Desperation is the Death of Reason

     My first visit to the naturopath started off pretty well. His office was littered with pseudo-science hogwash, but he seemed intelligent enough. He used some sort of machine that ran along my spine to test its tightness, and sure enough it showed tightness that corroborated with where I felt it. He then went to work on my back and legs, loosening muscles here, pressing on nerves there. I was suffering from a bout of sharp leg pain at the time, and after he did whatever he did that sharpness was gone for about 15 minutes but the dull ache remained. Nevertheless, it seemed pretty promising so I booked a follow up appointment. As you may have noticed from before, I said that my interactions with him “started off” well. The implication that it ended badly is correct. This is because my second appointment was nothing like the first. For starters, it wasn’t private like the first one was. When I arrived there were nearly 20 people all lying on massage tables throughout a room. I was led to mine, and my worries at that point proved warranted. He treated 20 people at the same time in the only way that is possible for one person, by going from patient to patient only spending 15 seconds on one before moving on the next. In total we each got a minute or two of time spent on us for the half hour appointment we paid for, because naturopaths aren’t covered by the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. It goes without saying I didn’t get any of the relief I did in my first visit, and so I stopped seeing him then and there. I still wonder how much bank he was rolling in by treating 20 patients at a time.

       The osteopath was a little more competent. He essentially acted as a chiropractor, physiotherapist, masseuse, and naturopath all in one. He too focused a lot on my spine and gave me certain exercises to do at home. At first it seemed like there was improvement, but over time I came to the realization it was just a coincidental fluctuation in pain. The only real benefit I was getting was from the massage aspects and I already had a good masseuse for that. I decided there was no point in continuing to see him, and him raising his prices didn’t help matters. Like the physiatrist, he espoused the benefits of an epidurolysis procedure and told me the name of which doctor he recommends that preform them. When I looked up the doctor online I had saw a lot of people were extremely upset about doing the expensive procedure, saying how their pain got worse rather than better. This gave me the impression the surgery made problems worse just as often as it helped. Even this wasn’t enough to disinterest me from trying it at the time.  This is because I still held the belief that if I didn’t find more pain relief I than I was getting I would eventually once again decide the only escape is suicide. Essentially for me, any risk was better than the status quo. I now know how wrong I was, because I now know what the source of my health issues are. I discovered from the doctor who eventually diagnosed me that the procedure would have been not just expensive and ineffective, but devastating for my body vulnerable. Furthermore, as details about the doctor who was recommended to me emerged, I found out he does the procedure for anyone who has the cash, regardless of if he thinks it will help them or hurt them. This brought my dad and myself to the conclusion that there was a bit of a referral racket going on between the physiatrist, the osteopath, and the surgeon in the U.S. They probably received kickbacks from each other for bouncing patients like me between them. We can’t prove this, but it is the most plausible explanation of their reckless disregard for patient safety. My personal lesson learned is that desperation is often the death of reason.

Summer Sleeps

      Now that the sleep doctor had seen how much my pain was interfering with my sleep he started prescribing me medications to help my brain relax. There were improvements right away but changing a sleep schedule as abnormal as mine takes time. Slowly, minute-by-minute, I normalized my schedule. Eventually I was able to start classes at 11 am rather than 2 pm, which while still isn’t even close to normal is clearly far better. As my sleep improved, so did my marks. Finally I felt like my mental functioning was returning, being on morphine and other sedating medications not to mention being stuck in a hospital for so long had put me out of practice.

