A man who was declared dead three times has revealed his hell battling a rare condition called “suicidal disease”.
The 47-year-old, who goes by the name Josh and has kept his real name anonymous, said he feels like he has a death wish.
His first brush with death began before he was even born, when his pregnant mother mixed toxic chemicals in an attempt to end her own life and he “almost died in the bathroom.”
On the other hand, a few months later, Josh was stillborn, not breathing for 15 minutes before finally being revived.
And not long after, she had her third brush with death after her brother covered her nose and mouth with baby powder to stop her from crying.
The man said he was found “blue and cold” and needed to be resuscitated for 20 minutes, but regained consciousness with no lasting effects.
At six o’clock he choked on the skin of a piece of chicken: ‘When the nurses found me, I wasn’t breathing and had no pulse, but one of them kept trying CPR long after they were told to stop. They saved me.’
Josh described how he survived being trampled by a horse and was the only survivor of a car accident that killed his uncle and two cousins.
After each incident, doctors said he was “lucky to be alive,” but years later, Josh was diagnosed with a condition that leaves users in so much pain they want to be dead.
A Reddit user detailed how they cheated death three times and was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia, a condition so painful it has been called a “suicidal disease” (file image)
At age 22, he was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia (TGN), “a disease so painful (the doctors said) that I would probably commit suicide.”
He revealed his experience in an anonymous Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA).
Nicknamed ‘suicidal disease’ because the excruciating pain makes people want to end their lives, the disorder causes sudden pain so severe that Josh compared it to ‘being burned alive.’
Despite the irony, his near-fatal incidents and his condition are not related. The man, however, said he can’t help but feel like death is approaching him.
He and his doctors believe his TGN was caused by a sinus infection he contracted.
While most sinus infections, also called sinusitis, can be treated with home remedies and antibiotics, their spread to the trigeminal nerve, the largest cranial nerve in the body.
They believe this caused a rare neurological condition that causes severe pain on one side of the head.
He compared his pain to “being burned alive, freezing to death, electrocuted, stabbed everywhere, flesh torn off, and nose hairs pulled out.”
While the exact prevalence is unknown, experts estimate that between 10,000 and 15,000 new cases of TGN of various degrees are diagnosed each year in the US.
The cause is not always clear, although it may be due to a compressed blood vessel near the trigeminal nerve or conditions such as multiple sclerosis that damage the protective layer around the cells.
The trigeminal nerve is a large, three-part nerve in the head that sends signals from the brain to parts of the face and vice versa.
The pain often appears suddenly and without warning, but can be triggered by factors as small as shaving, touching your face, eating, brushing your teeth, putting on makeup, the weather and smiling, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Trigeminal neuralgia causes severe pain on one side of the head. The anonymous Reddit user compared it to “being burned alive, freezing to death, electrocuted, stabbed everywhere, flesh ripped off, nose hairs pulled out” (stock image)
Mount Sinai describes TGN as “unpredictable attacks of intense pain that make everyday life unbearable.” All aspects of life become engulfed in currents of relentless shocks to the face, causing both physical and mental anguish.’
For Josh, the pain started in his cheek and spread to his eyelid, lips and jaw.
The poster was diagnosed with an acute form of the disease, as he only suffered three attacks and has had no symptoms for 12 years.
But in all three cases, he was put in a coma because the only way to relieve the intense pain was sedation.
He wrote: ‘There are weeks when I have nothing but fragments after the first few hours. Several hours were more than enough. I try my best not to remember them.
“I haven’t had any problems in 12 years, so I hope that part of my life is over.”
For people whose TGN does not go away as easily, the most effective treatment, according to Mount Sinai, is a posterior fossa exploration (PFE) procedure.
During this surgery, a doctor removes bone from the base of the skull, called the posterior fossa, to relieve pressure on the trigeminal nerve.
One study found that 87 percent of patients experienced complete pain relief and 78 percent still experienced relief five years after undergoing PFE.
One patient who underwent this procedure is Claudia Hirsch, who was experiencing 100 episodes of severe pain per day due to her TGN and for whom the medication had stopped working.
Just four days after being operated on, according to one case write Since Mount Sinai, Mrs. Hirsch no longer felt any pain.
She said: ‘I don’t even think about that. I don’t think about the pain… I don’t worry about how it will feel to get in the shower or what will happen if I brush my teeth… it’s like a bunch of cinder blocks have been taken away from me. back.’