Hi Tom
I have moved the whole thread to the SOS forum for you

good people here who understand

thank you Chemar!

Tom, I trust you will find us here. On rereading some of your posts..

"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."

I beg to disagree with a week or two of grief. Trust me when I tell you that it years of guilt and pain when someone we love suicides. You say you are far away from family and friends...that surely must add to your depression. Those of us left behind always wonder if there was something we could have said or done...we ask WHY until we realize that we'll never know for sure...we say What IF....or IF only.....

I don't know if some of those links Lara left in the old assisted threads still work but they were excellent ones.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/conte...7/s1914206.htm

Welcome Tom to our little "family". We "get it" here...can't wait until you meet DMack (David).

Hello Ted welcome to SOS.....May I use your words in quote

“Darkness is setting in, along with profound sadness -- something beyond depression ("melancholia," perhaps). Again, more and more, I see no way out”.

Question: What Is Melancholia?
Answer: Melancholia is a profound presentation of depression. With this form of depression, there is a complete loss of pleasure in all or almost everything. The start of these episodes is usually not caused by a specific event, and even when something good happens, the individual's mood does not improve, not even for a short time. Melancholic features can be associated with a major depressive episode of Major Depression or Bipolar Disorder I and II.
Possible Presentations:
(at least three of these symptoms must be present for a diagnosis by DSM criteria)
• A distinct depressed mood - one is not simply sad or down due to a life event such as the death of a loved one
• Depression is consistently worse in the morning
• Early morning waking - at least two hours earlier than normal
• Psychomotor disturbances - either retardation (slowing of normal movement) or agitation
• Anorexia or weight loss
• Excessive or inappropriate guilt


Ted Melancholia is Depression.................
In your case brought about by enduring and excruciating pain.....
The pain and the physical conditions you describe and are you undiagnosed with must be so debilitating......
The Melancholia can be treated though!..................and if treated your physical symptoms may improve.
We all tend to see physical disease as the reason of our pain, mainly because the effects it has on our bodies, and the limitations it presents.
But depression is one hell of a beast that does not stop at altering our state of mind.......it literally eats are very body and soul.


M.E= in the UK used to be called YUPie flu......a YUPie was a young upwardly Professional individual.........apparently these young businesses people worked 14 hours a day...went to the gym....drank like fish......worked hard played hard etc............ then got struck down by a debilitating mystery illness that floored them.....some for months some for years..................depression is said to be rife in this condition................but what came first? Chicken or egg

Depression can be present in many Arthritic/immune suppressant conditions/ gastrointestinal conditions...and so on..............

Tom before speculating on your own death........please have your Melancholia treated.............it may alleviate some of the physical trauma you describe.

I crushed to vertebrae in lower spine; nearly twenty years ago.........suffered for years [still do] had facet joint injections and had 7 years free of pain......I have bi-polar 2 which keeps me on my toes, and know 100% my multitude of physical pains result from my mental health..............when I’m low I’m a mess and often fight the lure of suicide [or the beast as we call it on here]
But I keep thinking one day there will be a serious cure for depression.....and hope that will aliviate my other symptoms.......

Tom please stay around you have a great deal to contribute to this forum, and your eloquent manner and educated contribution deserves to be heard.
So stick around for the next forty years and lets share life’s experiences

David

Tom-

Interesting, I had a friend by the name of Tom. He was advanced in age, in diabetes, in blindness exacerbated by diabetes, and he was tied to a dialysis machine far more than pure quality of life would tend to indicate. Together with his family and God he contemplated cessation of dialysis. An end to the treatments which could have but one certain effect, and now my friend Tom is no longer with us. We still mourn his passing, but sometimes as in cancer situations and the like one reaches the point when they wonder "should I continue?" I have friends who fight like the dickens continuing, because they see that as part of their legacy for their family, while still another who was DXed ALS lapsed into morosity until no longer was he effectively a participant in the family and his time was fairly brief.