     It was summer, which meant it was time for camp once again. This was my first year as a staff member, and I was assigned to be a counselor for the kids in grade 6. This is nerve-wracking in itself but I was worried about how it would play out in terms of my health issues.This was a rather tricky business, since I was still often waking up around lunchtime. It was a tragedy to miss every breakfast and all the accompanying pancakes. Thankfully I was assigned to a group of 3 other counselors so hopefully my missing of the mornings wasn’t a bigger problem than I noticed. Other health accommodations I needed were provided for me, a big one was being exempt from being required to sleep in the same cabin as the kids I was in charge of. There were two other counselors in that cabin, so that also wasn’t too much of an issue I hope. When an empty cabin was available I would sleep there, but when it wasn’t I was allowed to sleep with the adult specialists in a small house on the campgrounds. There were very considerate about not waking me up at night and  I was able to function pretty well given the circumstances. Sure, I couldn’t go on the canoe trips or play the sports, but I felt like I had a good presence. Even with all my accommodations the increased amount of walking required from at being camp took its toll, even more so than usual due to my added responsibilities as a counselor. I was able to stay for the last 2 weeks, but only by taking a break 3 weeks through the summer (the halfway point) and going home for a week to rest up. I came back refreshed, and all things considered had a pretty fun summer.
    I dreaded being judged for things out of my control and so before camp gave a little explanation of my situation to the current staff. I explained that I take lots of pills at night and so will be really out of it for about an hour before going to bed. I mentioned that there are a lot of physical things I can't do and so if I am asked for help I might need to refuse but not out of a lack of wanting. Finally I said that just being at camp is far more walking from place to place than I'm used to and so I may get occasionally grouchy or exhausted from pain spikes. I was received warmly and didn't have many issues that I noticed with my co workers in that respect. Another challenge is that the kids I had were 11-12 years old who like to run around a lot. When they wouldn't go to where they were supposed to I would sometimes feel the need to chase after them which would aggravate pain levels. Despite the difficulties, I had a great time and found being a counselor manageable with some adjustments along the way to the next year.

  
   I also started looking for new solutions for alleviating my pain; after all, my psychiatrist stubbornly insisted there was still hope. As a start I began getting weekly massages. This may sound like a pleasant, relaxing experience, but you’d be surprised at how untrue that is for me. As I now know, due to my defective connective tissue my muscles locked in place to compensate. Untightening those muscles to that degree is quite painful, particularly the hip flexors. Despite that it is still very worthwhile to get even a short relief from my locked tendons, even though they inevitably get just as tight again after a few days of use.

     The next specialist I saw was a physiatrist on the recommendation of my psychiatrist. When he examined me he got me to do something he called the Slump Test, though it is more commonly known as the Straight Leg Raise Test. It involved me sticking out my legs while sitting down in the straight line of a 180-degree angle. I was then told to lean forward, which caused my leg pain to get worse to a great degree, but this was followed with immediate relief once I put my legs back down. This is supposed to be a sign of neurological hyper-sensitization, because it positions your spine in such a way that it will cause pain for people with neurological issues but none for those without. This essentially just showed my nerves were firing when they weren’t supposed to, causing something he called neurological tension. He had five potential solutions for me to try. First I tried acupuncture, which had no effect except making me really tired. I literally fell asleep on the table while they were sticking needles in me. The next idea was a pain medication called Cesamet. This is a synthesized THC pill (THC being the main active ingredient in marijuana.) The pills didn’t reduce my pain, but they did make it bother me less. The physiatrist also told me of a procedure called Epidurolysis, which in simple terms involves the flushing the spine. Here’s the short official explanation: “Epidurolysis procedure is used to loosen and dissolve some of the scar tissue from around entrapped nerves in the spin, so that medications such as cortisone can reach the affected areas, and so that scar tissue is less painful.” He said that they only preform this procedure in the US, and that it is quite expensive. To my then desperate self it felt like a miracle solution, and I was eager to try anything and everything to alleviate my pain. As a doctor himself, my dad was more skeptical. We put it on the back burner for the time being. Lastly, the physiatrist referred me to an osteopath and naturopath colleague of his. I booked appointments with both immediately.

Depressed or Miserable?

