Posted by NickD (209.83.95.6) on March 12, 2000 at 08:29:50:
In Reply to: Depression, Life, on top of it all Clusterheadaches!! posted by Doug L on March 11, 2000 at 16:08:07:
many times, get hit head-on when riding my bike, body was black and blue from head to toe, get trauma headaches, just like a cluster except of the stuffy nose on the left side, with clusters on the right side at least 12 times a day, left leg was in a cast, can't walk, get an tax audit from the IRS, no mercy, either come up with $18K or they will confiscate my home and auction it off, ex-wife is yelling and screaming at me, she finally takes our one good car, credit card, and youngest daughter and leaves without saying a word, son reacted to medications on Crohn’s and was down to 102 pounds, insurance company of the guy that hit me promised to pay my lost income, lying bastards, never got a cent, and the projects I was working on were pulled back, falling behind on house payments, and the one car I had to use breaks down, I can fix anything on a car, but not with a broken body, my church that I donated heavily for years was no help, I was so depressed, I was all set to kill myself, but then I thought, my both sons and daughter needs me and I can always take my life tomorrow, I contacted my company, they forwarded me cash to make my minimum bills, my healthy son helped me with the tax audit and with a few calls found a good accountant, ended up over paying a buck one year, and paying a buck short the other, my Crohn's son gets a hemorrhage and is close to death, I was very happy I didn't kill myself, he really needed, got him to the hospital in emergency, a Viet Nam woman doctor that suffered all kinds of tortures during the war was on call, she did the surgery on my son and saved his life, I am glad she had the fortitude to stay alive, got my daughter back, she was a mess, she needed me, she was in a severe state of depression, I knew I couldn't help her, but sought help, from a girl that was flunking out of school, it took working with her for the last three years to get caught up and this last go around she honored herself and me with all "A's" on her report card except one B+ in physics, we have her accepted in college, my son on TPB for two years got his weight up to 160 pounds and has finished a year at college, my company has just assigned me with another six years worth of projects, I managed to pay off all the debts, but still $4,000.00 to go, recently my physical therapist worked on my right arm so I can finally raise it, I ended up pitching all the pain killers and decided to go med free, I still think these damn things have a rebound or hangover effect and I am able to get more done off them then on them, for the last six weeks I had a bad surge of clusters, this last week they finally broke free, yesterday they came back, learned that there was a huge tire fire only 8 miles east of me, the winds were from the west, but yesterday from the east, they switched back to the west again and I had a good nights sleep, for me that's five hours, there is always a reason for clusters! Also recently met the woman of my dreams, what comes of it, I don't know at this time, but there is hope of a life after all. Things look bad for you now, but you have to ask yourself, do people love and depend on you? Can you make a difference? I realize committing suicide is a very selfish act so you have to think how this act would affect the people around you. Rather than keep my mouth shut, I fully detailed the IRS harassment to my congressmen, whether this was responsible for this in the news three years ago, I don’t know, also ran across several bad attorneys that made me feel like a wounded animal dying on the side of the road waiting to pick my flesh down to the bone, I am in the process of reporting these actions to the state bar. I think the greatest defense against injuries and clusters is the mind, there is little hope in the bottle whether it contains alcohol or some kind of pill. I took my old car in and whether the dealer felt sorry for me or not, but got a newer car that looks like it came out of the show room at a price cheaper than just the parts cost of fixing my old car. Now my ex-wife is begging to come back, I still can’t deal with her, she divorced and left me when things were at their worse and my kids won’t have anything to do with her, this was not the only time she did this. I thought clusters were the worse thing in the world, my accident attorneys’ pain scale is a body with 100% burns on the body for a scale of ten, here you have no hope, a cluster can go as quick as it comes, and if you don’t load your body with drugs, the recovery is that much quicker, just my opinion. Things can still turn for the worse, and my ace in the hole is still taking my own life, but if I can’t deal with it today, I have vowed not to do it until tomorrow, in other words, take one day at a time, think how you can help others, get your mind off of yourself and use the power of your mind to make yourself well, still don’t think the answer is in the bottle.