Day 10 - IH Awareness Month & World Suicide Prevention Day
- mycorneroftheworld
- Sep 10, 2015
- 3 min read
Today is World Suicide Prevention Day which is probably a good day to discuss another need for research, awareness and advancing towards a cure for IH...loss of life.
Some of these loses are from complications or accidentally mixing meds but there is another reason we lose members of our community...those that take their own lives.
Image if you can your entire life changing. You go from being the person that you were to someone who has pain that may have taken years to diagnosis correctly. Even after diagnosis, you are limited to medical staff who understand it. Many don't remember covering it in medical school, if they did it may have been a brief paragraph because it's a rare disease. Then there are the doctors who don't see anything on a scan and think that other tools to measure mean nothing. That they know better than people studying it. You may come across doctors like I did who, even after 3 doctors in his own health system diagnosed me, said he didn't think I really had it because I didn't fit all the criteria that Wikipedia gave him. Yes Wikipedia...the place anyone can submit changes to, he opened his cell phone and was on a Wikipedia article I had seen before and because they said so, my diagnosis couldn't possible be right. He said I would be better suited to a mental evaluation appointment not a follow up with him.
If you have IH you debate going to the emergency room because what are the odds you will find someone to help you before you make yourself worse with frustration? Or what are the odds you won't end up with the drug seeking evaluation because, at least for me, as my frustration rises it's easy for the frustration and pain to overwhelm me and push me to a place where I start confusing facts. Not because they are wrong or made up but because my brain is so foggy when I get there, I explain the same thing a bunch of times to people who don't understand generally and they keep trying to tell me that it's something else and I have to explain what it is again...over and over. I won't go into the ER debate with myself again (I did that on Day 7) but it's a big messy debate in an already hurting head.
Which brings me back to the topic of the day...reaching that end of frustration. In all honesty, I don't know many IHers that haven't had at least of moment of seeing no light at the end. This disease is a deep, deep dark tunnel. As you go through the tunnel, sometimes you have a torch giving you light and sometimes you don't. We all want to come out the other side. As a community, we are good about trying to notice when the torches goes out for others and offering our torch to relight theirs.
But we can't do it alone. We the support of family and friends and perfect strangers who say, I will help light the way. I will help spread awareness so the loss is less.
Help us by helping the IHRF! You can donate on my crowdrise page, buy buying an item from my bravelets page ($10 from each item goes directly to IHRF) or donating directly to IHRF! Find all the links here!
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