as it goes and live one day at a time. Set small and achievable goals for yourself and Always be happy because after awhile your brain could explode. Be yourself and have fun.