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Winter 2003  

Kansas Girl Brushes Off CFIDS, Contributes To Cause

Given the choice, Hallie Kretsinger would have rather been playing soccer. But when CFIDS struck her four years ago, the Emporia, Kan., girl turned her limited energies to painting. The result was a burst of creativity, a lesson in perseverance — and a fundraising effort that will benefit others who continue to fight the illness.

Hallie recently presented The CFIDS Association of America with a check for $1,500, the amount of money she raised selling 100 small watercolor pictures she painted as part of a school project. “It was a pretty major thing for me,” the eighth-grader says. “I’m glad to think that I can do something to help.”

Hallie first began feeling the effects of CFIDS in 1998, when she was nine years old. Hallie and her family are still not sure what triggered the illness, but Hallie says she has largely regained her strength in the past year.

The illness forced Hallie to forego playing on her beloved youth soccer team, the Emporia Explosion. At its worst, CFIDS kept Hallie in bed nearly 20 hours per day.

While unable to play sports, Hallie cultivated another hobby: art. When her classmates went out to play at recess, she stayed inside and learned to draw.

Last year, Hallie was asked to create a project for her middle school Enrichment Services Class. That’s when she came up with the painting idea, sparked by a family trip to the art mecca of Santa Fe, N.M. “I saw lots of paintings of flowers, and thought, ‘That’s something I can do,’” she says.

She originally planned to paint about 50 pictures. But when she started approaching people in the community about buying them, Hallie was overwhelmed with requests. “I really got flooded,” she says. “Instead of 50, I ended up doing 100.”

Each of the small paintings took about half an hour to finish.

These days, Hallie is back playing soccer with the Explosion. She has adopted a new sports hero — soccer star Michelle Akers, another person with CFIDS. Hallie found out about Akers while writing a paper for school. She has written a note to Akers, and received a response along with several photos.

Life seems to be back on track for Hallie, but she says she will never forget the hard lessons that CFIDS taught her. “Things happen for a reason,” she says. “I think that I’m pretty lucky to be feeling better. I have really learned a lot, and I hope that what I did can help find a cure for other people who are sick.”