Discussion Sitting on pain / deteriorating health & self-sabotage

[Walpurgisnacht]

I have a couple of pretty bad sources of chronic pain, they've only gotten worse over time and made functioning more and more difficult.
Since I'm not using heroin anymore, I don't have a very easy way of masking the pain (I still use other drugs that numb it, but they're no where near as good as morphine/heroin was.)

I know the source of the pain, and I know what I'd need to go through to fix them, but it's gotten so bad now I'd need an invasive surgery that would leave me with permanent nerve damage/loss of feeling there. I don't want that, at all, but I know that if I do nothing, it will end up just getting worse and worse until it becomes dangerous and will need emergency invasive surgery to fix that will leave me with far, far less.

The thing is though, I don't really have a sense of future. I feel like it should bother me more knowing that my health is getting exponentially worse over time but it just doesn't scare me, I don't think I'll be alive for long enough for it to matter. And even if I do live that long, well, that'd be the perfect thing to push me over the edge again and let me try to CTB.
If anything, I feel like I'm just waiting for my health to degrade to the point that it is so unbearable and so beyond fixing that SI can't stop me from attempting again.

Should I just get them fixed and see what happens next? I guess if the surgery I need now does leave me with less sensation to the point it's unbearable that on its own would probably push me to CTB as well, but... It's hard to get the energy to care, yknow?

Do any of you react this way to serious health risks and chronic pain, too? Using them like springboards to make it easier to die in the future if you can't overcome SI with willpower alone?
Do you think this is a logical way to view such issues?
Do you think it's worth going to all the trouble, effort, and extra pain to fix your health problems (assuming they can be fixed at all) as best you can, when you are already suicidal? Even when these kinds of things are treatable, there aren't many cases that can be 100% fixed and not leave at least something behind. Can't magic away all chronic health issues in the world.

I'm interested if anyone else is in a similar position, and how people with deteriorating health on here view their deteriorating health.

Despite the (sometimes agnoising) pain and lack of functionality it brings to me, I just can't get myself to care enough to actually try and go forward the less bad long-term solution because "long-term" doesn't mean anything to me and never has.
As far as I see it, it's a waste of time to even try. I'll suffer forever in life regardless of if I experience less or more pain.

What do you think?

 

[Kta1994]

I have several multiple health issues and unbereable pain, i cant take it anymore, ill be leaving here in less than three months hopefully but if you still wanna fight then do it

 

[WhiteRabbit]

I'm still fighting but unless I get some improvement I know I can't go on like this forever.

 

[Life interrupted]

I'm in a similar position...just waiting for things to get unbearably bad so I get more courage to end it.

 

[Walpurgisnacht]

I have several multiple health issues and unbereable pain, i cant take it anymore, ill be leaving here in less than three months hopefully but if you still wanna fight then do it

I hope you find peace, and I wish you the best.

I'm still fighting but unless I get some improvement I know I can't go on like this forever.

Yeah I'm in a similar position I think.
I know I won't be able to ignore it forever. I can say "it's just pain" right now, but even then I know I'm lying; the pain has a cause I just can't bare to look at it and accept it and what it means.

 

[KuriGohan&Kamehameha]

It is a really tough ultimatum, having to choose between existing pain and further nerve damage. I am guessing there is no alternative method of surgery with greater precision that minimises the risk of this?

I can relate a lot to what you're going through, even if our health problems may not be identical. Last year I had several tumors in my reproductive organs and abdomen removed, and even though they tried to remove as much scar tissue as possible, because one of the tumors was large enough to crush my bladder and adhere to it for such a long period, I have not gotten a night of uninterrupted sleep in years because I wake up several times a night having to pee. Even after surgery I still have issues with IBS and constipation, albeit not as badly.

Having that surgery was meant to solve a lot of problems for me, and didn't, except the very acute and life threatening ones. So I'm sitting on a host of other problems that don't really have solutions or that I don't know the extent of the damage of. I know one part of my spine is degenerated and has left me with permanent sciatica of one leg, and that I have nerve damage. I can't get a MRI of the part of my spine that hurts the worst, but if I do too much I have intense pain in the bone that ruins my entire day. I know this is just going to get worse and worse especially when one disc is already degenerated a moderate to severe amount. So I do really relate to feeling like a ticking time bomb.

A large part of contemplating life and death and the in-between is figuring out what one's limits are, and what sort of things can be tenable and which are going to feel unbearable. It's understandable that self sabotauge seems desirable when you have to choose between two shitty outcomes, with no guarantee of relief. Sometimes inaction can feel more secure than making a decision, especially when we don't know if the outcome will be worth it and we have to weigh the risks and benefits. This is especially true for a risky surgery.

In my own perspective of going through it for years, I find that I've become so numb and I really need some sort of push to steer me in one direction or the other, and letting things fester has inevitably pushed me further onto the ledge especially as some of my issues are not well understood and have no treatment available. Fundamentally I think the lack of treatments for my issues and general understanding of them is what has plunged me into the depths of permanent hopelessness.

Though I truly wish that you were not in this situation to begin with and didn't have to weigh your options between difficult decisions. We are living in an age of many advancements in medical science and yet there is still not enough out there when it comes to nerve damage and regrowth, and progress is so very slow, so it really does put someone in a bind especially when you just want to get some relief from the pain. Wishing you well no matter what happens.

 

[xmissellax]

Chronic illness / pain and deteriorating health is around 90% of my reason for wanting to CTB. I'm only 28 but recently had surgery to remove gallbladder and have had never ending problems and Pain since. Need further surgery in the future for suspected endometriosis. I healed really badly from surgery, possibly due to suspected hEDS. So I can't bare to keep going on a losing journey tbh with more pain in store. Also have type 2 diabetes, POTs, chronic fatigue and joint pain. Been crying and depressed every day. I want to die before I get worse. But it's hard to do that when the available methods are also painful and scary and have chance for SI to kick in. I was interested in SN but I'm not sure how I would be with that if SI kicked in, the 15 minutes it takes to wait for death too. Some people say it can be painful or really bad with nausea/heart palpitations and how do we make sure SI doesn't kick in then?