I’m Kale.

My story

I used to be the one on the other side of the bed.

I was five months into my nursing career when I fell running to help a patient. I was 22. One moment I was the person doing the helping. The next, I was the person who needed it.

I went from knowing how the system worked, to being swallowed by it. A fall became a surgery, a surgery became a diagnosis I never saw coming, and a diagnosis became a whole new life.

What happened

A fall. Surgery. CRPS. Then the system failed me too.

I had Morton’s neuroma surgery to address the damage from the fall. What I didn’t know going in was that CRPS was a possible complication. It happened to me. CRPS (complex regional pain syndrome) is sometimes called “the suicide disease” because of how severe the pain can be. Nobody told me I was disabled. I had to figure that out myself.

In waiting rooms. In appointments where I felt like I wasn’t being believed. In the quiet of my apartment on days I couldn’t get off the couch.

I knew how the system worked. I’d worked in it. And it still failed me. That experience changed everything about what I wanted to do next.

Why I started sharing

I stopped putting my life on hold until I felt better.

That first year was the hardest. I hit rock bottom. I lost my grandmother. I isolated myself completely. Nick proposed during all of it, even after I asked him to wait until I didn’t need a cane anymore. He proposed anyway.

I started making content as a distraction. Then one day I got a DM from someone who said they’d never heard anyone talk about this from this angle. Not with the beauty and the softness and the realness all at once.

I used to hide my cane in photos and videos. I hid it at my sister’s wedding. Now I use it (the cane, the knee scooter, the wheelchair, whatever I need that day) and I document all of it.