I live in Canada. I am praying for all of my brothers and sisters with chronic pain in the USA concerning the FDA. I know just how difficult it is with chronic pain. Mercifully, the doctors have believed me so far and not treated me like a drug pusher. Then again, I have a visible disability, cerebral palsy and lots of health problems to go with it. I have also had depression long before my pain diagnosis (please don't blame the wheelchair!)

I see yet another doctor on Monday. I had my first ever seizure a few weeks back. Seizures can happen with CP, but unfortunately, they were not part of my hefty medical chart until now. My primary doctor sent me to a specialist. My brain has a history of producing high levels of prolactin. One psychiatrist told me I had close to the highest levels of that hormone he had ever seen. Then he refused to treat my worsening depression unless I went off my morphine completely. I had to can this fellow and find another shrink and for some reason, he took me off the drug that was controlling my prolactin levels.

I am suffering from doctor overload. I have had to see many doctors in my short life. Some of them were the best in the world, but things went very wrong on two separate occaisions and I suffered greatly increased pain as a result of both mistakes. I have nerve damage from the knees down. Putting on my socks results in agony. A hip removal in 1992 led to my current bout with chronic pain. (Joints can dislocate with cerebral palsy and I had osteoporosis, so replacement wasn't an option) Because of my lousy luck with surgeons, I am very reluctant to see another doctor, but have no choice. I have regular flashbacks of my previous operations and every other horrible moment in my life, including 18 months in a psychiatric facility for the mentally retarded for God only knows what reason.

For the record, my parents are no longer involved in my life. They tried to forcibly institutionalize me last summer. They told my doctors, my friends and my support workers, but they didn't bother to tell me until my case manager phoned me. This last person was the one to tell me what my rights were. She also told me that my parents remarked to her "how much easier it is to get our daughter to do things when she is in pain."

I stripped my parents of Power of Attorney for this. My father tried to pressure me into playing ball and when I refused, I was basically kicked out of my family. They were very emotionally abusive to me growing up, but I suspect both parents have mental illnesses and I see mental illness as no reason to make a person more miserable than they already are.

I do not take well to displays of pity. I have known nothing else besides my wheelchair and its' resulting hardships. But I neither needed a chronic pain diagnosis or headaches and now, seizures. I am gulping down Tylenol faster than Wonka Gobstoppers. I have had headaches so bad, they literally send me into panic. I have had nine operations by the time I was 21, and some of them had complications, so I don't freak out easily. I do have severe depression obviously amplified by the chronic pain and it does lead to thoughts of death.