A British woman had a leg and hand amputation after minor injuries – dropping a perfume bottle on her foot, and a dog scratch – triggered a rare and severely painful neurological condition.
Gill Haddington (48) was diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), a disorder that causes prolonged and intense pain disproportionate to the injury, her first one tracing back to 2017 when she accidentally dropped a perfume bottle on her right foot.
Believing she had broken her foot, her partner took her to hospital, but an X-ray showed her foot was “fine”, and she was discharged.
“Over the next six to nine months, my foot began to twist at a 90-degree angle,” she recounted.
“It got to the point where you could actually see bone coming through. I was getting a lot of blisters and ulcers, which started to spread up to my ankle.”
She was on 30 different pain medications a day – but nothing alleviated her suffering.
Eventually diagnosed with CRPS, known as “suicide disease” – a poorly understood disorder that can develop after even minor injuries – Haddington made the difficult decision to have her right leg amputated below the knee in May 2017.
“When I woke up from surgery, it felt as if I had my life back,” she said.
But her struggles didn’t end there. In 2020, a tiny scratch from her dog triggered another CRPS flare-up in her left hand. “I knew what was coming as soon as the blisters appeared,” she told NDTV.
Despite therapy, she lost mobility and eventually chose to have her hand amputated in May 2021, exactly four years after her leg surgery.
Now an advocate for CRPS awareness, Haddington is raising funds for Enable, a support group she credits with helping her through her darkest moments. “The pain of CRPS is excruciating,” she said. “I’m lucky I had the option to choose elective amputation. Others are still suffering in silence.”
CRPS is a rare condition with no clear cause, according to the Mayo Clinic. It typically follows injury or surgery, but the resulting pain is often far more intense than the initial trauma.
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