Hi, My name is Melody and I was reading all the responses to your post. I have to ask you something. Is your pain level managed? I mean, are you in such unbearable pain that you can't think straight, or are you just tired of living?

There is a big difference you know. I completely understand the mind set of a person who cannot find any pain relief. I am not condoning suicide under ANY circumstance, but I can understand that when a person is in agony 24/7, that the thought might cross their mind. This is a perfectly normal thought process.

I wonder if you have any kind of support system to help you deal with what you are dealing with. You mention that you do not have children. Do you have a mate, a good friend, SOMEONE that can be there for you when you are at your lowest point?

We all need people. Either being a friend to them, or having them be a friend to us. Sometimes being a friend to others helps us feel better.

Have you tried reaching out to anyone? What was their response? You say you don't want to be a burden to your family. What if something happened to them instead of to you? No one wants this to happen but sometimes, we are dealt a certain hand of cards.

We will be here for you anytime you wish to post any of your thoughts or questions, or if you just want to come by and share some ideas.

We are very nice people with various maladies but one thing we have in common is no one judges anyone else. That is not our role.

I believe we are a compassionate group made up of different kinds of personalities. Just think about this. Years ago, you never would have been able to post your problem on a message board and have different people try to reach out to you.

You will be in my prayers tonight. Here's a hug.

I wish for you a brighter tomorrow, whatever tomorrow brings you.

Take care,

Melody

Hello, Melody: Thanks ever so much for your message. No, I am not in constant pain, but I am in constant discomfort, mostly a sore back, and increasing weakness. That said, sometimes when I take a step there is a lightning bolt of pain in my hips; I have arthritis in both of them (consistent, I should add, with post polio syndrome, which is what I suspect I have. No professional dx yet). Also, I recently started having excruciating pain, very sharp, going upstairs in my right leg: sometimes, not always. The pain lasts for 2 seconds or so, involves the entire leg. I have not yet fallen, but almost did (for the first time) about a week ago. I am aware that these sharp pains can come any second, which makes walking dubious indeed. It is the NOT KNOWING when the pains will hit that is so debilitating, exhausting.

I live in Europe, so I am far from home and family. Nobody here understands what I am going through; they are inclined to think I am exaggerating at best, faking at worst. They are, in a word, irritated; I cannot say I blame them. From looking at the neurotalk forums, I am not the only one in that isolated condition. As you say, the forums provide what so many of us cannot find locally.

You mention sharing ideas...

Regarding suicide: I am not at all convinced now that suicide and taking one's own life are the same thing. The 200-plus people who jumped to their deaths from the burning World Trade Center were officially ruled NOT to have committed suicide. Rather, they were homicide victims. They had no choice (between being burned alive or dying quickly: there's no real choice there). So, in the end, they took their own lives.

Now, what if the "murderer" is not a person but a disease which, moreover, does not cause constant excruciating pain (comparable to the 9/11 fire) but debilitates its victim little by little -- killing him or her slowly, over the years? I ask: is not the victim just as much forced to "do something" as were the 200 people on 9/11, albeit forced in a different, more subtle way? I think suicide must be a voluntary act; to say someone was "forced to commit suicide" is, therefore, a contradiction in terms: that is the lesson of the 200. But if that is true, then people who are victims of debilitating diseases who kill themselves do not commit suicide; rather, they take their own lives.

Clearly, intention is also involved. The coroner of N.Y. noted that none of the 200 came to work intending to do what they did. Maybe, in suicide, the person intends to end life itself. When someone kills themself because of a serious disease (or a burning building), however, they do not intend to end life per se; they intend to end their suffering, and can do so only by taking their own lives. In that regard, to answer your question: no, I am not tired of living. I am tired of seeing my health deteriorate one inch at a time; tired of sudden pains; tired of perpetual weakness and discomfort; tired of being tired.

This whole question of what is suicide needs to be revisited. Socrates showed the incredible complexity of the issue: he was forced by the state to drink the hemlock (not suicide, therefore); however, when the moment came, he voluntarily -- truly willingly -- drank the poison (therefore, suicide). Now, that's a paradox for you.

You say it very well: sometimes, we are "dealt a certain hand of cards." The question comes down to this: do I want to be a burden to my family and others for a long, long time, or to be a burden for a week or two, settling my estate and so forth? Both are burdens, but I submit the latter is a lesser one.