As with my father, now DXed with Alzheimers and fading so very fast, should he, would he have chosen a different path. In this family historically beset with suicide, I am glad he did not. Far too often once priors go the way of the path to end pain immediately for themselves, the part of the equation not fully considered is what does the legacy breed within the family left behind? In the family of my progenitors, where cancer was cited as the reason a great grandmother who saw her beauty fade into grotesque hideous caricaturization of her former self, she opted for the way out. Later, others, seeing a progenitor do it, thought it might be the way too. Still later, another, distraught with back pain took himself in a way much less thoughtful than you have suggested and the whole of the family was left to pick up the pieces and clean the residue when the police had had their fill.

A cousin of mine, dear, very dear to me and but 18 at his death was thought to have ended it in a fiery crash on I-70 in Kansas City because he was overwrought with what comes in teen years. I was crushed for years. Not long after, I sought to end my own, having seen what my precious cousin had done. Sure, I had my excruciatingly painful teen years reason for wanting to. Oh, but the blood, and I botched it, could not finish, did not finish..... and then I went into denial, hiding, loathing of myself for what I had sought.

Why do I go through this litany? To bring to mind those who follow you. Those whose lives become left with having to pick up the pieces, those who might, just might be spurred on to action by your hand though you were not there to hold the weapon. Just a thought.

Fast forward decades. I was in a horrible car wreck. Left me needing multiples upon multiples of surgeries to put Humpty Dumpty together again. I will never NEVER be able to do all of the athletic stuff I used to enjoy with my family and friends, although after a fashion, I am trying to get back on my mountain bike again [had to take off the toe clips because with neuropathy, I cannot feel to get in and then cannot feel to get out].

I have had friend ask me why I had not ended all. Why did I endure pain when it was well known pain made me scream at the top of my blood curdling voice? How was I so strong, they asked? Had I somehow strengthened my faith?

Oh, faith is a huge part of the person I am in this life, and that faith carries me. Much as in the Footprints poem where God is carrying the one who needs Him most when the help was most needed. I have no strength, but by God. May sound mystical and all, but that is my inner strength.

Sure, I had done analysis after analysis, knowing the life insurance would more than provide what our estate did not to help my family through a suicide aftermath. BUT it came down to legacy. Oh sure, I had worked out a method and means to effect an end, maybe even clean enough so family would not have to pick up after me, but it was that legacy of my progenitors that haunted me and haunts me to this day.

How can I make a choice which affects not only me but those who follow in my footsteps, be they family or friend, acquaintance or NT follower? Is my action an independent isolated action which causes no reaction, or is my action something which regardless of my plan produces reaction beyond my understanding? I opted for action for which I could be accountable in person; thus, I write here, and write quite often, because through pain I have been working to my understanding of life, my importance in it to God to my family and anyone else whom I touch in person or cybernetically.

I have been granted a tremendous gift, the implant of a Boston Scientifc SCS unit to attempt better management of my pain through electronics and..... just perhaps without the need for all of the fist full of pills that used to sustain my morbid and declining existence. Hope..... there is much hope here. God? He has carried me so often that I wonder so how I could be worthy of the lift, and then I remember, "wait a minute, I cannot be worthy.... it is the matter of His caring in my life."

All of this being said Tom. I care for you. I will pray for you. You have so much of importance to decide in your life. No one can be responsible for you other than yourself. No one. As for me, I am thrilled that I still dwell among breathing people for the simple reason that we all matter. All of us.

May your decisions come through to you in the grace of a mind filled with peace, and may you glimpse joy.

Your friend,
Mark56

.Mark:

Beautifully said!! Very moving.

Melody

Tom, death is not the answer to what ails us. We cannot help others nor ourselves by trying to take, what we think is, "the easy way out". You are still a young man being I'm 64 and have a lot of life still in me. Don't give into the words "old age", it's a mind thing. "As a man thinketh, so is he". I use to have very bad pains in my legs to the point of my right knee giving out on me. I am not one to take medication except once in a while an Excedrin. I found other alternatives to medicine. I changed my diet....when we reach a certain age there are some foods our body can no longer handle. I eat more fruits and vegetables now and have totally taken red meat out of my diet. I use to walk and exercise a lot, but I felt I over did it. I had to learn to balance life out, and learn to listen to my body. Your body tells you what it needs, believe it or not. I also (please don't think that I'm crazy, but) talked to my pain, because I believe we all have the power within to heal ourselves, we just have to change our thinking.
We never know what life will deal us, but we have to be prepare to deal with life and choose to change it around to benefit us to the best we can with whatever situation we face. I have observed so many people, old and young faced with horrific conditions, however they beat the odds by choosing to live their lives to the fullest in the condition they are dealing with, for instance Steven Hawking. Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed, however his brain is still functioning and he is still teaching other people with what function he has left. He's looking at life with respect to it and choosing to 'live' it to best he can with what he has left of it. I hope you choose to live life to it's fullest and not shorten it, because you don't know what you mean to someone else in your life.
God bless you and keep talking and sharing with others.
....ask not what have you done for me lately, but what have I done for you lately... Rakeitha

Hello, Mark: Thanks for your moving and thoughtful message.

