Chantelle Baxter was finally beginning to live for herself. As co-founder of One Girl
one of Australia’s fastest-growing non-profit organizations, for seven years, she had successfully helped educate thousands of girls across Africa, thus giving their lives a purpose. It was now time to step down and explore another side of life and the world. With her bags packed, Chantelle was all set to start her dream life in the United States with her boyfriend, Patrick and work towards building her company BE.
Chantelle is the co-founder of the company BE. Bangles
Destiny though had other plans.
It all happened in early 2017. After twisting my ankle during a hike in Portland, Oregon I started experiencing extreme pain.
Luckily, I was supposed to fly back to Australia the very next day, unaware that this was just the start of the tortures that lay ahead.
When I came back to Australia, I was told to get some painkillers but when they failed to make a difference too, I knew something was very wrong.
Chantelle was the co-founder of One Girl Australia before stepping down and starting her own company BE.
I spent the next 1.5 months in Australia getting every test under the sun and they all came back normal. I even saw one of Australia’s best orthopedic surgeons around four times before even he gave up. No one could figure out what the actual problem was.
With my two-week vacation turning into a 1.5-month long medical trip and with no results, I decided to give up and head back to the States.
Once back, my boyfriend helped me find an ankle specialist known to “diagnose the diagnosable’ who then came back with the diagnosis that my problem was way bigger than a sprain in the ankle, I was, in fact, suffering from Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS).
This very rare and incurable neurological condition is nicknamed the “suicide disease” because it is the worst form of pain known to mankind.
My life was never a smooth ride. By the time, I’d left high school my life had been affected by domestic violence, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual abuse and suicide attempts. I was a pretty messed up kid and I left school believing that the only way I’d ever be happy, was if I made a lot of money.
Growing up I started a web company with my friend, earning big bucks but realised it wasn’t what truly made me happy. All that changed with a trip to Sierra Leone which marked the beginning of One Girl and completely changed my life.
I went on to be recognised as one of Cosmopolitan Magazine‘s 30 Influential Aussie Women Under 30 and Melbourne’s Top 100 Most Influential People by The Age.
Today, I am struggling to function properly.
After the diagnosis, the pain quickly spread to my entire body.
When the condition first spread, I ended up in Emergency with full body tremors and in an incomprehensible amount of pain — my body had gone into shock.
At my worst, my body felt like I was being dipped in boiling oil — and it was everywhere.
My legs felt like the bones were slowly being crushed — and it was relentless, hours and hours and hours of the worst pain I’d ever experienced.
I just kept saying ‘I have to die’ over and over again — there was just no way I could live with pain that high.”
The pain of CRPS is unlike anything else. It feels like one is being burnt alive. According to the McGill pain index a chart that doctors use to measure their patients’ pain levels, severe CRPS pain is ranked higher than childbirth. Imagine pain worse than childbirth, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
The McGill Pain Index
Chantelle though wasn’t the only one suffering. Seeing her condition and not being able to help her much, it was her loved ones that felt the most helpless.
Heartbroken on having lost one best friend to a degenerative brain disease earlier in the year, Lauren Markwell, Chantelle’s best friend and business partner was not ready to lose another one.
“A few months after being back in the U.S Chantelle was messaging me saying she was having constant suicidal thoughts. the CRPS was no longer isolated to her ankle. It had spread across her entire body, and she felt like she was on fire. The pain was 9/10 every moment of the day, and she could barely function, “said Lauren.
“She had almost given up when her boyfriend found one doctor in Fayetteville, Arkansas who was treating CRPS without drugs and having good results. It was called the Neurological Relief Centre. The treatments there varied from adjustments to the vagus nerve in her neck, to the frequency specific microcurrent, ARP Wave therapy, Vector Therapy which slowly helped her body to calm down.”
While I was undergoing treatment at the NRC, Lauren started a GoFundMe campaign for me, to raise money for an alternate treatment in Italy to a specialist clinic in Bologna.
We were successfully able to reach their $32000 goal in less than 6 months.
With the treatment at NRC being so effective, I decided against going to Italy and instead the money raised was used to continue my treatment there.
After this, I signed up for a course called the Lightning Process. It was based on neuroplasticity and the brain’s ability to heal.
It wasn’t until I did the Lightning Process that my positivity kicked back in and I realised I could beat this. Just because the allopathic medical system doesn’t have a pill or drug to ‘cure’ CRPS doesn’t mean it’s incurable-it just meant I had to find a different way
Talking about Chantelle’s condition Amanda Ashley, a practitioner of the Lightning Process said “When Chantelle injured her ankle, it was a time of severe and prolonged stress in her life, because of which the PER (Physical Emergency Response) of her brain got activated and it interpreted this minor injury as an emergency situation. This then triggered an acute pain response which then escalated even further as the stress of her illness caused even more PER to trigger more pain. In this way, she became stuck in an escalating cycle of pain that reached her entire body, thus leading to her suffering from CRPS.”
I don’t always get it right-it’s impossible to be positive and happy ALL the time but now that I can interpret my moods and anxiety, it helps me move into a better state of mind. I’d say I am a lot better and 100% recovery is just around the corner and am just happy to see signs of improvement every single day.
Today Chantelle is almost 90% CRPS free. Something that would have seemed like a distant dream a few months ago, has finally come true. She has been to hell and back and still never gave up proving yet again why she is such an inspiration to women across the world.
Though no one describes her better than Lauren who said, “Shon is the most powerful and extraordinary person I know. The courage, commitment, tenacity, drivenness, and strength she demonstrates on a day to day basis constantly blows me away. She reminds me of the phoenix rising from the ashes – strong, beautiful, unfuckwithable.”
A Familiar Stranger 