   With my recent hospital discharge and my online careers course 'training wheels' complete it was time for me to get back toschool for realsies. I knew going back to my previous normal high school wasn't an option. I would need something more accommodating. My brother had taken a summer course at a small private school with very flexible hours, so that seemed like a good place to try.  At this point my sleep schedule was so out of whack I had to start classes at 2 pm, but the system worked. Unfortunately it's rather inconvenient for other important things, like having a social life, to switch schools in grade 10. I was leaving all the friends I had been with since nursery school and didn't really have the opportunity to make new ones since the only way my crazy sleep schedule would work is if I took private classes. Even when I switched to regular classes there were only a few kids maximum. I had also come to realize there were only two types of students at this school. There were those with some sort of life crisis who needed accommodations. Sometimes it involved health issues like with myself, other times a parent dying, etc. If you didn't have to switch to this school because of a crisis, chances are  (though not with everyone!) you had to switch because you are a poor student who needs to be watched closely to get any work done. As someone who fought like hell for the chance to be back in school I had trouble getting close to these students and didn't really look to them as new friend material. Speaking of social life inconveniences, having to start school at 2 pm wasn't helping things so I got referred to a sleep doctor specialist.

     To see what exactly was going on with my sleep I had a sleep study done. Sleep studies require you to sleep over at the doctor's clinic and are rather unpleasant. Why are they unpleasant? Well, for starters, they involve dozens of electrodes being glued all over you. Just putting them all on takes half an hour and they all have wires leading to a receiver box placed next to your bed which severely restricts your movement. Every time you need to go to the bathroom they have to unplug and re-plug most of the wires while carrying the rest with you. After you're all set up they make you go to bed at 10 pm; even with the knowledge there would be no way I would actually fall asleep before 2 am. Not only is simply lying there for so long excruciatingly boring, it was horribly uncomfortable due to all the god damned electrodes and of course my pain. That wasn't even the worst part, not even close. The worst part is they make you wake up at 7 am despite the fact if I woke up before 2 pm I would be so fatigued I couldn't hold a conversation. It gets worse because they make you stay until the early afternoon so they can do what they call a series of daytime sleepiness tests. This entails filling out a bunch of forms gauging how shitty you're feeling and then trying to fall asleep for half an hour 5 times throughout the day. Despite me being unable to properly describe how exhausted I was, I didn't fall asleep once. This happened for the same reason naps were at the time never an option for me, that reason being the pain. My pain was so severe it was impossible for me to fall asleep without the aid of many sedating medications. Since I don't take those medications during the day, I couldn't fall asleep despite my fatigue, which is what the study results confirmed.

     The results also showed that I was having what they call an "arousal" about every 14 minutes throughout the entire night. Before you ask, no this isn't a sexual arousal, you pervert. It means your body has reached the surface of sleep. It basically means waking up except it only lasts a few seconds and you usually aren't conscious and won't remember it. Obviously, if your body reaches the surface of sleep every 14 minutes for the entire night every night, you aren't going to be getting much deep sleep. This also explains why the results showed my REM (Rapid Eye Movement) deep sleep was far less than what is normal. The assumed reason I woke up every 14 minutes was that my pain was preventing me from falling into a deep sleep. Go figure, but unfortunately it wasn't like we hadn't already tried everything we could think of to reduce the pain. I had just got off morphine for Christ's sake! Anyway, to sum it all up: how could I not be constantly fatigued with results like that? Apart from the obvious chronic pain problem, the doctor's diagnosis was Phased Delay Syndrome. This disorder essentially just involves your biological body clock being completely thrown off. Getting it back on track is a long tedious process that involves slowly shifting your sleep schedule night by night. Well, I had to start somewhere.

   In a very interesting turn of events the sleep doctor also gave his opinion that I wan't depressed, merely miserable, which was a very unpopular opinion at the time. He said that anyone in my situation would be miserable, and that the goal is all about improving my quality of life to improve my mood. Of course being miserable for an extended period of time puts someone at risk of depression, but they aren't the same thing. Being sad or miserable is both not necessarily chronic and is usually in direct response to some sort of problem you have. In contrast depression is the problem itself and can continue even when the supposed problem is solved. Sometimes there's not even a discernible problem at all.  I agreed with the sleep doctor's assessment. After all I had been fighting to keep my focus on my pain issue rather than my supposed mood issue every step of the way. It raises an interesting question: do you need to be depressed to attempt suicide? Surely every human has his or her breaking point for something like pain. Does exceeding that point and then seeking to end the pain automatically mean you're depressed?  Depression is by definition a mood disorder. A healthy mind gets sad when something bad happens, which is a very simplified version of the situation but definitely isn't disorderly. When someone can't take their pain anymore and their pain is so severe that they can no longer enjoy life, is it not a logical and rational response to end the pain in the only way available? Even if that sole escape is ending one's own life? I thought so, though I was perhaps slightly biased on the matter.

