Helping Kristen cope with chronic pain
As a young high school student, Kristen had an active life and a bright future ahead of her. The intelligent and athletic teen dreamed of going to college on the East Coast.
But at age 15, while playing soccer, Kristen suffered an injury to her right foot and ankle that left her in such intense, debilitating pain, she could no longer attend school. She was unable to walk or have anything—including water—touch her foot. Even a change of temperature, like a cold Chicago winter, would increase the agony.
“She was out of school an entire 18 months. It was a horrendous experience,” says Kristen's mother, Norma. “When your child is going through something like that, everything comes to a halt. The only thing you can really think about is to get back to a normal life.”
A four-year college away from the Chicago area seemed unfathomable at that point. Instead, her mother could only hope that Kristen had the strength to attend part-time classes while living at home.
A strong source of support throughout the family's ordeal, and the eventual source of relief for Kristen, was the Chronic Pain Treatment Program at Children's Memorial Hospital. It is one of the only chronic pain clinics in North America that is devoted specifically to treatment of pain in children and adolescents. There, medical staff worked diligently, sometimes at all hours of the night, to help Kristen cope with her ongoing pain and the devastating ways it had changed her life.
“I probably called 300 times over that year and a half,” Morris recalls. “We'd go in the middle of the night. They were always supportive and kept trying to find something to help.”