A Near Life Experiance

      I was welcomed to the psych ward by the head nurse who immediately realized I was about to throw up following that lovely ambulance ride. He fetched me a garbage bin and then confiscated my belongings, including my cane. Yes, that's right. I wasn't allowed to use my cane at all during my stay. I had tried to kill myself because I couldn't take my  pain anymore, and that was with the cane, so the first step in treating my depression was, logically, to take the cane away. A brilliant first move. Psych ward staff are a paranoid lot as one might imagine. They wouldn't want someone else, or even me, to have a violent outburst with a cane in hand. With that spectacular first impression I was taken into his office for an interview of sorts. 

    He asked me why I tried to commit suicide and I gave him the whole story, but like every member of staff in that ward, he was far more interested in my depression rather than my pain. We came to the conclusion that a big part of it was the expectations that were put on me. Imagine this scenario: someone is suffering for 4 years. Their suffering is made worse by medications that don't help, and make them an immobile potato both physically and mentally. They're suffering to the point where they can't take it, where they don't enjoy life anymore; so they try to kill themselves twice. They want to die. But, despite what they want, all through those 4 years they've been trying their hardest  for those around them. Yet those around them aren't satisfied. They want more than the person's best. The person gives up, because what's the point in trying if your best isn't good enough? Imagine how that person would feel. That's how I felt. The nurse asked me why I didn't tell anyone I was feeling this way. As I mentioned in the last chapter, I did tell people. Quite a few times actually. At one point I felt I was giving so many warnings and nothing was being done, that I went to the kitchen and started cutting myself with a knife in front of a parent. I was trying to show how horrible I felt and that if we kept doing nothing I would get hurt. This was a fact to me, and there was no question that I was quite vocal about my feelings to those involved in my case. The nurse asked me to list the medications I was on. I was hard pressed to name them all as there were so many. I was then informed I'd be going off of all of them except for two. I was left on a very light sleep medication (melatonin) and an antidepressant (cymbalta, I think.) This means I was going to be left with zero pain medications, when I was previously on too many. It was evident I was on too many medications, but taking them all away at once wasn't the answer. Not only was I immediately going off morphine without any weaning, but around 5 other medications were discontinued as well. All at the same time. This would have been a horrible experience in a controlled hospital environment, but I was in a psych ward. This puts these months as a contender among the worst experiences of my life. In this ward I was expected to do the same daily activities as the other... inmates. A psych ward is no place for someone going through extreme withdrawal and pain. There are no doctors immediately available 95% of the time, and the nurses and social workers have no idea how to deal with such a patient. The only equipment they had for me were these tiny kidney basins, to be used as a makeshift bucket for puking. They were no more than 10 inches across and a few inches high. This means every single time I puked, (probably 100 times in total,) I'd partly miss because I had these useless pieces of crap to puke in. Of course, I was doing all of the cleaning.

    It wasn't long before a psychiatrist came in to see me. For my entire stay there was a very stark difference in how the staff saw my depression compared to how I did. They saw my pain and depression as separate entities. They thought I took those pills because I was depressed, not because I was in pain. I saw my alleged depression as a direct result from my chronic pain. Therefore, one cannot treat my depression without treating my pain. This caused disagreements in the way I was treated, and I felt the months I spent at the psych ward were a waste of time. Since it was an extremely uncomfortable place to be, I was quite upset that I was uncomfortable for no reason since nothing was being done to remedy the situation. 

          It was time for me to sit down and speak one of the ward's psychiatrists. As I said. nothing of note came out of it, so there's not much I remember from it; except one question. To paint a picture, this female doctor was morbidly obese and always had a pompous look on her face. The question that stood out to me so much was: "Did you know you almost died?" I answered, "Yes," but what I thought was quite different. I thought: Yes. Yes I know almost died. I tried to kill myself actually, haven't you heard? I took over 60 pills at once including morphine. Of course I almost died. I was in a coma for hours and your stupid mug asks me that, in your matter-of-fact tone? If someone tries to kill themselves, telling them they almost died is encouragement, not a deterrence. It's like saying 'You nearly made it you know. Try a little harder next time.' I tried to commit suicide. Dying is the point you incompetent, condescending, overweight, clueless clown. In case it isn't apparent, I was still quite bitter about the whole being alive thing. In a rare stroke of luck, this moronic doctor wasn't to be my new psychiatrist. I was handed over to someone else.

