So I posted a thread about my fiance a few months ago and some of her first suicide attempts because she has chronic back and neck pain from a car accident almost 2 years ago that she can't live with and can't get help because doctors don't believe her.
Thread Pt.1: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=833290
I was always there giving her full emotional support and trying to help as much as I could and then some, and a month after she got out of her clinical depression and though she was still in pain all the time, she was getting out, spending time with friends and happy, optimistic and coping.
Then in mid-August we were on a vacation and she had a grand-mal major 3-4 min convulsions seizure because of a pain medication she tried (Tramadol while being on Prozac + some coffee that day) in order to conserve her minimal vicodin prescription. This was her first seizure and it fucked up everything. The muscle soreness from the convulsions and falling on the ground caused her pain level to elevate to the highest it'd be in the last 2 years. She had to go from taking two 5mg vicodin/day to six per day to get through the pain. But burning through the prescription at 3x the amount prescribed was not going to lead to a good place.
Well she saw some docs and got an appointment with some pain doctors in the hopes one would be able to help her. Got her hopes up. One doc's first opening was a month away, one was a week away. She had 1.5 weeks worth of prescription vicodin left. She pinned all her hopes on the earlier one that had been recommended by a local doc as a very understanding and helpful pain doc.
In prep for the appointment and since I can't be there due to work, I work with one of her gps whose known her a while to produce a detailed 4 page "medical evaluation letter" signed by the doctor explaining the long history of her medical stuff since the accident because her injury is one of the 10-20% of injuries that don't show on the x-ray/mris (and why so many doctors had not taken her seriously and even accused her of being a drug seeker)
She goes and sees the doc and he's not there so they put her with his assistant. The assistant looks at her x-rays and mris and says she seems like a normal 21 year old girl, here's some tramadol. She says "did you even listen? Tramadol was what gave me a SEIZURE" and he's like oh whatever, here's some advil++, your test reports look fine. And she tells him of her suicide attempts, of having to take 11 extra strength tylenol at a time to even make a dent on the pain, of not sleeping, etc...she's like it's all in this doctor letter I gave you and...he doesn't even read the letter! He says he's not giving her narcotics because she's young and looks healthy to him and he literally walks out of the office.
[From what I've been able to figure out the cause of her chronic 11/10 constant pain is:
1) A bad whiplash healed improperly neck injury with reversal of the curvature of her neck spine along with shortening of her neck muscles which can be healed through physical therapy but since she's in so much pain she needs pain killers to even do any PT; and
2) her back pain which is even worse is likely Myofascial pain syndrome of a excruciating muscle knot in her mid-back near her spine that probably needs trigger point injections -> physical therapy after the knot has loosened and maaaybe even a good trigger point acupuncture could help loosen the knot.
But no doctor's been able to diagnose #2 and #1 they just say do PT but she can't without at least 1 pain killer before PT to be able to do the exercises, 1 after for the immediate pain and 1 at night to sleep and no one is willing to prescribe her 3 a day for a few months of PT.]
Anyhow, after having gotten her hopes up, been almost out of pain killers and in heightened pain from the seizure (plus the doctor squeezed on the trigger areas causing a flare up of even MORE pain), and the mental defeat of another doctor not believing her because she's young and looks generally ok in her xrays/mris and another doctor accusing her of just being a druggie...she gave up completely. She fell back into a depression, gave up on believing she'd ever get better or anyone would ever believe her and was really wanting to die. Instead to get through the night of intense chronic pain (since she couldn't sleep from it) she cut up her wrist with a knife so at least she could focus on her wrist pain and for once not be focused on her back/neck pain. Also she wanted the natural endorphin pain killer effect from a wound.
That was bad.
That was Tuesday.
Wednesday and Thursday were really hard (she'd stopped cold turkey even taking her last handful of vicodin because she didn't know if she'd ever get anymore, plus she hated herself and her life at this point and wanted to try to endure the pain). She hardly slept more than 4-5 hours a night, was crying and crying in pain screaming all night. But during the day she'd get out, be social and her mood was good. She hadn't fallen back into a clinical depression thankfully and she was fighting.
Oh and we got rear-ended on Wed night (light impact, about 10mph, but still enough for me in healthy condition to have a sore neck/back for a couple days), which of course just made her pain even worse.
