Mental Health Author Talks About When Pain Rewrote His Life

Darcy Patrick started 2022 on a high. He was releasing his 5th book and had started his dream job as a peer support worker, using his years of experience with depression and mental health recovery. Then he was hit by a severe infection that was eating his spinal cord. The never ending pain was excruciating. Darcy used all the tools he had developed over more than a decade and just released his 6th book Personal Growth.  Darcy now has a device implanted in his spinal cord that as reduced his pain by 80% and he's back doing what he loves - helping people.

See all of Darcy's books and his workshops at: darcypatrick.com

Transcript

Meet Darcy And The Backstory

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Darcy Patrick is with me on the show today. And Darcy is the author of the five books kind of started with talking about his depression and his journey in mental illness and has gone through stages in steps of what he's learned along the way. Hi, Darcy. How are you?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I'm well, nice to talk with you again.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

We're going to talk about the severe chronic pain that you have gone through for the last four years. And you and I met in 2016, and you had just finished writing your book, Why I Run, where you talked ultimately about living with depression. And you did it because in 2016, it was not something that was easy to talk about. It still isn't for people with mental illness and mental health problems, but it was kind of more difficult in 2016 and especially for men. And we are still fighting the stigma, the greater stigma for men in mental health. That started you on a path to freedom and advocacy and teaching.

Choosing Honesty About Depression

SPEAKER_00 1:07

In 2016, what is it that made you decide I'm going to come out and talk openly about my mental health?

SPEAKER_01 1:15

I was in therapy and the homework I was doing was uh all through written work. And my therapist challenged me to write my first book. And when I sat down at my computer, um I made an all-in decision where it was like if I was gonna write this book, I was going to be as honest and as truthful as I was going to be about everything that I was experiencing in my life. I wasn't gonna pull any punches, but I was also going to share also honestly the tools and the way that I was I was using them personally to help support others. And literal, you know, little did I know that in making that promise to myself and writing that book was gonna spin into an entirely new career, spin it into six books. Uh, that, you know, the reason why I did it was to let people know that you know they weren't alone in their struggles and that a that they there was nothing wrong with them, nothing needed to be fixed, that we just need to, you know, be open and honest about what we're going through at all times in our lives. And I think that it all prepared me. Each step, each book that I wrote, I shared, you know, to lead into the next one, to lead into the next one and to and to well, and it was your journey as well, right?

SPEAKER_00 2:41

I mean, that part of those books was your journey was on still unfolding. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah. And the tools I was you learning to use were unfolding as well.

When Sudden Pain Gets Dismissed

SPEAKER_00 2:51

Uh in 2022, I believe it is, January of 2022, you were just releasing your fifth book and you were so excited, and then you were hit with a severe bacterial infection in your spine. So tell me a bit about what happened with that, and then we can talk about where that journey took you.

SPEAKER_01 3:15

Yeah, I mean, I woke up, I thought I had the world in my in the palm of my hand at that point. I had started my new job at St. Joe's as a peer support worker. You know, all the hard work that I had put into teaching my programs and everything was paying off. My my book came out, I was heavily into meditation. Um, you know, everything creating wellness, mindfulness, journaling. And then boom, you know, the book's coming out, and literally um I was getting the the photo art done, uh, the cover shot done while I was in in pain. So that's how close it was, it was intertwined with what happened. And I just woke up on uh, you know, in in January, and it was literally the 2nd of January at 3 a.m. and I couldn't move, I couldn't walk. Uh, I was in like the most ridiculous amount of pain, and I had never had any back problems. There was nothing that was kind of leading me towards this. I mean, I was doing yoga, I was stretching, I was, you know, I was in the probably the best shape I had ever been in at that point physically. And uh it was crippling, and I'd never experienced anything like it. And I, you know, I unfortunately I went to the hospital. My wife ended up calling 911, and the doctor that was working in the hospital that morning kind of blew me off and told me, Oh, you just have a pinched nerve in your back. Go home, do these stretches, and you'll be fine. And I said, you know, there's something really wrong. This isn't just a pinch nerve, this is something really bad. And uh, he didn't do blood work, you know, he didn't do x-rays, he didn't do anything that would have kind of hinted off what this was. And inside, I kind of didn't want anything else for it to be than a pinch nerve, right? Because I wanted to keep working and keep going on the direction I was going. So I went home and you know, I I struggled for two months uh doing the stretches, doing yoga, hoping that one day it was gonna get better, that it would go away. And, you know, um on February the 28th, the very day that my uh my managing illness book came out, was released. I was walking into the hospital again and was floored at the fact that you know they finally took me seriously. They did blood work and uh they did a CT scan and something was eating my spine. And I was hospitalized for two months while they tried to kill the bacterial infection that was that was eating my spine. And you know, what was amazing was the impact that it was having on me emotionally and mentally. So at that point, I had you know been scaling back the amount of times that I I was seeing my therapist.

