Pain makes bargains we later regret. At this point my doctors and I reached for stronger medicine—an honest decision born of exhaustion. What followed I came to call “the OxyContin trap”: the long unravelling and the longer way back.

At this point, my doctor consulted with his colleagues, and it was decided to prescribe OxyContin as a means of pain relief. I call this the start of the ‘OxyContin trap’, because it was a very addictive medication and the pain relief started to become ineffective after about eight hours instead of lasting twelve hours as it was supposed to. After several months it became even less effective as my body became used to it.

As we now know, the misuse of opioids such as oxycodone has become a worldwide epidemic, with millions becoming addicted and many dying from its effects when used to get a high.

In my own case, I spent the next six to seven years practically bedbound with migraines that were by then constant—24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It was only through the support of my wife, Alison, and my family that I was able to survive this time. I was blessed in several ways apart from them: the presence of our Lord and my relationship with him, and the constant presence of my faithful dog, Sonic.

They both would spend the days and nights with me—my faith in God in a spiritual way, and Sonic lying next to me on the bed, curled up in the crook of my knee. These were long years, and I had many dark nights of the soul.

Several times I attempted to detox from OxyContin, but unfortunately the pain—and the addictive nature of the drug—won out, and I was forced to continue using it. This, however, caused another problem as my doctors started to treat me as a drug addict and blamed me for becoming addicted to OxyContin, even though they were the ones who had prescribed it in the first place.

This became the course of my life for several years, with one doctor after another refusing to treat me. The cause of the problem was forgotten.

At one stage we were travelling 100 kilometres each way, each week, to see a doctor in another town. I can remember lying in my bed with a pillow wrapped around my head, just trying to cope with the pain.

During the years 2005 to 2009, we travelled to Sydney on multiple occasions to see some of the most senior neurologists, each a professor in the field. Multiple MRIs and brain scans did not reveal any obvious cause for the migraines. Again, each neurologist tried different medications; however, none of them worked. It was thought at one stage that I was getting referred pain from arthritis in my neck. Even anti-inflammatories had no effect.

At one stage I was put on cortisone for the inflammation, but to no effect other than to pile on a stack of weight, taking me up to 150 kg.

One small light was a specialist in Newcastle, Dr Schwarzer, a pain specialist. Every six months we would travel to Newcastle Private Hospital, and he would ablate the occipital nerves in the back of my neck.

This was done under live imaging and would take about one and a half hours to complete. An electrode would be inserted into the back of my neck and would cauterise the occipital nerve. During this procedure, copious amounts of lignocaine anaesthetic were injected into the back of my neck.

Other treatments that were tried were a 48-hour lignocaine infusion and, at a later date, a 48-hour ketamine infusion. Neither of these had any effect whatsoever on the migraines I was experiencing.

Finally, around 2007 a neurologist at Royal North Shore Hospital transferred me from OxyContin to methadone, and I was finally free of the addictive effects of OxyContin. Unfortunately, it took quite a large dose of methadone to counteract the effects of OxyContin.

I must say at this stage that neither OxyContin nor methadone was able to control the migraines.

By 2009 I had made my peace with life and death and had started to pray for the Lord to take me. I would have been quite happy to leave this world and pain behind. Even my family realised that I had come to this position privately because they no longer wanted me to suffer.

I must admit that, looking back at this period, I have many blank memories, because in May 2010 I suffered a stroke caused by a bleed on the left-hand side of my brain. Fortunately, I realised something was wrong (I could not add up 2 + 2), and we were able to get to the hospital very quickly. This meant that the worst effects of the stroke were somewhat mitigated.

Since the stroke, I have had to learn to write properly again with my right hand, have suffered major sight loss in my right eye, and now experience an inability to cope with changes in temperature. It appears that my body’s thermostat has been damaged, and I mostly live within an air-conditioned environment. The other side effect is that I suffer from extreme tiredness.

At first, it was thought that my tiredness was from sleep apnoea. However, after being diagnosed with sleep apnoea and buying a CPAP machine, the extreme tiredness remained. This means that I only have a certain amount of energy on any given day. I have since learned that this tiredness can be a lasting effect from the stroke.

What I should mention at this point is that one of the after-effects of the stroke was that my migraine headaches stopped overnight. I was left with only mild daily headaches that were controllable with over-the-counter medications. In my honest opinion, this was a divine healing.

Alison and I, however, were not happy with what the specialists were telling us about possible causes of the stroke. Nor did they suggest any post-stroke therapies such as physiotherapy. As such, we sought advice from Dr Schwarzer in Newcastle, and he referred us to a neurologist at John Hunter Hospital (Dr Levi, now Prof Levi).

When I attended Dr Levi’s rooms at John Hunter Hospital, he examined the same MRIs and scans that were taken here in Tamworth. Within 10 minutes he diagnosed that it appeared I had a blocked carotid artery on the left-hand side. No more than 20 minutes later I was in a room having an ultrasound on my carotid arteries, which revealed that my left carotid artery was 95% blocked.

As a result, I was booked in for a left carotid endarterectomy, during which a stent was placed in the artery. The surgery was carried out by a very kind doctor whose name may sound unusual—Dr Organ, a vascular surgeon at John Hunter Hospital.

Even though it would seem at this stage my medical problems were behind me, I still had one battle yet to fight: to detox from all the methadone and medications that I had been placed on for so many years.

At this stage, I had found a doctor in Tamworth who was willing to work with me through the medical issues. We discussed my future regarding medications, and he informed me that getting off methadone was harder than getting off the drug heroin. As such, I should not expect to get off methadone; rather, I would probably have to learn to live with it.

However, I am somewhat stubborn, and that was not something I was willing to accept. Consequently, I virtually locked myself in my bedroom for nearly two years and gradually weaned myself off methadone, diazepam, and other medications.

This was not an easy time, as on many occasions I cut the dosage back too much, too quickly, and ended up in hospital with heart palpitations and other withdrawal symptoms. Some of my family really could not understand what I was trying to accomplish; they could not understand why I would stay locked away in my bedroom. Personally, this was probably the hardest part of my recovery. I found it very hard to explain to them what I was trying to achieve, particularly when they came to visit and I did not participate in any activities with them.

Finally, after about eighteen months to two years, I was free not only of methadone but also of all the other medications that I had been placed on. Sometime during 2012, I started to drive again after almost ten years.

There are many other things that took place during these years; however, as I mentioned, because of the stroke I have many blank memories, so this account is really more of a summary of what took place over ten or more years.

This is Part 2 of a 2‑part post. Previous: Part 1 → Chapter10 Prt-1-of-2