Staying Active is Key when Living with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

For teenager Cadee Kulm, she never expected one accident would impact her later on in life. Now she's living with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).

While speaking with us about CRPS, it's clear that the diagnosis has changed her daily routine. Since it's not something all doctors know about, there isn't just one simple way to treat it.

Cadee says for her it means having some treatments locally and some treatments also in Utah. She also works with pain management doctors.

Surprisingly, while some think to stay off of an injured limb can help it, for Cadee it's actually better if she uses the limb.

"You want to keep moving. A lot of people say 'Oh something hurts.' Then they usually stop and rest. That actually makes this worse," Cadee's mom Christie said. "You want to keep moving that limb to keep it in motion and stuff. Otherwise, it can actually become more painful."

Physical therapy is a lot of what she does to keep her on track. We do some desensitization at home. we're still working with medications to help lessen the pain. it's probably never going to go away and there's a small possibility of going into remission.

A lot of it is learning to deal with CRPS on a daily basis. For Cadee that means taking online classes instead of being in a physical classroom. It also means taking fewer classes at a time because she'd rather do well in all her classes instead of mediocre when taking too many.

Aside from a long-term goal of working in the medical field, Cadee says she's been working up towards a short-term goal in her treatments. She plans to go snowboarding this year. While there could be ramifications because of other diagnoses, Cadee said she will go, even if she cries the whole way home.

"Sometimes you have to when you're dealing with stuff like this because you miss so much. Sometimes you just gotta give to get a little," Cadee said.