Kayani Turner’s fight with the excruciating pain associated with RSD began in 2005 after acquiring a stress fracture in her left leg.  The injury healed, but during the 2006 volleyball season she began to experience severe pain in the same leg.  Everyone immediately suspected another stress fraction, but X-rays and MRI did not reveal that this was the case.

“In medicine, it’s something we call a diagnosis of exclusion,” said Dr. Jerrad Zimmerman, the team physician. “Before we could come up with a diagnosis of complex regional pain syndrome, we had to rule out anything else that could cause it. It can take months to diagnose because of all the testing it takes to rule out other possible etiologies of her pain.”

As her doctor explained, with CRPS, in very basic terms, even though an injury has healed, some of the pain fibers never shut off and continue to send signals to the brain as if the injury is still present. In Turner’s case, the pain she experienced from RSD became more intense than the pain she experienced from the original stress fracture.

The RSD took playing through pain to an unimaginable level, but Kayani Turner continued to play during the 2006 campaign.  Read more about Kayani Turner’s amazing comeback.