Outrunning The Past

   During my stay in the hospital some of my family members gave me books to pass the time. One such book was Unbroken, a true and harrowing World War Two story of resilience. If it sounds familiar it's because they just released a movie adaption of it. If you are planning on reading or watching it and want to avoid spoilers feel free to skip to the end of this paragraph. As a book about resilience and the will to survive I imagine it was gifted to me on purpose for inspiration during my darkest times. And it gave me some, at first. The main character Louis is a bomber pilot that gets shot down over the Pacific Ocean. Using an inflatable raft, he survives sharks, the sun, and starvation for over 40 days. On one of these days he made a promise to god that if he made it through this ordeal he will always be his loyal servant. Two of his comrades were with him, and one of them died while at sea. Eventually, they got spotted and captured by the Japanese. After being tortured for information Louie was sent to a particularly brutal prisoner of war camp where he was singled out by a sadistic Japanese officer. Louie survived all of this, barely. At first glance it seemed like a good source of inspiration for me right? Well, the problem was the ending. Louie kept the promise to god he made while stranded at sea and became a born-again preacher after returning home. Now I have nothing against those who choose to follow a religion, but it is simply not for me. Turning to god to make sense of the horrible experiences you've had to endure can be a great coping mechanism when faced with tragedy, but it's never something I will be capable of doing and so I couldn't help but feel a little cheated after finishing reading the story.
 
    Books weren't the only gifts I received from my concerned family.  Earlier on in my extended hospital stay a family member drew pictures traced from actual photographs of happier moments in my life from both before and after I got sick. These moments ranged from eating at a favourite restaurant to my bar mitzvah, the pictures were captioned with the message "Remember all the good times... and the good times yet to come."
The first time I looked at the drawings was extremely emotional. It forced me to confront the unconformable but important truth that in my efforts to end my own pain I was creating more of it for those who cared for me to bear. The optimism of the message was so conflicting with what I felt at the time that I would often simply stare at the line, "And all the good times yet to come," for minutes at a time. I think I was waiting for the moment that I felt the same hope for my future that others did. The drawing now sits next to the door in my room so that I see it whenever I walk out. It will always be a reminder of the darkest pits that I came from, and the highest heights to which I'm going.

 
 





    During one of my last few days in the psych ward I experienced a migraine like no other. I had brought my Game of Thrones book with me but couldn't even think about attempting to read it. I lowered all the blinds in the room because even the tiniest speck of light was blinding. I curled up on a sofa chair, put a blanket over my head, and laid there for literally 4 hours. I must have looked especially wretched because all the super strict staff left me alone for once. At that point it seemed like some godly force was just trying to cram as many bad experiences into my time in the psych ward as physically possible. It was a fitting send off for my final trip home.

   The car ride of my homecoming was an emotional one. I could finally say the worst part of my journey so far, and hopefully forever, was behind me. This milestone moment of course called for listening to a relatable song, aptly named: Setting Sail, Coming Home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDflVhOpS4E
Unfortunately escaping your past involves more than just psychically removing yourself from it. I learned this from the many nightmares that would come even while sleeping in my own bed. Most of the nightmares would focus on a single specific moment, the moment I woke up from my coma following my suicide attempt. Re-experiencing that moment was torture both physically and mentally. Physically I would compare what I felt to the mythical creatures known as Banshees. If you don't know, banshees are spirits of those who have died that have been ripped from the peace of death to roam the physical world. Their weapon is their voice which wails in pain and confusion, horrifying and incapacitating all those who hear it. Their cries are fueled by the feeling of being ripped from the underworld, or in my case a coma, back into a reality with the chronic pain I've endured for years. If you don't remember the specifics, after waking up in the intensive care unit the first thing I did was start crying and ask the doctors and family starting at me with concern "Why am I alive?!?" I imagine that is about as close in reality to an undead banshee wailing as you can get. Living through this moment once was hard enough, reliving it every night even in the supposed safety of my own bed took its toll. It also made me realize that the past cannot be forgotten so easily. If I couldn't erase the bad memories, I would simply have to use my new-found freedom to replace them with good ones.

