by kennethfsk

Created on: August 02, 2008   Last Updated: August 21, 2008

Anyone who suffers from chronic pain will without a doubt experience depression as well. The big question is why. Having a great deal of personnel experience in this department I have come to believe the biggest reason is the drastic life changing events that take place in a person, with chronic pain. What do I mean by this, it's very simple? When an otherwise young healthy person develops chronic pain they have to make so many adjustments in their life, it takes a mental toll on you. Think of it like this, what is your biggest enjoyment in life? What keeps you going day in and day out? Now let's just say all of a sudden, or over a relativity short period of time you were unable to do it anymore because it causes you excruciating pain when you tried.

This is what happens to a person who develops chronic pain for me, it was golf, I lived to play the game, and in a period less than a year, I was unable to play anymore. Let's just say you like to stroll in the park on a nice sunny day. Now it causes you to much pain just walk around the corner let alone through a park. Think of what it would be like not being able to play catch with your son in the back yard. When you are healthy, you just don't give it a second thought. To a person with chronic pain these are the very things that haunt you every day.

I think the day that hit me the worst was I was unable to help an elderly lady carry a box only a few yards because, it weighed about 40 lbs, and I couldn't lift it. To look at me you would of thought I was just kidding because on outside I seem as health as anyone else you may know. The very reason I can go to work or even function for that fact is because of morphine. Without this drug, I wouldn't be able to leave my bed. It takes a strong willed person to want to keep living when they feel as useless as a blade of grass popping up in the middle of a parking lot.

Since I was diagnosed with chronic pain I have had to deal with its uglier partner "depression" I call it it's partner because everyone I know that is dealing with chronic pain also deals with depression. They seem to go hand and hand. I believe the reason we have so much depression in our lives is because, our minds are healthy, and can do whatever it wants to, but our body can't accommodate it. It's as if the kid in us just died, and we become no more than an apparatus to carry our brains.

Think what it would be like if you were unable to make love to your spouse because of the pain it causes you. All these things build up over time, and then the mind can no longer deal with them, so the minds decides to take a vacation, and go into a state of depression where nothing makes sense anymore. You put your mere existence up on block, and try to decipher your own self worth in a world you no longer feel welcome.

Think about silently sitting on the sidelines of life, and watch as everyone else enjoys the simplest things that you no longer can. The mere frustration of it all is enough to send anyone over the deep end. I once read that 37% of people with chronic pains end up suicide statistics, and what really bothers me is I actually understand why they do it. Every day we wake up, we need to find a reason to go on in life, and not become one of those statistics. If you or someone you know has recently been diagnosed with chronic pain please, do some research and talk to people find out what to expect and how to deal with. Don't let these things just broad side you be prepared. Chronic pain doesn't have to be the end of your life just a new chapter, and you can manage this as you have with any other problems you may have crossed in life.

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