The story of Annie
Life isn’t always a bowl of cherries. After a wrist fracture, I started suffering unbearable pain. After 3 weeks in a cast, my doctor wrote CRPS on the back of a visitors card telling me not to look it up on Google as it would scare me and it was so rare it probably wasn’t that. 9 weeks later after removing the cast and not being able to undergo physio, my journey to being diagnosed took 2 years. Being called crazy was the least of my worries, my arm turned a funky shade of blue and I finally was diagnosed. It was a blow…incurable. What do you mean? My life would be this suffering? The neurological lapses? I’m a high performance high school teacher, my students need me, my boys need me, my family needs me.
At that moment in time one of my former student confided in me that she was also diagnosed with the same condition.
I realized that now I had a goal, I needed to get better, I needed to be strong, resilient and a warrior. I have had ups and downs in the last 6 years since that broken wrist and my grieving process isn’t quite done, I miss HER, the one I was before all this but I am thankful because I have learned to take care of myself, to nurture myself, of living my best life and making sure every day COUNTS.
I want to educate so that I can help young people who suffer from this condition. They need services, the need understanding but most of all they need to be HEARD.