ABSTRACT
Jacki is a 56-year-old lady and a very successful mother, real estate broker, and agent. One day, while on a tour of listed houses, she was involved in a severe automobile accident. She did not break any bones. However, the accident initiated a very bad pain problem. When seen at the lowest point in her struggle with pain and related matters, she wrote the following:
My life since I was a passenger in an automobile accident 18 months ago has been a living nightmare for me and for my family. I will try to define it as best I can. There has never been one moment that I have been free of pain. My wonderful quality of life has been seized from me one ounce at a time until there is only a body trying to cope with being alive. I try so very hard to function with the smallest daily tasks. Before the accident, I was a “super mom” and a very busy professional lady in the whirlwind of everyday experiences. I was successful with my peers and had a very high esteem of my self-worth. I was very happy about life and all those around me.
How I wish this vicious circle of pain and sleepless nights would end and I could become a whole and worthwhile person again! Sometimes I feel as though I’m walking into a beautiful meadow full of magnificent flowers and unbeknown to me the trail I am on is taking on a path of quicksand. The harder I try to get out to be among my beautiful flowers (life itself), the deeper I’m being pulled to the bottom of the barrel of quicksand!
All my life I have been a survivor, having had cancer and won the battle against it. Somehow this one is so very different. I will continue to fight with all my being, to beat the wretched constraints that pain and weakness have thrust upon me.
I have obtained help from my pain doctor and his lovely nurse. I now see hope and believe that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. I wish I had been referred to my pain doctor sooner after the accident, before my body had been weakened so much with this chronic pain. My pain doctor is my last hope after being treated or evaluated by close to 20 physicians, surgeons, and physical therapists.
I have been caught up in the “bureaucratic web” of workman’s compensation, which has been a living disaster. All I have ever wanted was to get well and to be able to get on with my life. I feel that in the 18 months since my injury, “they” (worker’s compensation adjusters, attorneys, etc.) have broken my body and spirit.
With the help of my husband and my pain doctor, my spirit is getting the strength I need to go on. There is a way out of the quicksand and I will be there to see all the beautiful flowers once more.”