A Near Death Experiance

    If someone is standing on the edge of a cliff, it only takes a tiny push for them to fall. My push was small but significant. As was mentioned before, I was not able to go on the summer trip to Israel that was hyped up to me for years, because I wasn't well enough. You can hardly travel across the globe when you're asleep for the first half of the day everyday. It seemed I had another chance to see my friends, in the form of a trip to Syracuse over the span of a few days. Since I was devastated about missing the Israel trip, I wanted to at least compensate by going on the Syracuse one to see the friends I hadn't seen in a year. I hadn't had a real social life for quite awhile at that point and so was desperate to hang out and try to feel like a teenager again, if if just for a few days. I was told I couldn't go because my family was going to Montreal that weekend. This created a nasty argument between members of my family and I. Tensions were already strained by comments that questioned the effort I was putting into getting better. This event alone isn't much, but in my drug-addled mind it symbolized the destruction of my social life. I had to leave my hebrew school, and so hadn't been able to see school friends I'd known since nursery. And now I was being told I wasn't allowed to see camp friends either. I wasn't able to go to school and wasn't even able to walk my dog. I couldn't form coherent thoughts and I was unable to distract myself with video games or books because I couldn't concentrate to due perpetual exhaustion. Every time I'd try to relax in a Jacuzzi to get rid of tightness, I'd faint thanks to low blood pressure from medication side effects. The doctors weren't able to help, giving me the illusion that there was no hope. I hated my pain, and I hated my life. After months of mental preparation, I felt ready to die. Immediately following the fore-mentioned nasty argument my parents left to give someone a ride. I was home alone again.

     I knew what I was going to do as soon as my parents left. I had learned what happens when you overdosed on morphine and found what I was looking for. "A large overdose of morphine can cause asphyxia and death by respiratory depression if the person does not receive medical attention immediately." In a mental battle lasting months, I had turned the idea of death from something to be feared, to something to be embraced. My previous suicide attempt had been foiled by telling someone goodbye, so there would be none of that. At least no human, who could stop me. In my mind I would do one last thing before I died: say goodbye to my dog. I cried then, and for the first time I'm crying while writing this book. My dog Chelsee was still a puppy, and knew something was wrong when she looked at me, but couldn't understand what. I sat down next to her and took her in my arms. I pet her as I sobbed and will never forget the concern on her face as she looked up at me. I was too set on dying for a look from my dog to stop me, though. I went back upstairs and as I walked into my bathroom once again, I stopped crying. I stopped because I knew I would no longer be in pain soon. I would no longer be sad, no longer be angry, no longer be anything. My pill box for the week was bursting with medications. For the second time, I emptied each packet and swallowed them 3 at a time. Morphine, sleep medications, and antidepressants, all went down. There might have been as many as 60 pills in total. When the task was done I locked the doors of my bathroom and lied down with my back against a wall. I felt the blackness coming and did not cry, I only smiled as I slipped into oblivion. For what felt like 30 seconds I didn't feel my pain anymore. In the 3 years since my pain had started I had never felt more blissful than during those 30 seconds. The pain that had been my constant companion for so long was receding, along with everything else.

     I blacked out quickly, and so the next paragraph was all relayed from the mouth of a parent. After a period of time my parents returned home and evidently noticed I was missing. They opened the locked doors, saw me on the ground, and called 911. They learned all emergency rooms in the area were full, so I would have to be airlifted in a helicopter ambulance to another hospital. They knew I might not make it in time, and so used connections to discover there was room for one more at St. Micheal's Hospital emergency department. I was comatose the entire ambulance ride downtown and remember nothing. I could have been out anywhere from an hour and a half to 4 hours. When I got to the hospital they administered naloxone, a drug that negates morphine. It removed the morphine from my system and narrowly saved my life. I woke up slowly to see myself surrounded by a ring of 4 concerned doctors and one of my parents. After a few seconds of me comprehending I wasn't dead, I broke down in tears and asked in a choked voice: "WHY AM I ALIVE?!?" I still to this day have flashbacks of that moment, along with saying goodbye to my dog.

