KAYLA HANSEN: When I got my hand smashed, I just thought that I broke my hand.
Had no idea that it would change the rest of my life.
KAYLA HANSEN: I suffer from a condition known as CRPS which stands for complex regional pain syndrome.
COMM: 29-year-old Kayla’s rare condition is so painful that it has been nicknamed ‘the suicide disease’.
KAYLA HANSEN: CRPS is a condition where your nervous system attacks your entire body.
So some people, it will contain itself in one arm or one foot, one leg. In my case, I have a full body from head to
toe. So literally my nervous system is attacking every part of my body. It is rated the highest pain disease there
is in the world. CRPS outranks any amputations; it outranks natural childbirth, any broken bones, more
painful than cancer. There’s four stages and I am at stage four.
COMM: Most patients with CRPS experience severe pain, but one of Kayla’s symptoms is much more rare.
KAYLA HANSEN: I get burns all over my scalp, clearly you can see the burns all over my arms up to
my shoulders. This one right here would be an example of one that’s been on my body for about two weeks.
I am actually being burned from the inside–out. I have to use special creams. One of them that works the best is
Biafine which, it’s used actually to treat cancer patients and the radiation burns because those are the only other
types of burns that come from the inside-out. Only a very small percentage of CRPS patients actually suffer from
the physical burns.
COMM: It took a simple accident at work which bought on Kayla’s CRPS.
JACLYN HANSEN: When she called me that night that her hand was smashed at work she sent me a picture
and I thought, okay you, the worst scenario is you broke it and I wish that would have been the case,
but it just turned into a nightmare from that day on.
KAYLA HANSEN: When I first got diagnosed, I was kind of in shock at first. I didn’t really put two and two
together how serious it was. I didn’t realise at the time that it would completely stop me in my tracks, I mean it
flipped my whole world upside down. I went from managing a fine-dining Italian restaurant and working
anywhere from 60-80 hours a week to now I can barely get out of bed.
JACLYN HANSEN: It’s kind of pain is, I mean you wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Numerous times I have just,
you know, I wish it could have been me, but it isn’t.
KAYLA HANSEN: On a scale of 1-10 my CRPS pain most days is a 10. That’s with my medicine. I might get lucky
some days and it goes down to a nine or nine and a half, but it never goes below that.
KAYLA HANSEN: This is about a year’s worth of empty prescription bottles. I went from before I had CRPS to
I mean, barely even taking an aspirin to being bombarded with all this medication. I’ve gone on quite a
few treatments since getting CRPS. None of them ever worked for me. About a year, year and two months of
having this disease, I finally came to the acceptance point of it. So now I am still hoping for a cure, but at the
same time I realized that this is a disease that I am going to have for the rest of my life.
COMM: Treatment of CRPS usually focuses on pain management. But a Michigan-based Chiropractor
believes that by realigning Kayla’s body, her symptoms might reduce.
So she has travelled 3000 kilometres to see him.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: So, how are you today?
KAYLA HANSEN: I am doing okay. We have had a busy day so far.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: Okay! Do you get fatigued easily?
KAYLA HANSEN: Yes! I get tired very easily but I mean whatever I have to do I can you know,
I can fight my way through it.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: Was that surprise or pain? KAYLA HANSEN: Oh! Pain.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: Okay! Let me brace your head while you sit up. How are you feeling right now?
KAYLA HANSEN: Sore. DR. MICHAEL BURCON: What’s the first thing that you
feel when you are going to have an episode of getting more sores? Is it, it starts burning down deep?
KAYLA HANSEN: From head to toe I feel like someone has dumped gasoline on me, lit me on fire and put me in
a trash compactor but my scalp, my face and my arms, all the way up to my shoulders.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: There is this kink at the very top between the neck and the head that’s causing all of these
problems with her sympathetic nervous system. Adjusting the top two bones in your neck will help fix the
head tilt and working on your low neck, moving those bones forward will allow your head to fall back over your
body and take a lot of pressure off of your spinal cord.
Has any doctor ever given you an explanation of why this happened? Did it make any sense to you?
KAYLA HANSEN: Just basically they described it as my nervous system is attacking every part of my body.
DR. MICHAEL BURCON: We are increasing the space between the skull and the top of the neck to allow the
cerebral spinal fluid to come out and the blood to go up and her head will come back where it belongs and things
will balance out. And it’s a problem in her brainstem, that’s where the temperature of your body is controlled.
The doctors, they are putting nerve blocks at the top of her arm to stop pain from going down her arm.
But the problem is not in her arm. It’s in her neck and her brain. So she can start healing herself once this
interference is gone, and things should get back to normal. She can get off the steroids so she can lose the
weight that she gained. So she can get back in shape and she can go back to work like she wants to.
KAYLA HANSEN: For the first year that I had this diagnosis, I definitely was not positive at all.
I finally realised you know, I have this disease. I can’t work. I need to focus my energy on something.
So I became my own advocate. I started researching numerous different treatments on finding different
doctors across the country to go to, didn’t just listen to my pain management doctors, took things into my own
hands. I’ve got some information on the place in Florida that’s doing stem cell therapy. You have to go through a
full blood transfusion so they can clean out all your blood. I can’t give up hope, I have to keep fighting
because I am not even 30 years old yet and I refuse to just give up my life. I want to work again, have a family,
do all the things that everybody my age should be able to do. My hopes for the future are that I can continue
being an advocate for this disease and help spread as much awareness as possible as well as hopefully
keep pushing until I find the treatment that is going to work for me.