My Pain Journey

Hi, I’m Janna Kimel, the founder of the Chronic Pain Project.

I share my story not for sympathy, but for a reality check. We all have stuff—emotional health challenges, and physical health challenges, both temporary and permanent.

I’ve also found that it seems easier to have a pain or challenge that is visible. A broken leg or a sprained wrist usually has a visual indicator such as a splint, a cast, or crutches. People know that something is amiss. But what if your pain is invisible? What if nobody can see your headache, backache, or neuralgia pain? How can you describe it to others?

Janna Kimel wearing a grey hat, green sweater, and grey scarf. She's sitting at a table. Candles, flowers, and ceramics are in the background.

My first outing, post-brain surgery. The hope was that getting rid of a benign cyst would get rid of the migraines, but it didn’t.

I’ve been thinking about chronic pain for a long time, although I’ve only recently learned the terminology.

Graphic of ight grey figure bending over

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had pain somewhere in my body. At age 10, I fell in gym class. No swelling, no discoloration, but for the next 10 years I would see doctors, be on and off crutches and even spend a few nights in the hospital from unexplained ankle pain.

One of my most memorable moments was taking a wheelchair through Disney Land. I couldn’t walk long distances at the time, but I could walk enough to get on a ride. Imagine people’s faces when I got out of that wheelchair and onto a ride!

Without rhyme or reason, that pain slowly subsided in my twenties.

Graphic of light grey leaf

Now, I spend many a weekend hiking the trails of the Pacific Northwest that I call home.

However, other pain came to take its place. I’ve had persistent knee pain, then low back pain (I took a chemistry test in high school while standing at a lab table since I couldn’t sit down for long periods of time) and in recent years, pain in my shoulders that seems to come and go at will.

Adding to the musculoskeletal pain, I also have chronic migraines that started at age 25. What was once a fairly cyclical set of headaches, now seems to be a random ebb and flow of debilitating migraines.

“That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies.”

—from the book “The Last Resort” by Alison Lurie.

This project aims to bring visibility to the invisible by promoting and normalizing these conversations about pain.