Listen to The Voice

Dawn Cady is the owner of Pain Transformation, a business which helps chronic pain sufferers to break the cycle of pain. Having overcome 30 years of chronic pain and disease she knows only too well the impacts it has on every aspect of life. Dawn has demystified chronic pain and shows others how they to can beat it. Connect with Dawn at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/dawncady/

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Lying in the dark, curled in the foetal position on my bed with blankets over my body, I could hear my husband and little boy playing in the living room.

Alfie was 18 months old and like most boys of that age, full of energy, curiosity and mischief. That morning, while I was lying on the couch, Alfie had jumped on me in fun. This is something that others might laugh off, but after being in chronic pain for almost two years, waves of intense pain had been racing through my body for hours.

I still can’t remember all the things I said to him that morning. Living in a fog on multiple painkillers made me feel doughy and dulled my senses. However, the one thing I do remember is yelling at him and telling him that I wish he’d never been born.

So there I was, lying on my bed, feeling alone, thinking things like, “I’m a disgusting human being” “I’m a burden” “I’m worthless”. The pain I had been feeling for almost two years was exhausting enough, but on that day it was so intense I wanted to die.

I had always thought that suicide was the ultimate selfish choice. But all I felt at that time was that it was the most selfless thing I could do. My reasoning was that my husband and son wouldn’t have to see me like this anymore. I even started thinking about how I would end my life so my family wouldn’t have to find me.

It was in the midst of this thick, spiralling blackness that I heard a clear voice in my head saying, “it’s not true”. With the loud jumble of truly awful thoughts, made worse by multiple painkillers, I wondered if I was hearing things. So I tuned in and heard it again, then kept listening for it and focusing on it, eventually drowning out all the horrible thoughts and allowing me to focus on reality. That voice saved my life, and it wasn’t the first time it had happened.

Pain had appeared throughout my life a number of times. From the age of seven, I recall having intense cramping in my stomach that resulted in me crawling on the floor of my room. My parents didn’t help me; my mother was emotionally and physically abusive, and suffered from mental health issues, and my father was just distant. I learned to keep quiet about the pain and just get on with it because talking about it would result in abuse and a beating.

Finally after years of shame and hiding my pain, at the age of 17 my parents listened to me after I told them I found blood in my stool. I remember feeling excited that they were finally taking me seriously. They took me to a doctor, who referred me to a specialist.

The specialist did some tests, then told my parents and I in no uncertain terms that it was, “all in my head”. To say my mother was angry is a gross understatement, so I weathered her anger and carried on dealing with stomach pain.

Nearly five years later, my symptoms got dramatically worse. I had been bleeding for two months, going to the toilet some days over 60 times, I had an inability to eat and knew there was something seriously wrong. I was so weak that I would pass out regularly during the day.

You may be wondering why I didn’t seek help. Most of my life I had felt no-one in the world believed I was unwell or even cared about me. I was paralysed by fear; I felt there was nothing else I could do?

Then one day at work, I had become so sick, I had passed out in the toilets, sitting alone in the toilet stall I felt my heart race, palms sweat and panic rising. I thought I was going to die, with no other option and feeling intense fear; I called my mother.

Mum arrived in a taxi and took me to hospital. I asked the nurses for a bedpan, so I could show them what was wrong and then presented it to them half filled with blood. I still remember the look on my mother’s face because it was one of the rare times she actually believed what I was saying, “my daughter’s just done this, get someone to see her NOW!”

I was admitted immediately, they carried out a lot of tests no one could figure out what was wrong. By that point, I hadn’t eaten for three weeks.

About a week or so later I was lying in my bed in the ward when a doctor came in and wheeled me out for more tests. He tried to do a colonoscopy on me but couldn’t because my bowel was so inflamed. The doctor diagnosed me with ulcerative colitis and told me it was so severe that my organs were shutting down. (Ulcerative colitis is a bowel disease that causes small sores to form in the rectum and intestine due to inflammation causing bowel movement to be rapid and frequent.

The diagnosis finally explained what had been wrong with me throughout my teens and late childhood.

The strange thing was that no-one at the hospital seemed to know who the doctor was that diagnosed me. I described him to them as, “tall with blonde hair, and a Dutch accent”. None of the staff knew who I was talking about, but his notes were proof that someone had diagnosed me. I still wonder today if this was some kind of divine intervention, because without his diagnosis who knows how long it would’ve taken them to figure out what was wrong with me.

During my time in hospital, and because of the extensive damage to my bowel, they wheeled my bed down for surgery to remove it three times. Each time a clear voice in my head told me: no, you will heal yourself. I had to refuse to sign the consent form despite a lot of pressure from the doctors and nurses taking care of me.

Three months on from when my final no was accepted I was out of the wheelchair, having no more blood transfusions my body was healing.

Another incident where the voice saved me, I was 11 weeks pregnant, and I was having symptoms of a heart attack, so I took myself off to the Emergency room to be turned away with indigestion. The voice said “this is serious” 3 days later I was admitted into hospital with renal failure. I discovered while in the maternity ward when your kidneys begin to fail your body will abort the pregnancy to save you.    

Returning back to where I was in the foetal position in my bedroom, what had me in agony wanting to end my life.  Well, when 5 ? months pregnant I slipped and was left in a pretty bad way 11 injuries in fact. This challenge had me needing to learn how to walk again twice (I’ll leave that for another time).

You see the same voice encouraging me not to end my life, had visited me several times throughout my life.  Each and every time saving me from a doomed fate gently nudging me back on track.

As I reflect on my life, I now know with every ounce of breath I take, the true essence of the quote “the universe only gives you what you can handle”. My journey led me to see my body as my best friend, my rock, my saviour and I honour her by listening to all the subtle signs and now… we work together.  

I know when we take this approach to healthcare it works; I now have no pain, and the three autoimmune diseases I was diagnosed with are now in remission, and honestly, I know they have gone.

From my journey and experience of suffering, I opened a business to help others suffering; my main focus is coaching chronic pain sufferers to break the cycle of pain. Through intuition, I find the right tools for my clients helping them to reduce pain, remove anxiety, stress, PTSD and many other issues that come with being in pain. Empowering clients to take control of their health and maximise their body’s ability to repair I know is my purpose because I love every minute of working with my clients and I’m bloody good at it.

My hope for you as a reader is to know how important it is to listen to the inkling, the gut feeling, the voice, or however, you experience your intuition if I hadn’t who knows where I would be. NEVER GIVE UP!