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...

A New Hope, A New Pain

     As you might imagine I was quite excited to hear what the Head Neurologist at Sick Kids would have to offer me. In my mind I was thinking of all the possibilities that would come out of it. Would he have a miracle cure, or would it just end up being another setback? Well, in the end, it was somewhere in between. He decided to preform a nerve conduction test on me. This basically consists of electrocuting me and monitoring how my nerves react. While uncomfortable, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. The test showed normal results which in truth isn't surprising, and here's why: my problem is that my I have constant nerve pain in my legs; this is a result of my nerves conducting too much. The test he did is meant to check whether I have the type of nerve damage that consists of numbness,which would be indicated if the nerves didn’t conduct during the test. Since I have the opposite of that problem, the results on the test appear normal, since the nerves are conducting more than they should rather than less. After obtaining his results the doctor confirmed the diagnosis of Post H1N1 neuralgia and told me that he expects my pain will simply vanish one day, when my nerves finally realize that there's no problem now that the swine flu virus is gone. The catch is he couldn't tell me when. That was three years ago, which puts me at three and a half years in pain without any substantial sign of it receding. With this spark of hope the doctor sent me on my way, and I haven't seen him since. This hope lasted me quite a while,but frankly it has mostly burned down back to a distant fantasy.

     Grade nine ended and I passed all my courses, but not without quite a struggle. A struggle that was not only physically taxing but mentally, and this is where things start getting dark. This is how my days went for that year: I'd go to bed, spend a couple hours awake because I'd only be able to fall asleep if I was exhausted due to the pain. Then I would wake up still exhausted because the pain wouldn't allow me to have a deep sleep. Later sleep studies would show that I have an arousal bringing me to the surface of sleep every 14 minutes throughout the night. Then I'd be expected to go to school in just as much pain as before but now I'm also exhausted which makes it impossible to keep that mental barrier between you and the pain standing. If I push myself I'm able to make it through the school doors. Great, I'm at school, but now I'm expected tolearn things?!? On average days I'd fall asleep in class, on good days I'd go to sleep in the hall using my bag as a pillow during lunch, on bad days I'd beg my parents to pick me up and take me home where I can at least try to distract myself from my pain and exhaustion. As you might expect my marks were decimated but they were the least of my worries. Subjects like math that require focus and extra thinking were especially difficult, for how can a fatigued and in pain person focus? In terms of specific numbers, I went from a 98 in grade 8 math from before I was sick to a 63 in grade 9 math after I was sick. As I mentioned before, while I persevered through these hardships, they took their toll. For a while no one wanted to admit it but it became clear to my doctors that I had slipped into depression,and booked an appointment with a psychologist who confirmed this. I was never totally convinced. I knew without a doubt I was miserable but that and depression are two very different things.

     So began the vain attempts at therapy. Most depressed teenagers are distraught by emotional factors while in contrast my trigger was simply physical pain. I knew one can't treat my "depression" without treating my pain. Of course the psychologist felt otherwise. She'd have me imagine myself on a beach, to close my eyes and relax. I hated this. Try to imagine how someone in pain feels when they try to close their eyes and relax. What they feel... is their pain. Only now it's worse because that's all you're feeling when your eyes are closed. Her next step was to play the sounds of the ocean waves to help me imagine my way to a beautiful beach. Great, now I'm on a beach in pain. Hardly a success. It simply doesn't work (for me). This fact was eventually realized we then tried a more practical approach, a psychiatrist. I was prescribed anti depressants such as Prozac among others, which at first made me feel a kind of artificial giddiness. I'd laugh at everything even though I didn't want to and didn't think it was funny. I'd jump from medication to medication, with each one either not working or having their own infuriating side effects. Some of them actually helped so I took the good with the bad and went on to tackle another year of camp.

It seemed each year of camp posed a different challenge. 2009 was the time immediately after I was sick which involved me learning my new limits. I would find myself running to play sports and immediately regretting it due to increased pain. 2010 was the year where I was depressed without having working antidepressants, and the rest will become clear in later posts, so back to 2009. At this point all my hope of a speedy recovery had evaporated and I found I couldn't enjoy anything from a combination of pain and sour moods. I'd take copious amounts of Advil because I'd convinced myself they helped (they didn't.) I'd sleep through half the day's events because at this points my sleep cycle was fucked up beyond all recognition, and I'd start walking with a cane just to be able to get around the camp. They weren’t the fun summers I'd remembered. I'd finally made it through that year of school and told myself camp would be my light at the end of the tunnel, that I could still at least have a great time there. When at every corner I was proved wrong I'd fall into fits of despair and call home crying because I couldn't take the pain of the increased activity associated with camp. One night my parents weren't picking up the phone and I absolutely needed reassurance so I found a spot where I could be alone and called Kids Help Phone for my first and only time. They were clearly a bit dumbfounded because I imagine most calls they get are from bullied/abused kids, not kids with chronic nerve pain. I knew that but I think I just needed someone else to remind me that hope is a thing that exists and it tided me over for awhile. Unfortunately no amount of reassurance can act as a painkiller and so eventually my pain built up to a point where I had to leave camp for a number of weeks, this would be the first year I would have to do so and I had to do the same for several years afterwards. This is how the summer ended and so began Grade 10.