     Memories of my stay in the emergency room are fuzzy at best. I remember throwing up numerous times and convincing the nurse to let my go to the bathroom by myself. I was very weak and gaunt from my overdose and the months spent at home. My anesthesiologist who prescribed the morphine was out of the country and so sent his resident medical student in his stead. He explained that the morphine in my system was gone and my prescription is discontinued. I didn't hear from the doctor again. Unfortunately, a decision was made that I wouldn't be slowly weaned off morphine as is commonly done, it was all stopped immediately. Because of this I experienced a terrible withdrawal while in very uncomfortable circumstances. With the constant beeping of heart monitors from intensive care units in the emergency room you can't get much sleep. So I was up all night, vomiting and sweating. You can't stay in an emergency room long, they are always trying to get rid of you. You can't really blame them. I almost had to go in a helicopter because there was no room for me anywhere. The annoying part was they didn't give me a room at the hospital to wait out the withdrawal, they were discharging me all together. Well not discharging per say, I was to be transferred to the children's psych ward at Humber River Hospital. I was wheeled into an ambulance, which became the worst car ride of my life.

      I had the normal morphine withdrawal symptoms. Anxiety, drug craving, irritability, sweating, goose bumps, muscle aches, hot and cold flashes, twitching, restlessness, not being able to keep food down, nausea and of course, vomiting. Normal stuff, but I had these symptoms in a cramped, bumpy ambulance. I threw up repeatedly and it felt like there was a snake in my stomach that shifted with each bump. The best part is-- they took me to the wrong Humber River hospital location. We went in the building, up the elevator, to only be told we had to go back in the ambulance and drive somewhere else. It was quite the fuck my life moment. After a grueling car ride, we got to the child-adolescent psych ward. An unpleasant place to say the least; a place where I would be spending the next few months, whether I willed it or not.

Dog Therapy

    I eventually finished my summer course at my new school with expressionless indifference. I was still having strong doses of medication added to my already overwhelming concoction. This made starting school in September with everyone else impossible. It was the lowest point for me. I couldn't think, I couldn't laugh, I couldn't enjoy anything. I believe at this point I was taking 13 pills a day, which weren't even helping all that much. I was able to sleep through the pain due to all these drugs but I couldn't wake up. I'd be sleeping for 14 hours everyday and was still exhausted all the time because of the side effects. I regularly went all the way downtown to get lidocane infusions that weren't helping. The problem was when I went on a medication and it didn't work, a new one was tried instead without stopping the old one. The doctor I was going to was an anesthetist, a pain doctor. This can be good, but they are very limited in what they can do. Their sole focus is the pain, and so the way they treat it is with strong anesthesia, which can sometimes make things worse. My mind was far too clouded to realize what was going on or make any decisions for myself, so this continued for months. There were many days where I was home by myself, wallowing in pain that just wouldn't go away. I tried my hardest to keep some semblance of a social life; I went to parties with camp friends but couldn't even say 10 words I was so drugged. I'd literally walk in, lie on the couch, and sleep for a couple hours while everyone was socializing and having fun. People would try to talk to me, but at that point I might as well have been a brick wall. Point is, my life was broken, I was broken, and I wasn't happy.

      If my depression or just general sadness was hidden from view to anyone before, it certainly wasn't anymore at that point. To try to turn things around, an old childhood dream was dug up: getting a dog. It seemed like a great way to cheer me up and give me something to do at home. Plans were made and we took the few hour drive to the breeder and picked up the newest member of the family. I remember insisting we name the dog Chestaar after a chicken I took care of at camp, even if it was a girl, which it was. Looking back, I think this was me just feeling the need to get something I wanted for the first time in a long time. If I couldn't have a pain free life, if I couldn't think clearly, if I couldn't have a social life, then gawd dangit I'm gonna name my dog Chestaar. All these medications can turn you into a 5 year old trapped in a 17 year old's body; which really is what it felt like. Of course naming a female dog Chestaar is a terrible idea and so it didn't happen. Instead I was told to settle for the name Chelsee. The first time I saw Chelsee scampering around a little green field was also the first time I smiled in a long time. She truly did make me feel better for a period of time, having a dog in the house took away from some of the loneliness. Unfortunately, not even a cute little puppy can cure chronic pain.

