This year, to mark CRPS Awareness Month and to raise awareness of this rare disease, I created a set of very colourful and eye-catching images to share across social media. Although each message would be different, I wanted the colours and style of the image to complement each other; to form a clearly coordinated awareness campaign.
These had to feature the colour orange, which represents Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. One of the most common symptoms of this rare disease is a burning pain in the affected area, usually starting in a person’s hand or foot, so flame orange is meant to signify this type of CRPS pain.
It took me a while to find a good accent and background colour. Pairing black and orange was too reminiscent of Halloween, particularly as this year’s awareness day for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS) fell on November 2. After several horrible colour combinations, I settled on a deep blue. These are just two of them – what do you think?
Did you notice the quotations from medical journals? My audience is healthcare professionals, the folks who should be able to diagnose and hopefully treat this rare condition. After all, those of us living with CRPS are already experts in own experience of this disease!
So my goal is to increase knowledge of CRPS among the physicians and other healthcare professionals who may not yet have heard of it:
Even though some doctors are now diagnosing it sooner, many patients aren’t seen soon enough during the six month window when there is an 80-90% success rate.
Others are diagnosed and do not receive the proper treatment.
Why?
In medical school, CRPS is not taught.
By better educating the medical community on this rare disease, we hope that every newly diagnosed patient will be able to have successful treatment.”(1)
The hashtag #NAPW2020 is because this week was also, coincidentally, Canada’s National Pain Awareness Week (NPAW). Great timing to raise awareness of a disease which causes chronic pain, right?! This past week has been a flurry of social media posts for me, so I’ll be taking a bit of a break this weekend.
First CRPS Awareness Day on Monday, then the start of CRPS Awareness month at the same time as NPAW. But I’m not done! Keep an eye out this month for many more images like these, each with its own quotation from a medical journal or another reliable information source.
Because Remembrance Day on November 11 is such an important commemoration for me – as part of a long-time military family, as a former military officer, and with many family members and friends still serving in the military – I won’t post anything for CRPS on that date.
As always, thanks so much for stopping by the blog. If you’re new here, I’m not selling anything, or asking for money, or collecting personal information. This is a 100% non-commercial blog ‘-)
If you’d like to comment, or just to say hi, feel free to reach out over on Instagram or Twitter. One of the consequences of CRPS has been, in my case, a mild cognitive impairment. This makes it difficult for me to manage the comments feature of the blog, so I had to disable it a while ago.
All the best wishes to you for happiness, safety, and well-being during this strange period of global pandemic. No matter what you do today, please take some time for yourself, to find at least a few moments of joy in your day.
Reference
(1) PARC. Recognition of RSD/CRPS. Promoting Awareness of RSD and CRPS in Canada (PARC). Online. Accessed 09 Nov 2020:
https://www.rsdcanada.org/parc/english/parc/aboutus.html