Hospital Survival Through Acceptance

SPEAKER_01 6:12

We had agreed that I had reached a point in my recovery and my care plan that we were going to be kind of calling it quits. So I was seeing her like once a month, and then all of a sudden, bang, I'm lying in a hospital bed talking to her daily, um, and learning to cope and learning how to use the tools in different ways uh than I had before, because I didn't realize how much when you're in that much pain, like living with like when I was in the hospital, I was like 11 out of 10 pain. Like it was it was unbelievably crippling. And how the impact I learned quickly on your mind, body, and soul experiencing that type of pain is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Well, and you said, as you said, you had just started your as well, your book coming out, but you had just started your dream job as a peer support worker at uh McMaster.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

Uh yeah, St. Joe's and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

So St. Joe's. And how were you able to actually kind of get your brain through that wall of pain to be able to think about something else?

SPEAKER_01 7:28

Yeah, I mean, the thing was was uh at the height of the pain when I was in the in the hospital. So there's like kind of different stages where um when I was in when I was hospitalized before I had the spine, the spinal uh fusion surgery to to to stabilize the area, uh, because it got so bad that I had lost the use of my legs. It was all about accepting resources that were given to me without judgment. So it was like this radical acceptance piece that I had to play in my head every day, which you know, radical acceptance is something that we have to use to change our perspective and to look at positives. So every day I was practicing that radical acceptance. Um, I remember the very first thing that I had to face was the fact that, I mean, I had been sober for 13 years at that point. So the fact that they were, you know, hitting me with eight milligrams of Dilatted every four hours was kind of hard for me to take because I didn't want to be on any type of you know drug at all. But I had to accept that, you know, at this moment it was a resource for me to get through the it's an interesting way of looking at it. Yeah. So it was like a resource, it was something that was gonna help me. It didn't mean that I was always gonna be on the pain medication, it just meant that while I was in treatment and while I was in the 11 out of 10 pain, I needed relief, right? I needed to treat myself with some compassion. So that was uh uh, you know, one of the big pieces that I had to deal with was the fact that you know I'm gonna have to to to accept help, even getting out of bed and getting uh from the bed onto a gurney to go down for an MRI. Um, I wasn't gonna be able to do that by myself. So if they offered to help me, then I was gonna have to learn to accept that help. And in the book, I talk about a specific my first MRI that I had done when I refused to help. And I, you know, slowly walked over and I got onto the machine, and the nurse kindly looked over and she said, Darcy, you know, we are here to help you. Let us support you and help you through this, you know, because if you don't, you're gonna, you're gonna, your pain's gonna be greater. And I saw the concern in her face, and so from that point on, I accepted help. And then they, you know, they to the point where I was accepting that they could like use the bedding to cradle me and lift me out of bed, which I mean, which is incredible to go from being able to run a 16-kilometer run like it's a walk in the park, um, to you know, barely being able to sit up in bed uh can really destroy you inside. And there is another moment where, you know, they brought a physiotherapist in to see me, and she had a walker, and I was lying in bed, and she said to me, you know, I'm here to show you how to use a walker because we're concerned that you're gonna fall. And uh, you know, I laughed. I said, I don't need the walker. And she says, Okay, well, why don't you get up and show me how you're walking? And so it five minutes later, um, while I got myself up to sit in bed with my feet hanging over the side, like in screaming pain, she pushed the walker up to me and said, Darcy, please accept the walker. You don't have to use it forever, you just have to use it for now. So that was a huge step where the acceptance of seeing things as a resource to help me to actually treat myself with compassion was something that I had to get used to doing. And it only that lesson had to be there in place in order for me to get through the rest of it, because the rest of it was even worse. Um, and the journaling, the journaling tools, the thought positive thought records, and changing my perspective, all of these tools that I was using to fight my depression all of a sudden came flooding back to me uh in ways that I never dreamt of while I was dealing with this chronic pain and how my body was slowly disintegrating uh because of the my spine like literally being like eaten.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, interestingly, because it it it it it sort of jumps out at me that one of the reasons, maybe that you didn't want to accept the help