        The little bit my 13 pills a day helped evaporated. While drugs like codeine can be effective, eventually your body builds tolerance to them and they stop working. Take notes, because if you give someone with chronic pain a drug that only works for a couple weeks, you're going to be digging yourself into a very deep, dark hole. If you didn't already guess, my opioid pills stopped working. Now I didn't only have the terrible life-halting side effects, but my pain went back to being as bad as ever. I couldn't walk my new dog. I couldn't even play video games anymore because I was so out of it, and yet in pain. I went to my psychiatrist and told him if someone doesn't help my pain soon, I would try to kill myself again. As he put it to my dad: "I'm pushed up against a wall." So to combat the tolerance I built to my medications I was sent to the anesthetist who put me on stronger doses of morphine. After a few weeks I built tolerance to that too, but you can only go so far with medication. Through the last few months of 2011 I told those who were involved with my case that I was mentally preparing myself to die. Death is not something even someone who desires it can face easily. It's infinite. Final. Irreversible. I was at least coherent enough to understand that. This didn't change anything because there wasn't much else for them to do. Let me clarify, I didn't want to die. I needed to. As someone who has experienced it, if you have such a high level of pain, for such a long time, (2 and a half years at that point) you will break down. I see this as a fact of life. Now, of course, being on uncountable numbers of medications that didn't work wasn't helping anything, but what did I mean by mentally preparing myself to die? I would have a pain surge, not uncommonly, and tell myself that it needs to end, that I need to die. I'd tell myself this while trying to convince myself death isn't so bad. I told myself there'd be no pain, that I'd be at peace. What's also a fact of life is deep down inside no one truly wants to die. Even if you're the most depressed person in the world, a little voice will always be telling you "No! Live!" It's a reaction, just as much as someone who tries to drown themselves automatically comes up for air. Mentally preparing oneself to die means drawing this voice out of its hiding place in your mind, and stabbing it with your pain and misery until it shuts up. This went on for about 2 months and ended in success for my suicidal self. I only needed one final push.

Life or Death

       I had overdosed on all of my many medications and in doing so thought I had assured my own death. Obviously, since you're reading, this I was wrong. Scared but determined, I went to my room, sat at my computer, and on it was my open Facebook chat. In that chat I saw one of my brothers online. I decided that it would be nice to talk to someone one last time before I die and so I messaged him telling him what I did, looking for comfort I suppose. Naturally he or someone he contacted called 911 but at the time I didn't think they could do anything to save me. I was only 15 after all. In the ambulance ride to the hospital I started to black out but the paramedics stuck a breathing tube down my throat which caused involuntary gag reflexes that kept me from passing out. When I got to the hospital they immediately made me drink a cup of charcoal, which absorbed the medication in my stomach thus saving my life. If you're curious charcoal in liquid form looks disgusting and tastes even worse than it looks.

       While in the hospital I got lots of calls from friends and family, who basically told me how upset they would be if I were gone from their lives. These calls didn't cheer me up very much, but they did guilt me into realizing and accepting that if I end my life I would be doing harm to others not just myself. And so I would carry on living for the sake of others rather than myself. Not a very ideal way to live I'm sure you'd agree but it was all I had to go on.

     As is standard protocol after a suicide attempt I was sent to a psych ward for children at a hospital. It was probably the most boring week of my life. Stuck in a ward with kids sometimes as young as 10 with every mental illness you can imagine and very little to keep yourself occupied. I'd meet a couple of times with a doctor who didn't seem to understand my situation or me at all. I'm guessing they weren't used to having teenagers with rare chronic pain conditions that forced them into depression, so can't say I blame them very much for that. I was released fairly quickly but nothing truly got done so I went home in the same state as I left except with the shadow of guilt involved with leaving loved ones to motivate me.  There was still the result of even more school being missed so at this point it become apparent I wouldn't pass some of my courses. With the help of the guidance office I picked courses to drop so I could focus on the rest of them. With the assistance of the Facebook note sharing group my friend made for me I passed those chosen courses (barely in most cases) but would not be able to return to all those that helped me at the Hebrew high school for the rest of my high school years.

       The summer of 2011 was a very important year for my age group at camp. It was the year when my age group from Canad goes to Israel with the same aged group from the sister camp in America for most of the summer. We had already met and been in contact with our friends at the sister camp and pretty much all of out interactions had been hyping up this summer. In fact, pretty much every year at camp you get hyped up about this trip and how it will be the best thing you will ever experience. Accepting that I have to instead sit at home in pain while all of my camp friends were in Israel and all of my school friends were at camp was very difficult. I had spent a year collaborating with my councilors on ways to make me going to Israel work out but a repeat of my family's trip to Israel is the last thing I could bear at that point. With my prospects of a fun summer obliterated I instead subjected myself to summer school at a small private school to try to catch up. Unfortunately most (not all) of the people at summer school are those who were too lazy to get their work done during the normal school year and so were people I had nothing in common with. T'was a summer of loneliness and disappointment.

