Ah, so that's it

One of the things one loses when entertaining Trigeminal Neuralgia is an appreciation of the horror most ordinary people, and most clinicians, feel about suicide. I've been looking for a good summary of those feelings for quite a while, and now I've found this.

As of this writing, the blog is marred by several paragraphs at the end on chronic pain. I say "marred," because the lack of transition suggests that the material wasn't meant to go with the copy on suicide. Yet I appreciate the irony, because there is an association between suicide and some forms of chronic pain, a connection that may have eluded the author.

My cushion of Carbamazepine and Gabapentin allows me objectivity. It also allows me to write, because when things are bad it hurts to concentrate...it hurts to talk; to eat, or brush one's teeth; to open one's eyes. Yet I'm fortunate. I was born into a time when my medication exists, and fortunate that much of the time it works well enough to allow me to function fairly well.

Medication doesn't help everyone. I found the following recently.

While no one quoted here actually says "when I finish this, I'm going to stick my head in the gas oven," something else is clear. There are degrees of bravery, and degrees of bravado. When you live in a world in which suicide is just a treatment option, those degrees matter a lot.

Be patient with us: we see things through a different prism.