Friday (yesterday) was just bad. Either the rear-end aggravated her injuries or her tossing and turning in her sleep the night before, but she was in excruciating tremendous pain and she just couldn't take it. She decided she was either 1) going to kill herself by smashing her car into a wall, 2) was going to throw herself down a set of stairs so she'd finally have something that would show on x-rays/mris or 3) was going to drive at 3am to the seediest part of town and look for drug dealers to see if she could buy pain killers off the street since doctors won't help her. I spent hours all night/morning blocking her physically while pleading with reason and logic and trying to be supportive and asking her to hold on and not give up.
Eventually I succeeded but she was in so much pain and broken she went into bed and called the suicide hotline for the first time. Told them her story and asked what she was supposed to do living in chronic horrible pain that's not visible from just looking at her or in her xrays/mris and no doctor believes her and every night she doesn't want to wake up in the morning. They tried to be helpful but there's no much they can do. I was holding her the whole time but when they asked if there was someone there who cares for her she said "There is but I don't want him to be involved. He's missed so much work and I'm making him miserable and ruining his life" (and I was giving no, c'mon that's not true signals).
She gave the hotline an ultimatum, she'd be dead at the end of December when the year ends unless she miraculously got better.
The thing is, she doesn't bluff. She also said if she gets committed to a psych ward or institute she'll find a way to kill herself and I know she will.
Since I couldn't do anything about the December suicide deadline (no pressure, right), I was like at least don't give up, see doctors, try everything, TRY until then and she's like "no, I'm not seeing anymore doctors or trying anything else; every time I see them they never believe me and it hurts so much and everything they give me doesn't work for the pain and only gives me bad side effects like hallucinations or seizures. I mean the medication THEY gave me gave me a seizure and caused my pain to now be as horrible as it is" and I ask about 4 months then and she says she decided December so she has time to sort out all her stuff before she kills herself. She's given up and knows she's not getting better.
She passed out a bit after that.
She has an appointment with a pain doc on Wednesday. It was the highly recommended guy she was going to see when she got the assistant. The doctor who referred her to him said it was bad luck that she got the assistant as the assistant is new and very strict and that the doc would talk to the good pain doc about her case and clear things up. But she was still worried the assistant will poison the well and tell the guy that she was just another drug seeker with nothing wrong. I'm going this time to be there. I've taken videos and audio when my fiance wasn't looking at times while she's been breaking down crying and suicidal because the pain hurts so much so I can show the doc. But right now the hard part is 1) Getting her to make it until Wed, 2) Getting her to GO to the appointment.
And then if he doesn't want to help her (apparently the doc referring said because of a brand new drug law upping the classification of vicodin from class 2 -> class 3 drug, it's now getting hard for a doctor to prescribe it so even if he's sympathetic there's only a 60% chance he'll prescribe pain killers to help her get back to physical therapy and to manage day to day)...well if it doesn't go well there's another appointment in like 3 weeks but I don't even want to think about her surviving until then.
Despite her December deadline, the matter of fact is that each night without pain medication she literally just can't survive the pain. She crawls into a fetal position and just cries and hurts all night and thinks about suicide until maybe she passes out at 5-8am for a few hours.
She was talking about driving to Mexico on her own to see if people in that country would be more sympathetic and willing to help her. Needless to say, I don't think this is a good idea or would even work.
I'm really at a loss on what to do here. She's trying to be cold and push me away so I'll leave her and she can just kill herself, but I'm gonna do everything in my power to prevent that from happening. I'm thinking about taking a 3 month sabbatical from work to do everything I can and try to stop her from suicide. I'd call 911 when she attempts but she is so stubborn and prideful that I really belief her when she says she'll kill herself if they put her in a psych ward or mental institution.
I love her so much and she feels the same. When she at least HAS pain meds she can function and live a good life while coping with moderate but not soul-destroying pain. But without pain meds she can't even think because she's in so much pain and it's constantly in her mind, which is why she goes crazy like last night. She just can't think straight in this pain and can only think about dying to end the pain or getting pain killers to stop the pain.
I feel like it's wrong-time, wrong-place. With celebrity deaths like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and such, the government/DEA is tightening the grip more and more and pain killer prescriptions so doctors are afraid to prescribe them and when you're young and one of the 10-20% of muscle/nerve type odd injuries that don't really show on standard tests, well the docs say "sure you say you're in excruciating pain, but you're young, get some exercise and you'll be fine" and then they kill themselves.
Being completely open and honest here: I don't want my fiance to die. She's the most brilliant, hilarious, fun and amazing person I've ever known and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life together with her. I want to grow old together. I don't know what to do. I have 4 months, or more likely about a week or two.
