'Broken foot healed years ago, but my brain says I'm still in agony'

Kiera Ward, 17, takes a daily cocktail of 39 painkillers, even though the fracture is fully healed and the pain is all in her head.

She broke her foot during a playground game of tug-of-war when she was 11, but doctors believe the trauma of delays in her treatment triggered a condition called Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).

The ailment causes her brain to experience phantom pain as if the injury is still there – and Kiera lives in excruciating pain 24 hours a day.

The student said: "The pain is unbearable. I can't describe to anyone else how it feels.

"There are so many days where I can't get out of bed, or where I'm with my friends and I just burst into tears because I can't take it any more.

"The hardest thing is that my foot isn't hurt, my brain is just telling me it is," she said. "There's no reason why this is happening."

Kiera, from Wishaw, Lanarkshire, broke her heel-bone in September 2004 on a school trip to Kilbowie, near Oban.

She was playing tug-of-war when she fell under a group of classmates. No-

one realised she was badly injured until two days later, when she could not walk.

The youngster was taken to hospital, where doctors did not X-ray her, but they said she had ligament damage and sent her home with instructions to rest and to take ibuprofen.

Two weeks later, she was in such pain her parents took her to Wishaw General, where the fracture was found.

She should have been off her crutches after six weeks, but instead could not walk for 18 months.

It was in September 2005, at Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow, that she was diagnosed.

The musical theatre student at Motherwell College said: "I was devastated when they told me, and it was so difficult to understand.

"There wasn't much the doctors could do because the problem wasn't my foot. I felt all on my own.

"All I wanted was for the pain to end. I wouldn't wish that kind of pain on my worst enemy."

She went on: "I was screaming at my mum to please let them cut my foot off if it would make it stop."

Kiera had seven operations from the age of 12 to 16. Local anaesthetic was injected into her spine to stop the pain in her foot and "reboot" her brain into realising it had healed.

But the surgery, and an epidural, all failed. She still cannot walk on her foot and the CRPS has spread through her body to her back, arms and neck.

She has refused a wheelchair because walking does her no physical harm, she feels. However, the pain is so extreme she sometimes has spasms and needs morphine to cope.

Kiera has been told there's a chance her condition will last for life, but is hoping for a cure.

In the meantime, the teenager has completed a charity walk for Yorkhill Children's Foundation and raised 3,000 for Alexandra Sawmill's Pain Reserve Fund, which helps to control agony like hers.

lYou can find Kiera's fundraising page at www.justgiving.com/Kiera-Ward.