The Battle but Not the War

   As I began moving towards some semblance of my previous life I found myself stuck in a rather awkward situation. Reconnecting with my friends and family made me feel like I was leading a double life. The general assumption people had was that I was feeling better than I was before. This was both true and a lie all at once. I didn't have to sleep at a hospital most of the time, which was obviously better than before. I was getting back to school again, though which much difficulty. I wasn't on morphine, and so regained the ability to reason enough that I knew 1+1 doesn't equal fish. I wasn't actively trying to bring about my own death (though it was always on my mind) which I think we can all agree was an improvement. And yet, despite all this, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was exactly where I was just before my suicide attempt. My pain wasn't any better, and we still didn't have a clue what the hell was wrong with me. One might focus on my mental state and say that's what was important. Maybe it was, but I felt doomed to repeating a cycle of being unable to bear my unrelenting pain any longer and losing my mind every year or two. I felt that as long as my pain remained untouched my mind would inevitably crack under the pressure which made the whole "recovery" thing seem rather pointless. So my friends would ask me, "How are you doing?" and I'd say, "Better," because what else am I supposed to say? "Well, friend, I think I've got about 12 months before I disappear  again due to a third suicide attempt. I seem to be closer to the mark every time I try so I'm sure it'll work out one of these days. But no, I'm fine for now, really. Where are you going? Please put down the phone, no, no need to call the cops." See? Like I said: awkward situation.

    Let's be clear here though. When you have a debilitating chronic illness such as mine, suicide isn't an impulsive decision. I didn't say, "Well, today was more than I could handle, time to take all these pills." No, it is something that is built up to over months and years. It's a thought of escape that gnaws at your mind with increasing occurrence. Every time I felt so shitty that I'd rather be dead, the thought and ideation of death becomes more familiar. Death, and the lack of pain or joy it brings, eventually becomes a constant companion. It becomes something that brings you more comfort than fear. Despite this, no matter how far your will has broken, a part of you reflexively fights these thoughts, screaming at you to live. It's something built into all of us biologically. With a chronic debilitating condition this innate will to live crumbles over time until instead of a scream it manifests itself as a barely audible whisper. Also built into our bodies is a reflex to avoid pain since in most cases pain represents an imminent danger. Ironically in my specific situation pain is itself most of the danger, but the reflex to avoid it remains. So you've got two opposing biological and psychological forces: the will to live and the need to avoid pain. This kind of war does not take place over days or weeks. In fact, a part of me felt the tide begin to turn against life as early as the summer of 2010. I was at summer camp, which of course involves extensive amounts of walking and therefore extensive amounts of pain. This tipped the mental balance to favour the need to avoid pain and in tearful desperation I called a suicide hotline. I was only 15 and had never done such a thing before so I didn't really know what to expect. The man who picked up the phone seemed almost as desperate as me, because there wasn't much he could say to comfort me. I explained my situation and it clearly wasn't one he was familiar with. I was a teenager at camp with a mystifying chronic pain condition, so there wasn't much reassurance he could give me. He suggested I talk to my parents and asked if I would be fine and I decided I would be, for awhile at least. I found venting to someone who didn't know me and so couldn't possibly judge me was therapeutic. It didn't make me feel any less physically shitty, but the venting helped. Unfortunately a camp staffer saw me on my phone and told me I wasn't allowed to use it and needed to go to the activity that was going on. I imagine all they saw was a kid skipping out on stuff to break the no phone calls rule. I suppose that is exactly what I was doing, but this just goes to show when you know someone is hurting physically and/or mentally the benefit of the doubt can go a long way. That interaction upset me somewhat, but with some Advil and rest I made it through the day. The battle was won, with my will to live emerging as the victor. Unfortunately, as I learned, battles and wars are different things entirely.

