My disability
isn’t something I volunteer to talk about, although I will talk about it when I
have too. But, talking about it helps me realize how strong I truly am. Two
years ago I faced one of the worst things a 15 year old girl could imagine.
During cheerleading practice I was tumbling, and unfortunately my hand slipped,
and so did I. Three days later I went to the doctors and got x-rays on my back
but, nothing severe showed. I was okay with the back pain, because it didn’t really
affect me every day. Then, a month later I woke up and couldn’t get out of bed.
I couldn’t even being to describe the sharp shooting pain in my back, and my
entire left leg was numb. I spent a week in the hospital, had MRI after MRI and
still, nothing too alarming ever showed up. Finally I got a nerve test and I got
some answers, but not anything I really wanted to hear. I got diagnosed with
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, which is very hard for me to explain, but a
shorter version is chronic pain due to dysfunction of the central nervous
system, so I’m going to post a link of the actual definition. But getting
diagnosed with that pain syndrome, meant that I could be on crutches for a very
long time, or I could be up and walking again in a couple days. I got hit with
the being on crutches for a while, and was out of school for 3 months. When I started
getting stronger, my physical therapist finally let me try the walking bars
with the harness, and stumble after stumble; I was finally walking without the
crutches. It took a lot longer for me to get the feeling back in my leg than we
thought it would, so I was out of school for a longer period of time. Once I was
cleared by my newest and most frequent visited doctor, my pain management
doctor I was able to go back to school. By then, I had been so far behind, but I
wasn’t letting this awful setback completely ruin my life. I worked three times
harder on my makeup work, and by the end of the year I actually was on the
honor roll with honors, and received nothing lower than an 85. Looking back I realized
that even though I missed so much school, I set my mind to make all that work
up and, I was able to do that and then some. It taught me to never let my
disability get the best of me. CRPS is a pain syndrome that once you’re
diagnosed with it, you will suffer from it for the rest of your life. It does
affect my learning, and it does affect my life everyday but it’s something that
I will never let fully ruin me. Even if I have to work twice as hard as some
people in college, I will never give up on myself.
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