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.

Being Alone Together

   In the psych ward for adolescents there were two types of patients. Both types were miserable and wanted to get out; the difference was how they went about this goal. One group thought they could fight their way out. They broke the rules, fought with the patients and staff, and generally tried to be such troublemakers that they hoped the hospital would kick them out so they could leave. The other type of patient realized that the more antisocial you are the longer the psych ward will hold on to you. These patients kept their head down, smiled and nodded hen answering questions and did what was asked of them while waiting to be discharged. This is the group I belonged to. Most of the time, anyway.

   While most patients proved volatile enough to warrant avoidance, I made friends with two other patients around my age, one from each previously mentioned group. We bonded over what we had in common, namely our crummy situations. All of us were stuck somewhere we didn't want to be and didn't know anyone who was with us and in most cases didn't want to. We'd mostly sit on the floor playing cards or watch the TV that would always be playing Degrassi, my favourite show ever (not really, I hated it). Our little clique had a general, "Don't ask don't tell," rule where we silently accepted whatever the others were going through and didn't poke or prod about each other's dirty secrets. One was a girl who was quiet and friendly, but sad. She had been in the hospital longer than me and seemed very accepting of the situation she was in and so was waiting patiently for her release. The other was more angry than sad. Not at us or at herself, but at the staff. She would regularly have mental breakdowns involving fits of rage that required nurses and security personnel to restrain and sedate her. There was a special locked room that she would be put in until she calmed down. Failing that, the room had what looked like a bed featuring medical restraints. It doesn't sound very pleasant, and it didn't look that way either. On at least one occasion she was screaming that she wanted to go home but when the nurse grabbed her to put her in the room she started hitting them. The security guards were called and I glimpsed them holding her against a wall while the nurse injected her with a needle containing sedatives. The other patients including myself were always ushered into our rooms when these events started but we could hear the screaming and fighting even from there. There was one night where someone pounding against a wall was keeping me awake. The next day the girl had a cast on her hand. When we saw her the unspoken rule stayed in effect: don't ask, don't tell.

   Then there were the other patients; the ones who I avoided. Some were always looking for a fight and would channel their inner asshole until they found one. It didn't take much observation on my part to realize that fighting wasn't getting them out of the hospital any sooner and so I avoided such confrontations as best I could. Still... if you know me you know that sometimes I can't help myself. It was nothing physical, but one of these trouble making kids was being chastised by a staff member for making trouble. This staff was what I guess you would call my social worker, and he was always very soft-spoken and calm. He was also a really nice guy and by far my favourite staff member in the psych ward. The kid (a year or two younger than me) didn't apologize for whatever he was doing and responded by calling the staff member gay. The staff member asked why he was gay, and the kid said he's gay because he's weird. I assume that he thought he was weird because of how soft spoken and mild mannered he was. I asked the kid what's wrong with being gay and he proceeded to tell me what was weird about the social worker, in front of the social worker, as if that answered my question. The poor social worker seemed to appreciate my efforts but separated us before I we could escalate the situation, for which I am grateful. I've got to hand it to the kid though, because he was able to up himself by not returning to the hospital after his home leave ended. As is protocol the police were called and they apparently found him at a bus stop near his home heading to McDonald's or something. It was hard not to laugh when I saw him escorted by the police back into the psych ward, and the incident easily postponed his discharge for a month.

  The final notable patient was another kid a few years younger than me. He spent most of his time denying his use of drugs to the staff members and then bragging about his drug test being positive after they confronted him about his lying. He'd avoid mandatory activities as best he could, and when he found himself forced to participate he disrupted said activities to the best of his ability. One group activity that was repeated every week focused on our individual future goals. Boring stuff, especially since I personally don't change my future goals on a weekly basis. When I brought this up they told me to write them down anyway. Back to the kid, he seemed especially proud of his personal future goals. When it was his turn to discuss them he revealed to everyone's lack of surprise they involved smoking weed. When he was forced to re-imagine his future he changed it to the much more admirable goal of graduating middle school since he was apparently expelled from several schools for fighting people and using drugs and using drugs while fighting people. He later became my best friend ever. That was a lie, though I did eventually accept I would be spending the next few months of my life with this colourful character, and that is basically the same thing.
 

Out of Place

    The cards were set, the chips were dealt, and the Mitch was stuck. As I mentioned before, a psych ward is the last place you want to be when going through opioid withdrawal. They have very strict schedules and procedures. They don't have doctors but instead have staff who have had training in mental health, not in withdrawal and chronic pain. To make matters worse the worst night of my withdrawal happened to be the night when the worst nurse was on duty.

    My withdrawal symptoms had reached their peak. Sweating, vomiting, trembling. I spent the entire night vomiting into the tiny kidney basin they gave me then and cleaning it up. I wasn't allowed to turn the lights on to read or see where I was vomiting so I was stuck in the dark, bored and delirious. Eventually I quit this to go to the toilet instead, since I wasn't going to be able to sleep anyway. This was the usual routine, but the problem was the sheer amount of times I was vomiting. My stomach was starting to take some damage, and I started vomiting up blood. I felt a weird tenderness in my stomach and was worried I was going to get an ulcer if I kept vomiting. I felt an impending sense of doom for the second time in my life, the other being when I had swine flu and couldn't stop coughing to breath. If you're not familiar with this, it's a really weird feeling of dread that you're about to die, kind of like a panic attack but specifically about death. I left my room and went to the nurse for help. You can picture the nurse as a really old woman who hates her job. As she looked up at me when I walked up to her she immediately got a look of impatience on her face. I explained what was happening, but the nurse wasn't impressed. She told me to go back to my room and that vomiting is normal during withdrawal. I told her I know vomiting is normal but I was starting to vomit up blood and so need to see a doctor. She told me to show her the blood-vomit. I told her I can't because I flushed it down the toilet. She gave me this smirk that said, "I don't believe you," and once again ordered me back to my room. I pleaded and I begged to see a doctor to ensure I wasn't in danger all to no avail. I wanted to be in sight of an adult in case I really was in danger but also wanted to get out of my room because the stench of puke was overpowering. I asked if I could just sit outside the room she was in until the current bout of withdrawal receded but she denied me that as well. I went back into my room to endure withdrawal... alone.

    Nights were hard. Without my medications I couldn't sleep much. When I did, I had nightmares and flashbacks, mostly about myself waking up in the hospital from my coma. Specifically those first few seconds when I open my eyes and look around to see 4-6 doctors including my dad looking down at me concerned. Then the realization that I wasn't dead. The realization that my pain would continue, causing me to break down in tears and ask to no one in particular: "Why am I ALIVE?!?" This memory will stay with me forever, and I wonder if it even caused some form of post traumatic stress disorder. I'd have plenty of time to ponder such things as I laid awake in bed. Mornings would come, and I'd always be woken with everyone else at 8:15 AM. This is a big change from when I was waking up at 2 PM when I was at home, causing exhaustion to be my constant companion. I was still expected to partake in all the daily events. All the kids/teenagers would sit down with a counselor and talk about lovely things like our future goals and aspirations. We'd be forced to bake cookies and make coffee (not for us) and go just outside the ward to set up a stand in the hospital to raise money for the hospital. Thankfully they gave me back my normal clothes to replace the hospital gown before this.  We'd do certain sporty things that I couldn't take part in because of my legs, but that I still had to be present for. Some of the kids were real pieces of work that I managed to deftly avoid. It wasn't all bad though, because I managed to make a couple of friends. There's nothing that brings people together like being collectively stuck in a place you don't want to be.

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.