Yes, the idea of legacy has entered my head, too. Nobody in my family, to my knowledge, has committed suicide or taken their own life. My mother, who was in a nursing home for almost 4 years, told me she wanted to die, and I believed her; however, it was too late. She was entirely in the hands of other people, inside a "soft" "caring" prison. If she would have had the pill, she would have taken it inside of two seconds.

I think people considering taking their lives should give as full an account as is possible as to WHY they did it. Yes, they will leave a legacy -- but that legacy need not be a "bad" one. I see little comparison between a distraught 20-something whose girlfriend left him and a 60-plus man suffering from a debilitating, unknown, apparently not curable disease. The latter person needs to state his case clearly, so that the former will not -- cannot -- see it as an example to follow.

You mention your faith in God. I wonder ... what are we to make of Jesus' death? Did Jesus "commit suicide?" After all, he had the power to stop his death, but did not use it. Or, did Jesus "give up his own life," rather than commit suicide? I am inclined toward the latter conclusion. I'm beginning to think that suicide has a large anger component, which "taking/giving up one's own life" lacks. (Despite their claims to be serving a higher ideal, "suicide bombers" are thus appropriately named; their videoed confessions before they strike exhibit great anger, hatred). Maybe, Jesus' death is what made him truly human; had he waved his hand and destroyed his opponents, we'd be talking about something else. Difficult, probably unanswerable questions -- which makes them so compelling. They don't call it the greatest book ever written for nothing.

Rakeitha:

I am so glad you wrote what you did. I'm a big believer in putting good stuff in our bodies.

Thanks for writing what you did. When I first came on this thread and read the various postings, the first thing that popped into my head was Steven Hawking, a man stuck in a body that is practically frozen, but his mind is on a different level than all of us.

I don't know how he has lasted so long, but God Bless that man.

Mel

Hello, Alffe: Thanks for your thoughtful words. "Why?" "What if?" Well, thanks to this forum, it's becoming clear to me that PRECISELY what is needed for someone contemplating taking their own life, is to fill in the blanks as much as possible. That means leaving a written legacy. Of course, those accounts can never be complete; perhaps, that is the way it should be. "Wonder is the beginning of philosophy": Aristotle.

I read the full 4corners transcipt, about elderly, very aware people thinking about ending their lives. Something else is shaping up: I'm not sure that those people should be placed in the category of "suicide." In their case (and mine, I'm beginning to suspect), people who are elderly, in pain (or severe discomfort), facing a disease with no known cure and which is getting worse, are not in the same boat -- although we put them there -- as people who commit suicide for other reasons, e.g., economic hard times. Eventually, maybe this forum will make the distinction which presently is lacking. For now, our vocabulary lacks words and expressions to fill that gap. As more people live longer, have more physical and psychological problems, the terminology will emerge.

Hello, David: Thank you for your information on melancholia and comments. You confirmed my initial perception that, given the fact I have three of the symptoms mentioned, I have something on the order of melancholia. I definitely do not have a bipolar problem: I have zero moments of elation. Zero.

I have no doubt whatsoever that our mental condition has repercussions on our physical existence. As I'm sure you are aware, there are numerous pills out there that can "fix" the problem for a few hours, then leave you in a vegetative state. So, it's a question of staying clear of them.

As for the physical side: the arthritis shows up on xrays. As for the nerve condition, the EMG showed there is a big problem in my legs. I wish it were just "old age," but it's something else. I also wish it was indeed entirely psychological. Well, as the French say, "on verra." We will see. Otherwise, do you have a specific treatment to suggest?

Thanks for being here, David -- and for being you.

Tom