Magic Valley Family Hopes to Spread Awareness of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
A family in the Magic Valley is hoping to spread awareness of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS). While they're always trying to spread the word, they're trying to push expanding people's knowledge of CRPS especially during November, which is the official month for CRPS awareness.
According to rsdhope.org, November became the official month to spread awareness about CRPS nearly 20 years ago. For people with CRPS, what they experience is a chronic illness that lasts six months or even their whole lifetime.
The illness usually involves a pain of some sort, ranging from the feeling of 'pins and needles', to a 'burning sensation'. It also comes with symptoms like stiff joints from time to time, as well as abnormal sweating, changes in skin texture, hair growth changes, and abnormal movement in limbs.
Unfortunately, while some people might only have mild symptoms that go away, there are many people out there in the world that will experience symptoms for their whole life.
For people with CRPS, they're usually diagnosed with the illness after having some other incident or trauma. In only 10% of the cases do people with CRPS not have some sort of previous incident or trauma that leads to getting the illness. Currently, in 2019, there is still no exact way to diagnose someone with CRPS. Instead, it's often determined someone has CRPS after analyzing their medical history.
Throughout this month we'll be looking at different aspects of Cadee, a local teen with CRPS' life. It's been a journey for her since she was diagnosed and nothing is stopping her. Be sure to tune in for weekly installments of our series.