The strange pain that can overcome kids, especially high-achieving teenage girls
Angie Friesen didn’t think much of it when her sixth-grade daughter, Annelise, told her she’d hit her elbow on a desk at school.
It wasn’t until about a week later, when Annelise complained of pain from her elbow down to her hand, that the mother of four took her daughter to the family doctor for an X-ray.
Nothing was broken.
The pain continued . Within a few months, it had spread to Annelise’s shoulder blade. Another X-ray and a nerve study revealed no damage.
Finally, a pediatrician gave a diagnosis.
“I hate to even say the word,” Friesen remembers the doctor saying. He suspected her daughter had a condition called CRPS , or complex regional pain syndrome . In adults, the condition can be devastating, with burning pain that spreads, discoloration of a limb and the loss of function.
Friesen’s pediatrician apparently didn ’t know it at the time, but children with CRPS often respond well to...