No pain, no gain?
WINFIELD TWP — Krista Burdett sits at the kitchen table of her Cabot home, grabs a chocolate chip cookie from a platter and breaks it in half with her fingers.
She smiles when she talks about soccer and the way she plays the game.
“I will hit you,” she says. “I will mess your day up.”
Burdett, 17, is a senior forward for the Knoch girls soccer team who loves to score goals almost as much as she savors contact.
But her physical style as a 13-year-old threatened to end her soccer career and leave her with a lifetime of excruciating pain.
A run-of-the-mill hip injury cascaded into a condition called Reflex Neurovascular Dystrophy.
RND causes the brain to misinterpret pain signals. The cause is unknown, but it is often brought on by a traumatic injury or stress.
In Burdett's case, a torn labrum in her hip suffered during a Cup soccer practice in the summer before her eighth grade school year set off a chain reaction that caused her RND.
At the time, though, Burdett and her family had never heard of the syndrome.
Few doctors in the area had, either.
The first clue was the pain Burdett was feeling didn't correspond to the location of her hip injury.
It perplexed the doctor, Burdett and her parents, Patty and Larry, but they shrugged it off and pressed on with physical therapy.
She didn't improve.
“I said to myself about a million times, 'This isn't right,'” Krista said.
What followed was a medical mystery that took weeks to solve.
“What's happening to me?”Three months after the hip injury, Krista found herself in a hospital emergency room with debilitating pain on the surface of her thighs and below both knees.“It felt like pins and needles were being stuck into me and tingling,” Krista said. “It was all the time. I was thinking to myself, “What's going on? What's happening to me?”No one knew. Krista saw “more doctors than I can count.” All were befuddled.Krista underwent a battery of tests — blood work, urinalysis, MRIs of her hip, spine and brain, X-rays and even two lumbar punctures.Nothing.Nurses at Children's Hospital in Pittburgh even joked that she should see Dr. House, the fictional TV diagnostician famous for solving the most difficult medical puzzles.Meanwhile, the pain was marching down her shins and onto the tops of her feet.Patty Burdett had heard enough when it was suggested the pain was all in Krista's head.“We know her,” Patty said. “She played soccer with bruised ribs. She knows what pain is. I know it's not in her head.”The family was looking for an answer — any answer.Finally, they got one.
Krista's pain had traveled to her arms and fingers by December of 2008.On Dec. 10, Krista saw Rheumatologist Dr. Paul Rosen. It was an appointment that finally gave Krista and her family some hope.“He walks in and says, 'I think you have a condition called RND,'” Patty said. “It was like winning the lottery.”No one was happier than Krista, who finally had something to fight other than the pain.More than 80 percent of RND sufferers are female and it usually strikes between the ages of 12 and 16.“It doesn't show up on tests. Ever. Period,” Patty said, explaining why the diagnosis was so difficult and so long in coming.If not caught and treated early enough, the syndrome can be severely debilitating.The treatment is extreme, as Krista soon discovered.<B>“Beat it or repeat it”</B>In March of 2009, Krista was admitted to the Children's Institute in Pittsburgh, one of only four facilities in the country that have a treatment program for RND.The program consists of eight hours of intense physical therapy five days a week for up to a month. The goal is to train the brain to re-interpret the pain signals as well as relieve the pressure of blocked blood vessels of the skin, muscles and bones that is also associated with RND.The theory behind the technique is analogous to one walking through a wheat field. Walk on the stalks once, and they spring back up. Walk on them repeatedly and they stay flat.Repeated exercise keeps the nerves from “popping up” and misfiring.It's a grueling regime that also included yoga, biofeedback and aroma therapy to relieve stress that could make the syndrome worse.The program's motto was “beat it or repeat it.”Krista, though, relished the chance to get better.“Some people think it is like a boot camp,” Krista said. “I never really felt like I was being tortured, forced or anything. I just looked at it like this is what I have to do.“I actually loved it there,” she added. “I'm an active person, and I think that helped a lot. I think if I was a couch potato and played video games all day, I wouldn't have gotten through the program.”When her time at the Institute was up, she left relatively pain free.She still, however, has flare-ups that affect her today.“I'm 17. It hasn't gone away yet,” Krista said. “I may very well have this for the rest of my life.”With her RND under control, Krista faced still another challenge to get back on the soccer pitch.<B>“They carried me off the field”</B>Once Krista was able to manage the RND pain, she began feeling the ache of her original hip injury during her freshman season on the Knoch girls soccer team.By mid-September, the pain was so intense she had to quit.“It got to the point where my hip hurt so badly, I couldn't run,” Krista said. “I couldn't kick. That was it.”She tried to play through it, but during an early-season game she collapsed to the ground, unable to move.“They carried me off the field,” she said. “I played my hardest that last game. I couldn't do it any more.”To keep the RND at bay, Krista had to stay active. She and her mother often would take midnight strolls around their property. When hit with an attack, Krista would descend to the basement to use the treadmill or elliptical machine.The hip needed to be repaired, but the inactivity during recovery could kick the RND back into overdrive.It was a risky decision, but Krista opted for surgery.“It needed to be done,” she said.Doctors told her even with the surgery, she could never play soccer again.“I cried,” she said. “What other sport can I do?”She picked up tennis, but it didn't pique her interest like soccer.“I couldn't imagine a day without looking at a soccer ball,” she said.During her rehab from the hip surgery, the RND remained manageable. Her recovery was so complete, she was cleared to play soccer again.“It was the happiest day of my life,” Krista said.But during her sophomore year, she suffered a severe concussion. Luckily, during weeks of inactivity, the RND didn't flare up.Last year as a junior, Krista enjoyed her first complete soccer season, finishing as the Knights' third-leading scorer and helping Knoch to a 16-2-2 record.“It was wonderful,” Krista said. “I really conquered everything. I didn't get a concussion. My hip wasn't hurting. Sure, I had RND. I cried after every game because of the pain. But I got through it. I didn't let it stop me.”<B>“I feel great”</B>On the occasions when she gets a 30 second bolt of pain that sizzles down her back and into her legs, Krista is reminded that she still has RND.She is considered in functional remission, but she can rarely wear jeans because of the pain caused by the fabric rubbing against the skin on her shins.Her back is a source of pain if she sits for long periods of time.Krista now carries a pillow with her everywhere she goes to mitigate the discomfort when she sits, especially in the classroom.“I'm the pillow girl,” she said.Toward the end of last soccer season, she couldn't take the jarring of bus rides, so her parents drove her to games.Still, Krista has maintained excellent grades in school and has never asked, “Why me?”She wants to play soccer in college and study to become a nurse so she can return to the Children's Institute to help other young girls with RND.“I was a happy, healthy girl until I was 13,” she said. “I'm kind of glad it happened to me. With what I know and who I am now and what I went through, I've met girls from all over the country. I'm inspiring them to keep working, to keep doing it, to keep fighting.“My message for what I've overcome since I was 13 can really help someone know this isn't the end of the world,” she added. “There is hope. You can get to where the grass is greener. You will be fine.”As Krista pops a piece of chocolate chip cookie into her mouth, chews and swallows, she smiles again and says: “I feel great.”
