Hello everyone. My name is Kristi Oen and I am a CRPS Conqueror.

Pain is a four-letter word, but so is hope.

I want to share my journey with you.  To give you that hope.  And to also let you know that you are not alone. You are not crazy. This is not in your head. And most importantly you can do this. You can survive it, you can conquer it, and you can have a life again. You can be you again.

I was 10 years old when an amusement ride and I fell into the concrete below.  That started my lifetime of pain, my CRPS, even though I wasn't diagnosed until 25 years later.  No one, even the best doctors in the Chicagoland area, understood what was happening and why I had the intense burning, stabbing pains, crazy difference in body temperature, extreme sensitivity, you know what I’m talking about.  The worst part was being told that the pain and sensations were in my head and honestly I am still told that today by some in the medical field.    

So just to reiterate and reassure you, there is something going on physically in the body. But there's also hope, there's hope for conquering it.

At age 11 feeling alone and hopeless I thought about checking myself out of this world.  I decided not to, I made a pact with God. I decided I'm going to get through this. I can handle this. I can figure out something. So the next years of my life were really just figuring out coping mechanisms.

I remember in high school I was playing volleyball and I fractured my ankle. It was visibly hard for me to walk. And suddenly people, including my parents, were adamant that I go to the doctor. But the pain of my fractured ankle was nothing, not even close to my everyday pain in that leg. So I didn't understand. I couldn't comprehend how people cared now when they seemingly didn't care before.

Truly it's just people didn't understand. That's why education and awareness are so important when it comes to CRPS. And that's why I'm making it part of my journey to actually talk about this. It's time to build awareness, time to help other people, time to get a plan out there so people can live their lives again and be understood. That's a huge part of our journey; to be understood.

I kept managing in my life until I had a C-section.  That surgery caused the CRPS to go full body and shut down my thyroid, adrenals and basically messed up my whole body – not to mention the pain – I thought I was used to pain but this was insane! 

It still took a couple of years for me to actually get diagnosed with CRPS.  I thought finally I will get the help I need.  But I spent many years and over $250,000 with doctors trying everything under the sun, all different kinds of medications and procedures and therapies. And for me the more I did, the worse I got.

So with the doctors’ help, I ended up being permanently disabled; in a wheelchair, bedridden, freezing all the time, extremely sensitive - couldn't handle any sounds or sunlight or be touched.  Wearing clothes was unbearable. I couldn’t even read across a page.  I was in a four-year flare where I just want to die every second of every day and trying to figure out a way out of it.  Pretty much I'd given up.

The last thing the doctors wanted to do in Chicago was put me in a seven-day ketamine coma.  That was where I drew the line.  They said I could try moving south. So I moved to Florida. My mom came down to take care of me because I literally couldn't get out of bed or do things for myself.

One day my mother said, Kristi, I want you to do one thing for me. She said, I want you to look in the mirror and say, I am getting healthier. And I thought about it for a second and then I decided, you know what, mom, I can do that. So I started to do it. And you know what? I took my power back.  I started to feel a little better, more in control.  I started having HOPE.  With that hope, I started to attract the things in my life that I needed. I started to meditate. I brought in this medical device that absolutely saved my life. 

Within three weeks I was walking again. Within two months I was off my thousand dollars a month of 30 different medications; anxiety, pain, thyroid, adrenals, etc., and off my thousand dollars a month of therapies; acupuncture, myofascial release, etc.   All those things that were just kind of working anyway; they could only taking the edge off and now I didn't need them anymore.  I was getting my life back. I started to live again.

Fast forward to now. It's been 3 years. I'm living an absolutely beautiful life. It's not a perfect life, but a beautiful life. I do have to modify my life. I still have CRPS, a medical condition that is in the background that I need to respect and be aware of.   I use my medical device and meditate daily while thinking positive thoughts.  I'm not pushing hard and overdoing it.   I am focusing on the positive, finding the beautiful things in my life. I am not in a wheelchair. I am not bedridden. I am doing this, I am living again.

I am a CRPS conqueror. And you can be too, just remember to hang on to that hope.