Constant Pain Disorder

Imagine suffering relentless pain and having no idea of a cause. It's a reality for nearly a million Americans.

Their nervous system misfires and leaves them in constant discomfort.

Seventeen year old Erikka Elsbury is a has been battling it for 5-years. Erikka is a prisoner in her own body and under constant torture.

"The burning pain is usually like dousing your arm in gasoline and lighting it on fire."

Things like the wind, a soft touch or baggy clothes cause her extreme pain.

"Even like sheets on the bed hurt, so I sleep with the sheet over half my body."

"You're supposed to protect your child, and I can't even hug her," laments Linda Elsbury, Erikka's mother.

It's called reflex sympathetic dystrophy...or R-S-D.

It started five years ago with a sprained wrist that caused an abnormal nervous system response. Erikka's pain continues and spreads even though her injury healed.

Erikka is a patient at the Cleveland Clinic's new Pediatric Pain Rehabilitation Program. She's attached to her pain medication. When she presses a button and it's injected into her spine, but the real treatment is something you wouldn't expect.

"The cure really is getting back to daily to include exercise," says nurse Judy Hall.

For now, she's just trying to get her limbs to function.

"I really wish I could just go and do simple things without being in pain but I can't anymore." Without a cure, her pain may never disappear completely, but she will learn to live with it.

R-S-D is also known as "complex regional pain syndrome."