Thread Pt.1: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=833290
I was always there giving her full emotional support and trying to help as much as I could and then some, and a month after she got out of her clinical depression and though she was still in pain all the time, she was getting out, spending time with friends and happy, optimistic and coping.
Then in mid-August we were on a vacation and she had a grand-mal major 3-4 min convulsions seizure because of a pain medication she tried (Tramadol while being on Prozac + some coffee that day) in order to conserve her minimal vicodin prescription. This was her first seizure and it fucked up everything. The muscle soreness from the convulsions and falling on the ground caused her pain level to elevate to the highest it'd be in the last 2 years. She had to go from taking two 5mg vicodin/day to six per day to get through the pain. But burning through the prescription at 3x the amount prescribed was not going to lead to a good place.
Well she saw some docs and got an appointment with some pain doctors in the hopes one would be able to help her. Got her hopes up. One doc's first opening was a month away, one was a week away. She had 1.5 weeks worth of prescription vicodin left. She pinned all her hopes on the earlier one that had been recommended by a local doc as a very understanding and helpful pain doc.
In prep for the appointment and since I can't be there due to work, I work with one of her gps whose known her a while to produce a detailed 4 page "medical evaluation letter" signed by the doctor explaining the long history of her medical stuff since the accident because her injury is one of the 10-20% of injuries that don't show on the x-ray/mris (and why so many doctors had not taken her seriously and even accused her of being a drug seeker)
She goes and sees the doc and he's not there so they put her with his assistant. The assistant looks at her x-rays and mris and says she seems like a normal 21 year old girl, here's some tramadol. She says "did you even listen? Tramadol was what gave me a SEIZURE" and he's like oh whatever, here's some advil++, your test reports look fine. And she tells him of her suicide attempts, of having to take 11 extra strength tylenol at a time to even make a dent on the pain, of not sleeping, etc...she's like it's all in this doctor letter I gave you and...he doesn't even read the letter! He says he's not giving her narcotics because she's young and looks healthy to him and he literally walks out of the office.
[From what I've been able to figure out the cause of her chronic 11/10 constant pain is:
1) A bad whiplash healed improperly neck injury with reversal of the curvature of her neck spine along with shortening of her neck muscles which can be healed through physical therapy but since she's in so much pain she needs pain killers to even do any PT; and
2) her back pain which is even worse is likely Myofascial pain syndrome of a excruciating muscle knot in her mid-back near her spine that probably needs trigger point injections -> physical therapy after the knot has loosened and maaaybe even a good trigger point acupuncture could help loosen the knot.
But no doctor's been able to diagnose #2 and #1 they just say do PT but she can't without at least 1 pain killer before PT to be able to do the exercises, 1 after for the immediate pain and 1 at night to sleep and no one is willing to prescribe her 3 a day for a few months of PT.]
Anyhow, after having gotten her hopes up, been almost out of pain killers and in heightened pain from the seizure (plus the doctor squeezed on the trigger areas causing a flare up of even MORE pain), and the mental defeat of another doctor not believing her because she's young and looks generally ok in her xrays/mris and another doctor accusing her of just being a druggie...she gave up completely. She fell back into a depression, gave up on believing she'd ever get better or anyone would ever believe her and was really wanting to die. Instead to get through the night of intense chronic pain (since she couldn't sleep from it) she cut up her wrist with a knife so at least she could focus on her wrist pain and for once not be focused on her back/neck pain. Also she wanted the natural endorphin pain killer effect from a wound.
That was bad.
That was Tuesday.
Wednesday and Thursday were really hard (she'd stopped cold turkey even taking her last handful of vicodin because she didn't know if she'd ever get anymore, plus she hated herself and her life at this point and wanted to try to endure the pain). She hardly slept more than 4-5 hours a night, was crying and crying in pain screaming all night. But during the day she'd get out, be social and her mood was good. She hadn't fallen back into a clinical depression thankfully and she was fighting.
Oh and we got rear-ended on Wed night (light impact, about 10mph, but still enough for me in healthy condition to have a sore neck/back for a couple days), which of course just made her pain even worse.
