Chronic Illness and Suicide

This last week the lyme community lost 3 people. One of which was suicide. There are so many of us that consider suicide at some point or another on our journey with chronic pain and chronic illness. Sometimes people don't have friends or family that care, or want to help and support them. Sometimes the toxic die off and drugs over power your brain and you can't think straight and just want to die. Sometimes you become so depressed you see no other way you can go on. Sometimes the beginning of treatment is too much to take, or you have been on treatment SO long that you just can't handle the struggle anymore. Some of us loose our house, our animals, file for bankruptcy, have to live off of or with family, go on food stamps, have to use the food shelf. You just want a normal life again. I could come up with a million reasons. Fighting through all of the horrible effects can be very difficult to say the least. I think a lot of us have been at one of these points or all of them. It's hard to live in daily pain or feel sick so often. This is why we need to stick together, reach out, talk about it, speak up. One of the main reasons for my blog is to educate people and get support out there. There is a large lyme community out there. Many groups and people on facebook, many support groups to go to, many web sites to read up on, many doctors that can help you(you just need to know where to look). I am fortunate that I have a few close friends that will never give up on me or turn their back on me. I also have a very supportive family that also fall into that same category. But even with all the support in the world, you can't be helped if you don't reach out. I have experienced almost every one of those listed above. I have considered suicide, I have made a plan, I have known what I want to say in my letters to my daughter and husband (and written them)and I have spend time in the hospital because of it. Checked myself in. I have never admitted this to anyone outside my very close group. So why now? Because people need to understand that this is a very common thing in the lyme community. These thoughts and actions are something that are discussed on a common occurence in closed groups. I want people to be aware it happens. I want the newly diagnosed Lymies out there to know that it's ok to feel like that, but you need to reach out if you are going to make it. We can't keep loosing our friends to suicide. Although I totally understand where they are coming from and just wanting to be done, we need to stick together! We need each other! We can't let the bugs, the political crap, the unsupporting people, all of the uneducated medical people that said nothing was wrong with us to win! We can make it, and we will! Reaching out to someone is the first step!