Again, Melody, I thank you for your concern, your compassion, and your prayers.

Good morning...I think this conversation would be better placed on the SOS Forum...here is just one link from previous threads regarding assisted suicide...http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...sisted+Suicide

and another one...


http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...sisted+Suicide



If you do an advanced search, you will find others there. I do understand my friend and would feel very much the same given your circumstances.

Spoken with a clearer voice and softer spirit, you have opened my eyes to still another means to help others. We still are. We still are. Just the other night I shared on another thread with one who, being stricken, needs to know it is OK to cry needed to read, let yourself be human.

As we each remain committed to one another and to our beyond cyber families and friends, we can reach beyond ourselves to share, to be there. Lebelvedere, I am glad you are here among us, for being only human with your DX, you can be THERE for others. I am, despite having lost the tremendous strength of my "athletic" body to a car wreck 5 1/2 years ago. Next week, I am allowed to speak in front of a chronic pain group here in Colorado; how I wish you could be there so I could shake your hand.

Hang around. You have purpose. OK?
Caring,
Mark56

great post Mark...thank you!

Tom:

This is a long post, but I wanted to get the information to you.

So right now you are on Lyrica and over the counter meds. I would have suggested a fentanyl patch or something stronger (I have no doubt that you have access to this), but given your possible predisposition to take your life, I'm not going to go in that direction. You didn't mention alternative treatments. And don't laugh, but there ARE alternative treatments to what you have been taking.

My husband has severe neuropathy in his two feet. He admitted to the neuropathy support group that yes indeed, he has thought of suicide way back when his neuropathy was so bad he didn't know where else to go. Many others at the meeting also raised their hands when asked "have any of you had these thoughts?

He did try the fentanyl pain patch but they had to keep increasing the dose and then you can't have any more. So he had to detox and that was a BIG pain in the butt to get off of that drug.

So he tried acupuncture. Well you should have seen this man after his first appointment. He bounced out of the office. That's right, he BOUNCED.

He said "Oh my god, what a difference" Now I do not know if you have explored any of the alternative ways that many people explore.

Like yoga, meditation, acupuncture, etc.

I have diabetes. I have NOT gone through the hell that you obviously have gone through but I did have a bout with neuropathy that sent me temporarily reeling from the pain. I then knew WHAT MY HUSBAND HAD BEEN SUFFERING FROM.

See, no one who hasn't walked in your shoes, can possibly know what you are feeling. And when drugs do not work, we have to try and see if our bodies can start cooperating and heal on it's own.

Doesn't work for everyone, this I know. But I can assure you of one thing. It worked for me.

I have been a diabetic for 22 years, on insulin, on meds, high blood pressure, neuropathy, degenerative joint disease (notice the word degenerative).

I once had a doctor treat my frozen shoulder and he looked me in the face and said "Melody you have DEGENERATIVE joint disease, you DO know what the word DEGENERATIVE means, right? He wasn't trying to be cruel, he just wanted me to have the facts.

Want to know what I did with the facts? I decided to change the way I looked at food. Sounds stupid, right? Well, guess what? It saved my life.

Some years ago, I gave up Red meat, and started eating a plant based diet. You can look this up on google. It's a no brainer. You eat fresh stuff, nothing in a package, no meat, and you get rid of all the toxins in your body.

I have done this. I also went online and discovered the benefits of sprouting my own food.

Ever heard of sprouting? Neither did I. I happened to come across a video of someone sprouting her own broccoli seeds, (never heard of broccoli seeds at the time either), but I said "Melody, what on earth do you have to lose?" "Do you want to be unhealthy, diabetic, degenerative, blah blah, the rest of your life? or do you want to make an effort and see what happens when you change the nutrition in your body".

So, because I had absolutely nothing to lose, I made a change in what I put in my body. AND BOY DID THIS WORK FOR ME.

I went on youtube and watched a video on the benefits of broccoli sprouts. Blew me away. I then learned about the minerals, vitamins, life sustaining enzymes in sprouting other things. So I sprout organic seeds that I purchase online. You can do this because you obviously go online.

I make it simple. I just sprout broccoli, radish, FENUGREEK (which aside from broccoli, is VERY BENEFICIAL TO THE BODY), and I sprout whatever seeds I happen to buy.