We All Fall Down

     Before grade 10 began my extended family took a trip with my family to Israel for my sister and cousin's joint bat mitzvah. This proved to be disastrous for me. Hours upon hours of mandatory walking made it impossible for me to enjoy even a second of it. I eventually gave up and stayed in whatever room we were staying in while everyone else went to the top of Masada. A certain individual (not here to name and shame) berated me for not being a part of the family on this very special trip. This darkened my mood significantly. Up to that point I had participated in everything and it was simply too painful to continue. As if I didn't feel bad enough for missing out, they insisted it made me a worse person to have done so. I don't totally blame them because even I didn't entirely understand my situation yet so how could those around me? I was playing games on the computer while I waited for the rest of the family's excursion to end so it did seem like I was choosing my computer over the family, but this simply wasn't the case. Regardless, these encounters made me spiteful and angry which added to my depressed/miserable mood. 

   If I had to pick a time where I think things really started falling apart for me it would be 10th grade. I took on too much and paid the price. 10th grade would be my last year at a private herbrew school that has its students take 11 courses at once in three different languages. It's a challenge in itself, but when you're missing as much school as I did it becomes nigh on impossible. This coupled with the experimentation of different medications by my psychiatrist would prove too much. Things were much the same as the previous year where I would force myself to go to school regardless of exhaustion and pain. The pivotal moment of realization for both the school and myself that things weren't working out occurred in a music class. At this point in time I was on a number of medications that evidently I was unable to tolerate. I'd be dizzy whenever I stood up, and at the end of class, when I did so, I fainted. Everyone, including myself, was pushing me to go to school and not give up. Obviously I was pushed too far. The school called an ambulance as is procedure and I was taken to the hospital. It made me feel awful. I'd been convincing myself that making it to school was a victory but even when I did my medical problems brought me right back out. I got talking with the administration and we agreed it would be best for me to drop some courses and try to finish the year; after which I'd need to figure my situation out if I were to realistically continue at Hebrew school. Something good did come out of the fainting incident though, a friend of mine at school noticed how much trouble I was having and he took it upon himself to come up with a Facebook group for my grade to take part in. In this group everyone could share notes on the many classes I missed to help me get the marks to pass, and so he named it Marks for Mitch. It actually still exists to this day even though I no longer attend Hebrew School, for it evolved into a group where the whole grade shares notes with each other and everyone benefits. Even after switching schools I would still check in every now and then to see what people are up to.

   Changing medication is always a risk so even with the fainting incident we hoped it was isolated and that it wouldn't happen again. Of course we were wrong. I went to a winter camp over winter break that year and slept through most of it, but even with the sleep I needed I encountered another crisis. I found myself experiencing a common side effect of medication, a dry throat, but this dry throat wasn't alleviated by drinking water. I was downing cup after cup but my throat stayed extremely soar. I must have been close to 10 cups when I became alarmed and called my dad. As the phone was ringing and I was hurrying upstairs to go somewhere quiet, someone ran through a door I was next to and accidentally slammed it in my face. This proved to be the straw that broke the Mitch's back for I fainted again. At the hospital they said I have a minor concussion, but also that I was probably about to faint anyway thanks to the medication; the door to the face just sped it up. Finally, we got rid of that medication and tried stronger stuff like codeine, which gave me some relief but at an even greater price.

    By early 2010 I wasn't myself anymore. The happy, energetic, child I was was gone and replaced with a depressed, drugged, frustrated teenager version of me. I developed amnesia from the stronger medication and my mind was slower. The temporary relief Codeine brought allowed me to make it to school more often, but I couldn't think properly. If you've ever been on narcotics for an extended period of time you know what I'm talking about. Your mind becomes cloudy; you think and even speak slower. The other problem with narcotics is that they're are addictive and tolerance to their effects builds fast, so the dosage had to keep being raised. Now I felt not only physically but mentally chained. I became suicidal. What would then occur was a perfect storm of trouble for someone having suicidal ideation: a very bad day. First off, I woke up and was in even worse pain than usual, but also as usual I forced myself to go to school. Then we were watching a movie in hebrew class, in which one of the characters kills themselves while in a Nazi prison. It brought all my dark thoughts up at once and so I immediately got picked up from school by family friends (my parents were busy) to get away from the terrifying thoughts. I couldn't afford to spend another day without catching up on work so I decided to watch a different seemingly tame movie for English class: Dead Poet's Society. If you've seen that movie you know where this is going. Unfortunately (spoilers) the main character in that movie also kills themselves. At this point I flipped out and broke down so my family friends took me home (I was watching the movie with them at their house). So now I'm home alone, in agonizing pain, with my mind in a very dark place, A perfect storm, indeed. All of my medications for each week is kept in a little plastic container with a slot for each day. Dozens upon dozens of pills. I took them all...