Rebuilding With Journaling And Kindness

SPEAKER_00 12:10

or or accept that you needed the help was because you had worked through so much in your life and you had you had gotten to a place of emotional and mental health strength. Did you did you kind of go back to the beginning?

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yes. Yeah, I literally went back to to writing positive thought records uh where I would add up the good things that happened that day as opposed to the bad, right? So I mean, I was writing thought records about you know being able to sit up and eat my uh you know, sit in a chair and eat my lunch or eat my breakfast and then go back to bed, right? So I was adding up even the smallest type type things. Not only that, but I was also practicing, you know, being kind to people because even though I was in pain, I, you know, I also got to see how overworked nurses are, and I got to see how they were treated by the patients. So, you know, I learned how to advocate and how to uh have relationships with people on a different level, right? Where if I was kind if I showed kindness, the kindness would would would be returned to me, which I was learning already um throughout my own life. So that kind of just kind of morphed into, you know, basically, how am I gonna survive and live in a hospital, like you said, when I'm a strong man, right? But right now I'm um so emotionally weak, right? So I had to really dig deep and find ways of doing things. And it's amazing because each step along the way, like uh of that of that pain journey, I utilized, like you said at the beginning of the interview, every tool from every book that I had written was preparing me for this, right? Which was kind of mind-blowing because we think that what can we gain from from chronic pain, right? Like a lot of people say, well, what's there, what is there to gain from that type of pain and for it lasting over a four-year period of time. Well, I mean, there's I didn't think there was anything to gain. Uh, but then I learned that, you know, it made me a stronger person by giving in. So I uh my strength, my advocacy, my ability to adapt grew in leaps and bounds because of my past.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

Well, the pain of mental, the pain of depression is a different kind of pain, but it's also really severe and it's really hard to work through. Can you tell me in in sort of high level? Um, because I want people to go and buy your book, Personal Growth, because it is amazing, and it's not just about pain, it's about it's about life. Can you can you give me sort of a high-level look at what the tools were that you did use? And I and we've mentioned yoga,

Self-Compassion Against The Inner Critic

SPEAKER_00 15:18

and that was that was one of them, but but I followed you on Facebook over the years, and there were a whole bunch of other um create creative tools that you learned and things that helped you get through every day.

SPEAKER_01 15:31

Yeah, I mean, one of the things when we're dealing with mental health and the voices that we have inside of our head, uh our worst enemies, uh, the poison parrot, the negative thinking, the negative thoughts, our low self-esteem, how it works against us. I mean, after my surgery was done and um my pain continued, you know, in into the real world, um, I noticed how quickly I would think negatively and how I how much I believed. So, like if I went to stand up and my left leg gave out, I automatically had a thought, like, what a what a loser you are. You can't even walk anymore. Right. So, and then I would let that kill my self-esteem. And then I would slowly allow it to for me to spiral, even though I was already at I was working and I was getting up from my office chair. Um, I overlooked that.

