The Start…

After a endless series of serious accidents, injuries and health scares spanning 15 months and starting in November, 2011 (two weeks after my 30th birthday), I was confronted with a period of immobilization and the seeming reality of not only never doing the thing I lived and breathed for ever again (the thing that kept me going every day and my motivating drive that helped me deal with struggles and obstacles that I didn’t know how to overcome – sports, especially my love of figure skating – but with the terrifying fear of never being able to walk again. In the first year after my accidents, I suffered acute chronic levels of uncontrollable pain and fell into a massive depression. The shock to my psychological health was so severe that I reached a point where I no-longer had the will-power to bathe, dress, eat or talk to anyone other than my cousin – a medical student at the time – who would call me in the mornings to gently encourage me through bathing and dressing on the days that she could will me to sit-up in my bed, and periodically throughout the day to check-in on me and stay on the phone with me until I finished crying.  My pharmacist was filling my prescriptions on a two-week basis and finally took me aside privately one day to tell me that she was worried about me. I could feel a tidal wave coming over me that I couldn’t stop nor swim away from fast enough, and I started crying uncontrollably. Other than my cousin, she was the only person to tell me that they were worried about me. Within a matter of days, I was red-flagged for suicide watch and had to do mandatory check-in with a psychotherapist at my CLSC. By this point I had seen doctors, specialists, physiotherapists and osteotherapists, and done treatments that were ineffective and felt like a waste of time. I felt like my doctor wasn’t taking my health or well-being seriously, I felt like I didn’t have any hope left inside of me, and I definitely felt like I didn’t want to live anymore.