Darkness

Over the coming weeks I faced many procedures and tests. I had a bone scan. Basically they inject radioactive material in you and take pictures of your bones. I had countless lumbar sympathetic blocks. This is where they use a fluoroscope and inject pain medications and steroids around your spinal cord. Multiple MRIs and on and on and on.

By this point the pain was unbearable, and later I found out that severe chronic pain causes severe depression. So there I was. Laying in bed, wishing I had the energy to get up and kill myself. I knew if I could just die, the pain would go away. I would lay there and my mom would talk to me for hours begging me to get out of bed to go to physical therapy or to the hospital for another treatment. I had to go somewhere five days a week, and all I wanted to do was go to sleep and never wake up. I know now that the pain was the only thing that saved my life, I was hurting too much to get up and end it all. I remember so clearly the sound of my dad's guns in his gun shop calling my name. Telling me that they could make it all go away. Luckily for me, he keeps the shop and safes under tight lock and key. It got so bad that my mom started hiding knives and anything else that I could hurt myself with, including my medications. She handed them to me every day and watched me take them.

The sleep deprivation also was at an all time high. The lack of sleep was causing me to scratch myself unconsciously and pull out my hair. I would scratch and scratch until someone stopped me, or I noticed blood. I still have faint scars on my arms and face to this day.