CRPS: Why the Ducks Started Waddling
There was no crash. No heroic fall. No bar fight. No drama.
Just a quiet ache that crept in like it didn’t want to be noticed.
How It Started
Shoulder tightened. Arm felt off. I figured it was from training too hard. I’d just wrapped a triathlon, was halfway through Tough Mudder prep, working full-time like rest was optional. I thought I was tough. Turns out I was just naive.
The pain turned sharp. Skin felt wired wrong. Like every nerve had gone rogue. Lifting my arm became a joke. A cruel one.
Doctors tossed out guesses like raffle tickets. Carpal tunnel. T4 syndrome, T1 dysfunction. Maybe something from stress. Or bad posture. Or… who knows. “Rest it.” “Ice it.” Like that was going to fix this.
The pain didn’t fade. It spread. Breathing hurt. A breeze across my arm felt like fire. My nervous system had turned on me, and no one could tell me why.
The Diagnosis
Let’s talk about CRPS for a second. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. That’s the name they eventually gave it. Honestly, it should stand for Constant Ridiculous Pain & Suffering. It sounds like a boring meeting agenda. It’s not. It’s ranked the most painful chronic condition known to medicine, higher than childbirth, kidney stones, amputation, or getting set on fire. That’s not poetic exaggeration. That’s the McGill Pain Index. Look it up. CRPS sits at the top. Like a cruel joke no one wants to be part of.
It’s your body acting like it’s still injured, long after the original wound is gone. Your nervous system gets stuck in a loop and keeps screaming like it’s day one of a trauma that never ends. Skin becomes electric. Pain turns up to eleven and snaps the dial off.
There’s no cure. No guaranteed treatment. Some people go into remission. Some don’t. It’s unpredictable. It’s unforgiving. It doesn’t care if you’ve got plans.
Living with CRPS
Work disappeared. So did sleep. So did any sense of control. I lived in a loop of pain, appointments, pills, and silence.
They gave me stronger stuff. Eventually ketamine. I drifted through days, half awake, half sedated, barely aware of where I ended and the fog began.
I lost everything that used to make me feel like me. Work. Travel. Shirts. Even standing upright some days. I couldn’t fight the system, I could barely fight gravity.
Spent what I had chasing answers. Saw everyone. Tried everything. Surgeons. Chiropractors. Hypnotists. Herbalists. One bloke waved a feather over my head and told me to focus on gratitude. I nearly smacked him with it.
Some wanted to cut into my spine. Others said it was all in my head.
I walked out of the last clinic and decided I’d had enough. Enough pills. Enough guesswork. Enough silence.
Writing Through the Wreckage
Started keeping track. What made it worse. What helped. What didn’t. It wasn’t healing. But it was something to hold onto.
Those scribbles became something more. Pages. Then books.
Not polished. Not pretty. Just real. Messy. Human.
This Isn’t Just About CRPS
At first, it was just about CRPS. But the more I wrote, the more I realised this wasn’t just mine.
Pain shows up in all kinds of ways. Doesn’t need a label to level you. Doesn’t need a diagnosis to leave you stranded.
I wrote for the ones who wake up and don’t recognise their life anymore. For the ones just trying to hold it together. For anyone who needs to know they’re not the only one stuck in the dark.
That’s when the ducks showed up.
The Waddle Forward Collection came out of the rubble. But it’s not about the pain. It’s about getting up when everything in you says stay down. Even if all you can manage is a wobble.
I still live with CRPS. Some days I walk. Some days I don’t. Some days I sit on the floor for hours because standing feels like climbing Everest in thongs.
But I get up again. I cook. I travel. I write. I keep going.
Recovery didn’t give me my old life back. It handed me someone new. Someone who knows what it takes to move forward when everything inside wants to stop.
If you’re in it right now, stuck, hurting, tired of pretending you’re fine, read this carefully:
You’re not weak.
You’re not broken.
You’re not alone.
Take one step. However small. Even if it’s ugly. Even if it’s just brushing your teeth and flipping off a duck on the way to the shower.
It still counts.
Even when it waddles.
Want to meet the ducks? Check out The Waddle Forward Collection.
They’re weirdly uplifting and slightly rude. Bit like me.
From that wreckage, the books were born.
Not because I wanted to write about CRPS. Definitely not because I had answers. And absolutely not because I thought anyone needed another sob story on the internet.
These books aren’t about CRPS.
They started there, sure. That was the spark. But they’re about what happens after the worst day. When your life splits into before and after. When you’re left holding the pieces and everyone’s expecting you to glue yourself back together with a good attitude and a meditation app.
They’re about the middle bits. The messy bits. The quiet, painful, ridiculous parts no one talks about because they don’t look good on a timeline.
They’re about figuring out how to keep moving when you’ve got no map and one leg emotionally shorter than the other.
Not inspirational. Not motivational. Definitely not tidy.
Just real.
If you’re looking for a guidebook on chronic illness, these aren’t it. If you’re looking for someone to say, “Yeah, I’ve felt that too,” then maybe, just maybe, these pages will feel like less of a wall and more of a window.
Because CRPS might’ve lit the fuse.
But the story’s about surviving the explosion, and what you grow from the ashes.