Amanda Siebe was an ordinary, healthy young woman, who lived an active and outdoorsy lifestyle. Growing up with two older brothers, she was never short of her fair share of bumps and bruises, as well as broken bones. None of this ever had an ill effect on her wellbeing, and so she became a young woman who enjoyed an adventurous lifestyle.
As a young adult she became a female firefighter, and in her spare time she liked to go camping, hiking, mountaineering and whitewater rafting, as well as leading girl scouts and boy scouts on outdoor adventures.
For this reason, it was a devastating blow to her wellness when she suffered from an accidental sprain to her ankle. Although it seemed like a simple sprain, the foot was badly swollen and the tendon was torn and painful. Despite this, her boss at the restaurant where she worked insisted that she continue to carry out her duties on crutches. Doctors told Amanda not to put her weight on the injured foot, but this proved impossible in the course of carrying out her duties, and she repeatedly fell in the slippy restaurant, causing further injury to the foot.
This caused a far more serious injury, which caused her to have to take months off work, where her foot refused to heal, and she, as the sole provider for her family, ended up losing her apartment and having to move back in with her parents.
The cause of all this turned out to be something called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) which, unlike arthritis, is a type of neuropathy. The nerves in the area affected by CRPS register every touch as pain, and so any sensation causes the sufferer agony.
There is no cure for CRPS, and Amanda now lives a full life with her son, husband and house full of pets, but suffers with pain on a daily basis.
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