I was sucked into what we loosely call depression. It’s a catch phrase for a range of conditions and illnesses that can be caused by as many kinds of reasons. In the early stages of depression, I sought out advice from friends and close family. “Stop overthinking,” they said. But, their advice would irritate me. “They just don’t get it,” I felt. I had lost my father in my twenties but losing my mother in my thirties hit twice as hard, because that’s when I realized both of them were now no more. I was working hard to be successful but the great recession had just hit, my wife had just had our second child and our first child was just about turning ten. And for no apparent reason, a few months after my mother’s death I felt a cloud gradually gather around me, one that wouldn’t lift no matter what I tried. My wife was close to delivering our second child. At the time, I was just about scraping through and our company announced a retrenchment exercise. I had not yet been fired, but the uncertainty was enough to tip me over. And it was only after my wife delivered that I told her I wanted to get help.

When you lose an arm or a leg, you are bound to get a lot of sympathy from friends and family, and almost everyone else you encounter in your daily life. The missing limb is a visible indicator that you are someone who is suffering, and who is therefore deserving of due consideration in all aspects of life.  If however, you are someone like me, who suffers from chronic pain, the sympathy and understanding of those around you are a little harder to come by.  I suppose one can’t blame them, beyond a point. After all, if a friend, relative or coworker, constantly complains of overwhelming pain, even though he or she looks perfectly fine, isn’t it natural for you to wonder “What’s he complaining about? He looks like he’s in good shape” or “Everyone gets a backache once in a while. Why’s she making such a big deal about it?”  The truth, which every sufferer of chronic pain, including me, is aware of all too well, is that the pain can sometimes be as bad as the pain of losing a limb – particularly if you suffer from complex regional pain syndrome. Not to mention, everyone has a different pain tolerance.

My twenties were a tumultuous time, as the twenties should be. But in my case, the tumult posed a serious risk to my health. From being overweight to being underweight; from experimenting with my diet to not caring about my diet at all – I went through all manner of bodily highs and lows. Life being the school of hard knocks, the party was bound to end someday. In my case, it was by being diagnosed with an eating disorder. There’s just something about the calm but firm tone of a doctor’s voice when he tells you exactly what’s wrong with your body, that forces you to rethink the choices you’ve made. So I sat back and thought about the kind of body I wanted, and about the kind of diet that would help me with that goal. I consulted a dietitian, did a whole lot of research, and eventually came up with a diet plan . Things were going great. For the first time in awhile, I felt in control of my body and my health. Then the invitations started coming in. Birthdays. Business meetings. Fun afternoons and nights-out with my pals. All of which entailed eating out. Now I loved a good restaurant meal as much as anyone else.

Migraines have been a part of my life for a long time. Both my parents had them. My mom suffered from hormonal migraines, while my dad was afflicted by crippling migraines triggered by red wine, cheese, and stress. Watching the two people closest to me suffer all through my childhood and adolescence had the unfortunate effect of instilling in me a degree of fatalism when it came to migraines. I came to believe that migraines were just something I had to live with. They were in my genes, they were in my fate, and there was nothing I could do about them. This was the frame of mind I was in when I started having migraines of my own, as an adult. My stressful and hectic job as a nurse was definitely a major contributing factor. For a while, they were tolerable enough. I thought I was patient and resilient enough to manage the pain. But eventually, I realized that I wasn’t. That turning point came shortly after I delivered my second child. The joy of giving birth to my beautiful boy was almost overshadowed by the crippling pain of my migraine attacks, which became more intense and more excruciating than I ever could have imagined.

I have often had moments of despair when I have questioned the existence of humanity and goodness in the world. Having a congenital heart disease and pulmonary hypertension right from when I was born has certainly not made my life easy. It gave me a gloomy outlook on everything. The silver lining to this chronic medical condition was my job. I loved my job and often told friends “I was born to do this!” They would chuckle but know in their hearts that it was true. I worked hard to not stress and work out regularly to keep my pulmonary hypertension in check. And this worked just fine for me until the age of 27. When a chronic cough progressed to breathlessness to sleeplessness to the inability to walk, I had to write to my boss with a heavy heart to inform him that I would be off for a few weeks. Those few weeks turned into a month and eventually into a year. A lot changed in my life during that year off from work. A few hospital visits, a few hospital admissions, a few scares and finally the doctor uttering those 20 words which rattled my world – “You will need a double heart/lung transplant and we need to put you on the organ waiting list right away.