The Slippery Road to Recovery

    Before starting this chapter I want to introduce a new idea I had for this blog that will help convey my thoughts and feelings of the moments I write about with sounds as well as words. As I'm sure you all know music can be a great coping mechanism for tough times. I personally am the time of person who listens to music they relate to and therefore am constantly changing that music based on my thoughts and feelings at the time. My idea for the blog is to link songs that I listened to in the time period I am writing about to allow for a better understanding of the state I was in at the time. I realize this idea won't interest everyone and so feel free to simply skip the link and accompanying contextual words when I choose to include them and read the blog as you normally would. In regards to my first example, if you've been following along you know that I'm currently writing about a very dark period in my life. As a result the music I listened to during my stay in the psych ward was rather dark and gloomy. Here's one such song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N3N1MlvVc4

Previously: I started having sit-downs with my doctors and parents.

     Something that everyone involved in my care could at least agree on was that my pain, whatever the cause, was preventing me from having even a half-decent sleep. This led to my psychiatrist adding some additional sleeping medications which became a turning point in my road to recovery at the hospital. He had started me on antidepressants some weeks after taking me off all my medications at once but my mood wouldn't improve as long as my sleep remained at such poor quality. Thankfully the new medication worked and it no longer took me hours to fall asleep at night. The quality of sleep still sucked, but it was a start.

     My parents visited once again and this time were allowed to bring my only few months old puppy with. Seeing her again was pretty emotional for me because before I purposefully overdosed she was the only living thing I could say goodbye to without being stopped from taking all those pills. It was to the point where for months whenever I saw her I would have flashbacks of what I thought at the time was my last goodbye. I understood these were ghosts that needed to be confronted eventually and would simply have to make new, fresh, and more pleasant memories with her to replace the sad one. 

    I continued to meet with my parents and doctors because I wouldn't be able to return home until some kind of mutual understanding was reached. I spoke of events in the past that show I am the type of person who is their own best motivator. If I can do something I'll do it without urging, whether it be physiotherapy or getting to school. If I'm not doing something that is expected of me that essentially means I can't do it whether it's because of pain, a bad night's sleep, or both. Therefore, urging me to do something like go to school on a bad pain day by pleading, yelling, or coercion, is counterproductive. As someone who is motivated to do things like exercise or go out with friends I am already upset by not being able to to do these things very often in the first place. Others getting upset at me for not being able to do them as well simply adds stress to all parties which makes it harder to deal with my pain and fatigue and makes it harder for me to do the things everyone, including myself,  wants me to do. For a lot of people, especially teenagers, this isn't the case but I'm sure developing a debilitating illness at age 13 caused me to mature quickly in this regard. If anything I would push myself too hard and simply make my situation worse. Examples of this would be pushing myself to get to school despite feeling horrible and then fainting in class. Or going to school when I couldn't sleep at all the night before and falling asleep in class or in the hallway. These things aren't helpful and I had to be trusted to know my limits to prevent them from occurring. Many times this trust wasn't placed in me. There were many mornings when others were trying to wake me up for school that I would be made extremely uncomfortable until I was forced to get up. Methods for such acts included filling plastic baggies with ice water and dipping my feet in, tickling, or simply yelling that I'm wasting my life away. There's points here for creativity but it's wasted effort and counterproductive if I'm woken up just to faint in class or fall asleep in the hallway. This is why it was so important for there to be a mutual understanding between myself, my parents, my doctors, my teachers, and my friends. Focus needed to be put on improving my health so I could get myself to do the everyday activities of life rather than trying to have me do them before my health was improved and putting the cart before the horse. As the talks made progress it was decided I would have a sort of test run of normal life by being allowed to stay back at home on the weekends. There was still some inter-familial tension but no especially notable incidents.

