I am still as depressed as before. From what I have learned about chronic pain, I will be battling my depression at its' current level for the rest of my life. But I have some important things to say and I need to push past my mental illnesses to say them.

It is only through the grace of God that I have decided to go back to school, or at least stick around to fight for others in chronic pain. Most in the medical system and in the psychiatric system have written me off as "untreatable." And even though I was escorted to the ER by police and paramedics because people here feared for my safety (and rightly so), I was led to believe via my hospital file that I was not wanted there. I wheeled out of the ER unopposed and was allowed to go on my "merry" way. No one tried to stop me. They sent an ambulance after me just to ask if I had everything I needed. After a one-word answer, they went back to the hospital Another person would have killed themselves. And I did try to do so in my own way until I realized that the medical and psychiatric systems had no idea of how to deal with chronic pain patients, let alone one with a disability. Both systems had treated me like manure with no sense of remorse. They are/were incompetant. I have known such incompetance before, but it has reached new heights in the past two months.

Let me tell you just how incompetant they are. They left me unguarded in the ER. They had been told I saw everything around me as a means of death. Although they had punched a hole in a plastic bag to prevent my using it, they left a roll of tape with me that I could have used to repair it. Perhaps they wish to see if I was genuinely suicidal. And they left a patient on a stretcher to witness an attempt to end my life. When told what happened, the psychiatric resident showed no concern whatsoever. She finally snapped at me: "Pull yourself up. I can't do it for you!" (This outburst encapsulates the medical profession's whole approach to me as a chronic pain patient.) I've had the audacity to see doctors with a medical condition that as far as most of them know, can't be proven and can't be cured. But my pain condition has been proven and I have better pain control than many chronic pain sufferers (no thanks to the doctors.) But the emotional devastation chronic pain causes has remained untouched at best and at worst, it isdeteriorating. I was in that ER to ask for help with the depression which is linked to the chronic pain. My depression came years before and has other causes, but because of that link, I have been written off as uncurable.

Because of my physical disability from birth, my life is seen as having little to no value to begin with. A suicide on my part would be seen by society as valid, even without the chronic pain. It could even become a national issue. It is seen as perfectly normal for someone in a wheelchair to want suicide and few would interfere with what they would see as a "free and willing choice" on my part to die. I have been told this to my face. (I have to wonder why able-bodied depressed people are not allowed that "choice". What makes suicide for a disabled person "valid"? Would they leave an able-bodied person with depression to jump off a bridge as I have been "left"? It is frightening to be left to fight a deadly mental illness on one's own and to know that if I was found half-dead after an attempt, no one would revive me. The mental health system in Ontario will not confine a person with a mental illness unless they are a danger to themselves or someone else. And it appears that the system will not act to protect me from myself unless I am found dead or half-dead.)

Life in chronic pain has important implications for someone with a disability. I was in the pro-life movement before my chronic pain diagnosis. I believe that what I have learned there has important implications for people with chronic pain. My life with a disability also gives me valuable insights. I have far less physical and emotional resources at my command than most, if not all, other users of this website and yet I am the one who has decided to go back to school or at least start an organization to fight for better treatment for chronic pain sufferers.

I have suffered much in my life due to cerebral palsy. Yet it was chronic pain that broke my will to live. Contrary to what many believe, chronic pain is not an inevitable consequence of cerebral palsy or even a symptom of it. But prejudice around my handicap, plus poverty and lack of political power, means that my chronic pain will be treated far less aggressively than for someone with no other handicaps. This pain condition has devastated my life, my friendships, my intellect and my faith in God and humanity. in ways that cerebral palsy never could. That alone is reason enough to go into pain management studies. I refuse  to believe that my life is over because of my chronic pain. I have felt myself as good as dead for the past seven years. Every day, my depressed mind tells me that there is no real purpose to be served in my contnuing to live, as continuing to live means continued pain. But I've had a premonition for years that if I ended my life, it would mean disaster and death for many others. I have nothing to base this on, I am nobody of significance, but it is this belief that has sustained me through seven of the worst years of my life. This belief and two others. One is my faith in God, the other being that God is allowing me to suffer the way I am for a good reason. If I ever come through this depression, I will devote my life to helping people with chronic pain and people with disabilities. I thought for years that I should not speak out to people in chronic pain unless I had a cure in hand. I worried that if I wrote about what I had seen in the medical system in trying to treat my chronic pain, I could drive many people in pain to suicide. I didn't realize that MANY people in pain knew what I knew, but most lack the courage and strength to speak out.

Even as I write this, I realize that there will never be a cure for my physical pain, nor likely for the depression, but I must fight to ensure people with this hellish condtion get better treatment than to be abandoned, told to go home and learn to live with the pain, or called drug addicts. I do not have the manual dexterity to be a surgeon, but I find what people with this condition need most is emotional or psychiatric support. You cannot fight a battle when all hope is lost. And people in pain are at war. They are at war with their pain. And as the pain comes from their bodies, it can be hard to believe that they themselves are not the enemy.

To be quite honest, it would seem that people in chronic pain are also at war with the medical and psychiatric system. Often they must fight just to get someone to believe that their pain is real. I've had to fight to convine them of my desperation and was told "You don't look desperate enough". I am still as desperate as ever.

Emotionally, I am little better off thsn when I first wrote you. My antidepressants haven't had time to work yet. (It was a new prescription. I went off them before they had a chance to work. I was off them for a month and went back on them of my own free will.) I am well aware that I will likely be grappling with the issue of suicide for the rest of my life. But why should I pay for the medical system's incompetance, ignorance and lack of compassion with my life? Why should others have to pay?

I am broke and live in poverty. I must drink energy drinks just to fight bone-numbing fatigue (the morphine doesn't make me drowsy.) I don't know how much pain I am will be in from one hour to the next. I don't even know if I will live another decade, so precarious is my condition. But the future of people in chronic pain could be riding on me. My actions could mean a great deal....not a cure, but certainly a lot more can be done to improve the situation. If God put me on this earth to help other people in chronic pain, I'm confidant things will work out.