Friday (yesterday) was just bad. Either the rear-end aggravated her injuries or her tossing and turning in her sleep the night before, but she was in excruciating tremendous pain and she just couldn't take it. She decided she was either 1) going to kill herself by smashing her car into a wall, 2) was going to throw herself down a set of stairs so she'd finally have something that would show on x-rays/mris or 3) was going to drive at 3am to the seediest part of town and look for drug dealers to see if she could buy pain killers off the street since doctors won't help her. I spent hours all night/morning blocking her physically while pleading with reason and logic and trying to be supportive and asking her to hold on and not give up.
Eventually I succeeded but she was in so much pain and broken she went into bed and called the suicide hotline for the first time. Told them her story and asked what she was supposed to do living in chronic horrible pain that's not visible from just looking at her or in her xrays/mris and no doctor believes her and every night she doesn't want to wake up in the morning. They tried to be helpful but there's no much they can do. I was holding her the whole time but when they asked if there was someone there who cares for her she said "There is but I don't want him to be involved. He's missed so much work and I'm making him miserable and ruining his life" (and I was giving no, c'mon that's not true signals).
She gave the hotline an ultimatum, she'd be dead at the end of December when the year ends unless she miraculously got better.
The thing is, she doesn't bluff. She also said if she gets committed to a psych ward or institute she'll find a way to kill herself and I know she will.
Since I couldn't do anything about the December suicide deadline (no pressure, right), I was like at least don't give up, see doctors, try everything, TRY until then and she's like "no, I'm not seeing anymore doctors or trying anything else; every time I see them they never believe me and it hurts so much and everything they give me doesn't work for the pain and only gives me bad side effects like hallucinations or seizures. I mean the medication THEY gave me gave me a seizure and caused my pain to now be as horrible as it is" and I ask about 4 months then and she says she decided December so she has time to sort out all her stuff before she kills herself. She's given up and knows she's not getting better.
She passed out a bit after that.
She has an appointment with a pain doc on Wednesday. It was the highly recommended guy she was going to see when she got the assistant. The doctor who referred her to him said it was bad luck that she got the assistant as the assistant is new and very strict and that the doc would talk to the good pain doc about her case and clear things up. But she was still worried the assistant will poison the well and tell the guy that she was just another drug seeker with nothing wrong. I'm going this time to be there. I've taken videos and audio when my fiance wasn't looking at times while she's been breaking down crying and suicidal because the pain hurts so much so I can show the doc. But right now the hard part is 1) Getting her to make it until Wed, 2) Getting her to GO to the appointment.
And then if he doesn't want to help her (apparently the doc referring said because of a brand new drug law upping the classification of vicodin from class 2 -> class 3 drug, it's now getting hard for a doctor to prescribe it so even if he's sympathetic there's only a 60% chance he'll prescribe pain killers to help her get back to physical therapy and to manage day to day)...well if it doesn't go well there's another appointment in like 3 weeks but I don't even want to think about her surviving until then.
Despite her December deadline, the matter of fact is that each night without pain medication she literally just can't survive the pain. She crawls into a fetal position and just cries and hurts all night and thinks about suicide until maybe she passes out at 5-8am for a few hours.
She was talking about driving to Mexico on her own to see if people in that country would be more sympathetic and willing to help her. Needless to say, I don't think this is a good idea or would even work.
I'm really at a loss on what to do here. She's trying to be cold and push me away so I'll leave her and she can just kill herself, but I'm gonna do everything in my power to prevent that from happening. I'm thinking about taking a 3 month sabbatical from work to do everything I can and try to stop her from suicide. I'd call 911 when she attempts but she is so stubborn and prideful that I really belief her when she says she'll kill herself if they put her in a psych ward or mental institution.
I love her so much and she feels the same. When she at least HAS pain meds she can function and live a good life while coping with moderate but not soul-destroying pain. But without pain meds she can't even think because she's in so much pain and it's constantly in her mind, which is why she goes crazy like last night. She just can't think straight in this pain and can only think about dying to end the pain or getting pain killers to stop the pain.
I feel like it's wrong-time, wrong-place. With celebrity deaths like Phillip Seymour Hoffman and such, the government/DEA is tightening the grip more and more and pain killer prescriptions so doctors are afraid to prescribe them and when you're young and one of the 10-20% of muscle/nerve type odd injuries that don't really show on standard tests, well the docs say "sure you say you're in excruciating pain, but you're young, get some exercise and you'll be fine" and then they kill themselves.
Being completely open and honest here: I don't want my fiance to die. She's the most brilliant, hilarious, fun and amazing person I've ever known and I can't wait to spend the rest of my life together with her. I want to grow old together. I don't know what to do. I have 4 months, or more likely about a week or two.