   These long emotional talks did their job and the focus shifted to improving my sleep so I could increase my functioning. Improving the pain would have been ideal since the pain causes the sleep issues, but I had just come off of morphine and that hadn't exactly gone well. Playing with the dosages and types of sleeping medications for a little got me alert enough to be able to start preparing for a return to school. I hadn't been discharged from the hospital yet, so my options were limited to starting off slowly. I used their computer room to begin an online careers course, easy stuff to get me back in the swing of things. The course went well, and I had started to get my capacity for thought back after the dampening effect caused by morphine. My mood improving followed suit as my confidence to be able to think and work started to come back. The doctor was pleased with my marks, mood, and energy to the point where he said it was time for me to be partially discharged. I would be allowed to sleep at home every night again assuming all went well but would come back to the hospital during the day to continue my careers course. This also involved slowly transitioning back into having a social life as I began attending family shabbat dinners and explaining to close friends where I had been for the past few months. It had been a long hard journey both physically and mentally, but I was now in the home stretch. 

Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?

   It was soon time to meet start meeting with my parents and my psychiatrist together. This also meant the psych ward nurse started caring about my appearance. I had gotten my clothes and ditched the hospital gown, so next on the "Important Things for Me To Do List" was asking me to shave. Now I still wasn't what you would call a particularly "happy" person and so this request annoyed me a lot more than it should have. Surely they knew I was at such a point in my life where the last thing I could possibly care about was shaving. Maybe to them shaving simply gave the appearance I cared which is what mattered. Perhaps if I shaved enough they thought I would start to care. Regardless of their thinking, I was observant enough to know doing tasks like these without complaint assisted in getting you discharged sooner and so I complied. When I was done I was even more angry than before because as I stared into the mirror I saw a gaunt, pale, and hollow cheeked version of myself starting back. I thought, "Maybe if they did something about me throwing up everything I ate from morphine withdrawal shaving would've made sense." Consequently I had the appearance that I cared enough to shave but didn't care enough to eat or go in the sun. Mission accomplished, nurse.

   It was time to have the big sit-down with my parents and my new psychiatrist. It was very tense, and tears on both sides flowed frequently. My sour mood led me to being very frank in explaining my feelings as the psychiatrist wanted to get to the bottom of my attempt on my own life. I explained that too often I felt more was expected of me than I could preform. My pain and fatigue would keep me from family events, sports, and now even school. This alone was very depressing, but it became unbearable when others got angry with me for being unable to do these things I desperately want to do but simply can't. More than once I had been told to get back to school since I couldn't stay at home my whole life. Furthermore I had been given passive aggressive advice that it's simply a case of mind over matter and all that is required is the will to find a way. My psychiatrist supported me on some points, but any of these moments were eclipsed by my rage when he suggested I have a Conversion Disorder. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a mentally ill person converting their mental stresses into physical symptoms. This made absolutely no sense to me; the main reason being that I had no mental health issues until six months after my pain had started. I got sick, I had pain, I realized the pain wasn't going away, and then I got depressed. I did not immediately develop depression after my pain started. Sure, you could argue my pain started out from a physical source and continued due to mental stress conversion but that would still mean there's no easy fix for the pain. Regardless, I was still angry about going cold turkey on medications. He began putting me back on antidepressants but I stayed off any pain medication. I felt at the time this was because of the belief from others that the primary problem is in my head, rather than in my legs.

  Hostility and blame continued for a while. I think something I wrote about the situation at the time can explain my thoughts and feelings better than current reflection can, so here's a little note I wrote down back then that I'm unsure anyone other than me has ever seen:
"I want you to imagine a scenario where someone is suffering for four years. Suffering to the point where they can't take it. To the point where they don't enjoy life anymore, so they tried to kill themselves twice. They want to die. But despite what they want, all through those four years they've been trying their best for those they love, but those they love aren't satisfied. They want more than their best. So they give up, because what's the point in trying if their best isn't good enough. Now imagine how they person would feel. That's how I feel." This tension and fundamental disagreement on my mood and pain problems dominated these meetings. Everyone had a different opinion on the cause and effect and which came first, the chicken or the egg/which came first, the depression or the pain. My viewpoint was such that I normally wouldn't care what others think, but I felt that the difference of opinion would hamper finding a working treatment for my chronic pain. I knew that my pain led me to attempt suicide twice and so if we just focused on my mood rather than the pain inevitably a third attempt would occur. Paradoxically this realization disheartened me and darkened my mood further.