I do not go to the store and purchase lettuce or stuff that I don't know where it came from because all that food was grown using pesticides. (You DO know what pesticides do to the body, right?) all kinds of nasty side effects. Neuropathy, being one of them.

It's amazing what happens when you put GOOD things in your body. You go to the bathroom effortlessly every day. You dont' get bloated, you don't get headaches, some of the aches and pains with being in your 60's, well they go away. It's like your body goes "hey, thanks, I'm feeling a bit better today".

I have been eating this way for 2 years. You couldn't make me go back in time and put whatever I used to put in my body, well I would not do it again.

My body now works. It didn't work that good before. I had a frozen shoulder that I could not bend behind my back. I can bend it much better now. Can I do push ups, sit ups, run a marathon, OF COURSE NOT. But I can move better than I ever could before.

I tell myself. "you are almost 63 years old and you got up this morning, and you were able to go out of the house and do what you had to do".

Two years ago, I was all bent up, and stiff as a board, and while I'm no spring chicken, I can move BETTER. Might be all in my head, but who cares. I CAN MOVE. And yeah, I have days when the barometer drops 20 degrees and my body says "ouch". But when the barometer is steady, my body does not say OUCH that much any more.

It's all baby steps.

Here's a link to one of my online videos. I was asked to make a video of how I sprout because I joined a sprouting message boards and we all get excited at what we do.

So click on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjwlIRrKRy0

You can also view my other videos because this video links to the others on youtube. I sprout lots of cool things.

And if this lights up your brain and you go "hey, what have I got to lose", well then google BENEFITS OF SPROUTING, and the immune system, and how it just might help.

What have you got to lose?

And you might even like the taste. I make sprout salads (I put things in that people put in salads), and I add a splash of extra virgin olive oil, tomatoes, black olives, sea salt, fresh ground pepper. FABULOUS. I put them on sandwiches. (I sneak them in my husband's meals.)

I give my sprouts away to my neighbors who say they don't have the time to start sprouting in trays like I do. To me, it's what I love to do. It's the greatest hobby I have EVER discovered because it saved my life (medically speaking I mean).

And my biggest advocate is my doctor. He's a body builder and you should have seen his face when I marched in with a bag of sprouts that I had just harvested in the morning. They were broccoli sprouts.

He turned to his other patient and said "See what my patients bring me? SPROUTS!!!!" I once asked him ."are you saying this to make me feel good or do you really know about the benefits of sprouting"?

He said to me "Are you for real?, keep sprouting and bringing me sprouts" We both laughed.

And my husband is his primary patient. My husband doesn't see food the way I see food. He sees it for what it does to his brain, so he eats things he is not supposed to eat.

He also seeds the doctor MORE THAN I DO.

And just to update you. I put NOTHING artificial in my body. I eat food that rots (eventually). No preservatives.

So tell yourself the following:

"What the heck do I have to lose, I might even like doing this"

For me, it's quite relaxing, and I can make a big deal out of sprouting, or I can just sprout one or two trays. It's the fact that you are growing your own food, WITHOUT PESTICIDES and if you look up what sprouts contain, well you just might see that this might be the thing you have been looking for to KEEP YOU GOING, and not go down that black hole.

I can only suggest this.

Look at my videos. Have a laugh or two at my expense. You can see the various methods I have tried.

For me, I healed my body nutritionally. I am almost off my insulin. Five years ago, I was on 46 units of Lantus and 2000 of some oral medication.

This morning I am down to 9 units AND NOTHING ELSE. And my glucose levels are just fine.

Now you might be saying "but she's a diabetic and I'm not a diabetic".

That's not my point.

My point is try and put some good LIVING FOOD in your body, and your body might just start cooperating.

There are no guarantees in life.

But right now, nothing else is working for you right?

I just want to help. Please believe that.

Melody

[Hello, Mark: Thank you for your message. I, too, wish I could be there to listen to your speech and to shake your hand. Good luck with your presentation. If it is as moving as your message, you will get rave reviews.

Hello, Alffe: Thanks for your latest contribution.

I, too, believe the discussion belongs on the suicide board. Should I cut and paste my note there? What's the best way to go? Thanks.

Tom, I left you a message.

Hello, Alffe: Message received. I think it would be best if the moderator made the move -- and included the message to which I responded (if that is O.K.) I'm still learning the ins and outs of neurotalk.

Your help is greatly appreciated. I thank you in advance.