I want to get another perspective from some of you that suffer from RSD. I’ll break it down between her history and the actual question since I know a lot of you can not read that much at a time:

History:
My wife and I have been together for 5 years and she had her car accident that caused it a year into our relationship, so my wife has had RSD for the last 4 years. The last 2 years have been really bad and she keeps getting worse. She is on Methadone, Gabapentin and Percocet for her pain and the sympathetic nerve blocks never last more than an hour after the injection. We got married 6 months ago so now she is on my insurance (BCBS waived her pre-existing condition) and we are now looking into other options to relieve her pain.

Last month her pain specialist that she has had for the last year and a half pretty much gave her a weeks worth of her meds and said “sorry, your condition is too advanced for us, we really only do injections, go find another pain doc” they handed us an addictionologists’ card and sent us on our way, said he might be able to treat her pain with higher doses of drugs. We could not get in to see another doctor before her medication ran out. Her pain had started to escalate to the point that she would pass out from it so we went to Urgent Care, they said go to the ER, ER said to go to the pain doctor. I dropped her off at home and drove to her old pain specialists’ office and refused to leave until they gave me something for my wife, 4 hours later I went home with a script for 3 days worth of meds. It wasn’t much, but at least it bought her some time to get through the weekend.

So the next morning I wake up to find a suicide note sitting in front of the coffee pot. I read about the first 4 sentences before I figured out what it was, dropped it and rushed over to the couch where she sleeps. She was still breathing, although it was a bit labored. I was able to wake her up and assess all of her vitals/take inventory of what she took trying to determine if I HAD to take her to the ER or not (I was a firefighter/paramedic before we started dating). I was afraid that if I took her to the ER, they would admit her and then she would be stuck with no pain meds at all and on top of that, alone in some cold sterile room and that it would be worse for her. Having seen enough OD patients, I knew that I could detox her with the activated charcoal that I had at home.

Question:
She is very upfront with me about wanting to end her own life. Am I being selfish in not just letting her do it? (I removed everything from the house that she could use to do it). My wife and all of you are a thousand times stronger and braver than I am. If I had to go through what I see her go through on a daily basis, I wouldn’t have lasted 6 months. Since her horrifying experience with the last doctor, her PCP has been a god send and has taken over her pain medications while we look for a new pain specialist. She is too scared to try to OD on her pain meds again for fear that it won’t work and then she’ll be stuck with no meds. I don’t want her to do it because of obviously selfish reasons; I love her and I have hope that HBOT or the SCS will give her some quality of life once we get enough money put away for them. I just can’t imagine the pain that she goes through and part of me doesn’t think it’s fair to her to insist that she goes through it. She says that the only thing that keeps her going day to day is me and she knows that I will always be here for her, but I don’t know how long that can last.