SINGAPORE — Eighteen-year-old NurAaliyah Syakirah was around 10 years old when chronic pain took over the remaining days of her childhood.
She pushed herself to go to school despite having very severe headaches. Her reason was because she did not want to miss school and let her parents down. Her mother had to quit her job as a Deliveroo rider to care for her around the time Aaliyah was diagnosed and was unable to cope with the extreme symptoms. The girl’s parents have a history of migraines but their symptoms are not as severe.“I feel like I’ve missed a lot of important things in my life. My secondary school years were just a fraction of what I could have enjoyed. And the rest of it — I was just at home, in pain.
“I know of a patient who confined herself at home due to leg pain. Some struggle through their daily life with headaches. Dr Angela Yeo, clinical director of the Children’s Pain Service at KK Women's and Children's HospitalThe Children’s Pain Management Clinic — set up in 2005 and helmed by a multidisciplinary team — is the first in Singapore and the region that manages challenging and complex chronic pain in children in an outpatient setting, KKH said.
The majority of its child patients are referred from other specialities within KKH; the rest are from pain specialists in private practice. Before referral to the clinic, most investigations to exclude other more curable causes of pain would have been carried out by other specialists.Affected children tend to withdraw from social situations, and feel frustrated, isolated and misunderstood... their siblings and parents find themselves arranging their own schedules around the patient’s pain, and this can lead to resentment and guilt.
Because of changes in the sensory system and brain when one experiences chronic pain, the child may experience pain in other parts of the body as well, she added. For Aaliyah, acute pain flares caused her to miss many social events, including outings with friends and families as well as important examinations.She recalled her sadness over missing an important school excursion to a polytechnic’s open house. She was battling a week-long acute flare-up of pain at the time.
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