SPEAKER_00 16:34

You had gone back to as a to work as a peer support worker.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

Yeah, I was actually working and it's and and still experiencing all this pain. So I had to realize that, hey, listen, I may my leg may give out, but I'm still doing what I love. So I have to stop talking to myself in such a negative way, right? So I had to be really conscious of my inner voice because even though I was experiencing great pain, I couldn't allow it to bring me down, to stop me from doing what I love. Uh, because I was doing it, so I had to give that more attention. And one way that I started to give it more attention was I started to work heavily on self-compassion, and what I like to call the pillars or the components of self-compassion. So every day I would write these headings: I am love, I am kindness, I am understanding, and I am compassion. And under each heading, I would write where love came into my life at what things I loved, um, how I was loved by others, who I loved, what things, and and then I would go into I am kindness. How am I showing kindness to myself today? How do I show kindness to others? Right. And then understanding how how can I understand my struggle today? How can I understand others? Where does understanding come into my in into my day? And then I read about compassion, and the amazing thing is that if we do this every day, all those things come up differently. So every day you'll find love somewhere, you'll find kindness somewhere different. And so that really built up the fact that I was still growing and still experiencing life. Um, and I never gave up.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

Just recently, you've had uh, you'll have to explain this because I just I just read that you had something inserted in your spine which has relieved an immense amount of pain

Spinal Cord Stimulator And Real Relief

SPEAKER_00 18:49

after four years. Um tell me about that and how that has made you feel physically, but then as well emotionally.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So uh I had gotten to the end after almost five years um of trying so many different treatments, physiotherapies, tons of imaging, um, tons of neurologists and figuring what the heck's going on. Um, you know, I had a work colleague who had told me that they had a spinal cord stimulator put in like 10, 15 years ago, and how much it changed their life. So I reached out to them and kind of said, hey, tell me more about this because I want to remember how much of an impact it had on you. And so she told me, and then I I was involved at the uh the McMaster de Groot Pain Clinic, uh, and I made an appointment to go in to talk about the spinal cord stimulator. And I went in and it was quite amazing because you know, when they work for you, they they they really do a good job. And so I asked for a referral for a spinal cord stimulator. So a spinal cord stimulator is an electronic device that they implant in your body, and they put two, it's kind of like a pacemaker, and they put two leads up into your spinal cord. And so what happens is when you have a spinal cord injury, which is what um I ended up being classified as after this infection uh decimated my spine, my nervous system at L1 through L5 was destroyed. Uh, so I was going through extreme pain in my legs, so my spine is sending false signals to my brain saying, you know, you got to for things that weren't there. So, what a spinal cord stimulator does is those two electrical leads, they go into this into the epidural space between your uh spinal cord and your vertebrae. And what it does is it sends electrical impulses that tricks your brain into not sending pain signals. It's incredible. And so I went and I did like a uh you know a two-hour uh intake interview exam, because you have to fit certain criteria in order for it to be covered by the government. Um, and so I went in and I had it approved for a trial. And then I went through a three-week trial where I had the wires like hanging out of my back with the with the uh unit taped to the side of me to see if it actually worked. And lo and behold, uh during that trial, it it helped take away probably 60% of my pain, which was a which was amazing. Um, and then I went in and I had the permanent implant put in on April the second. And now it is taking about 80% of my pain away, which is unthat's amazing. So before this happened, like my health had decreased so much that I was barely able to walk. Uh, and when I walked, I had a cane, and I was barely able to maybe walk 100 meters if I was lucky before I was I was finished, or my legs would get out. And now I'm able to do uh you know two or three like three kilometer walks a day. So without without limitation, without falling, without resting. Uh and it's amazing because I'm on the other side, you know, I've reached the other side and I never thought I would. And I started work, I worked here for nine months as a you know, peer support provider before I got ill. And then I came back and I worked for four years in you know, nine out of ten pain at times. And now I'm back after this, after like about an eight-week recovery period. Um I'm back to work and uh and I'm healthy, and I have so much to share now. And I get to work with people who struggle with mental health and chronic pain because it goes hand in hand. It goes hand in hand. Trust me, you can't have chronic pain without poor mental health, without depression, without anxiety. It it either it's incredible how it's connected. And if you already have mental health issues and you get dealt chronic pain on top of it, man, you need support. You need someone who's been there, done

Connection Between Pain And Mental Health

SPEAKER_01 23:52

that, and got the t-shirt. And I am so happy that I am that person now who went through what I went through because now I've got the t shirt. I've been there, I've done that, and I can support and I can help advocate and I can be there with people.

SPEAKER_00 24:08

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