BY JOE KOVAC JR.
jkovac@macon.com September 6, 2014
Katie Crosby, 26, has been living with chronic pain of one form or another since her teen years. Today, the pain is so severe that she is mostly restricted to a pair of rooms in her childhood home. Crosby wants people like her who live in the middle ground between the terminally ill and those with rare seizures to be part of the argument for medical marijuana in Georgia. GRANT BLANKENSHIP GPB
It was early evening. The young woman’s living room was already dark. It almost always is. The blinds were shut, curtains drawn tight. Blankets hung over the curtains kept the faintest ray of late-day sun from piercing the blackness.
Still, there was light.
A 42-inch, flat-screen TV was on.
Katie Crosby’s beloved Georgia Bulldogs were playing Clemson in their football season opener.
She wasn’t about to miss that, even as the TV’s flicker triggered searing chronic pain that sometimes felt like it would split her in two.
Last weekend, despite wave upon crashing wave of migraine-grade misery, she sat still on her sofa, watching. The volume low, an ice pack on her head, a heating pad snug against her back.
In her upstairs apartment at her parents’ house in Macon, enduring what she described as tremendous pain, Crosby could hear the glee downstairs where friends and family were rooting on the Dawgs.
She used to holler at the TV when Georgia played. Sometimes she threw stuff. But no more. Sound or sudden movement can unleash agony.
Even as UGA running back Todd Gurley galloped for four touchdowns, Crosby didn’t flinch. She smiled. Nothing more.
It hurt too much to cheer.
Come Wednesday, the 25-year-old will leave her darkened home for the spotlight of a legislative panel at the center of Georgia’s medical marijuana debate, where she will try to open people’s eyes.
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