I was raised by a father who was a hard-working framing contractor and a mother who was very caring. I was always energetic—the middle child, who some people say is the comedian or a person who likes to keep the peace. I was always trying to make people laugh. I was told to work hard and that I could do anything I wanted if I just worked for it. I started working when I was fourteen years old: doing a paper route before school, and washing dishes at night after school. When I got paid, I loved to help the family pay our bills, as by then my parents were divorced and I was helping Mom raise my brothers.

High school was not for me. I took the GED and joined the military. I wanted to work on airplanes, on jets in particular, but when I got out of the military, the economy was so depressed that I joined the construction union. I started as an apprentice, using a jackhammer in a ditch. Soon I started my own business, and I worked without missing a day, including weekends, because, to me, that was the way to be. People really looked up to me, and I liked that. Some nights I would come home just exhausted, my back hurting badly and my legs starting to give me problems. Whatever I did, I wanted to look good, no matter what it put my body through. I felt like Superman.

I started a company building custom homes, and then, my back gave way and I had to go to the hospital. The doctors told me that I had to have a spinal fusion, but I didn’t care, as I thought I was invincible at that time. I had the surgery and back to work I went. Before you knew it, I was on my job site and already working before the stitches were even out of my back.

A few years later, business slowed down, so I went to work for a finishing company and was rushing around trying to get stuff done—trying to show how much I could do. A 200-pound board fell from the 16-foot ceiling, hitting me in the head and breaking the vertebrae in my neck and also damaging my right arm and shoulder. I remember being told to stay still, and all I wanted to do was get up. To the hospital I went again, and they gave me a single-level fusion of the neck and rebuilt my right shoulder.

The pain when I woke up was really bad this time. I was older and was not recovering like I did in the past. I tried to work again and the screws loosened in my neck, which led to my second neck surgery. I remember being really nervous about this surgery. Just before going in, I asked the doc if I was going to be OK. He said, “I do this all the time, you will be fine.” I awoke different this time. I had trouble breathing, and I was moving all over and couldn’t control it. The doctors didn’t know it at the time, but in cutting across the front of my neck, they had paralyzed my left phrenic nerve, lifting my left hemidiaphragm and paralyzing my left lung—giving me phrenic nerve palsy.

They cut me loose from care after a few weeks, and I started a new career. I went to school to become a building inspector and to get my real estate license. But I found myself in a bad market again. So I went back to work in construction, only to end up in the emergency room one more time. I had loose hardware in my neck and needed another level of fusion. This time, they went in through the back of my neck. Eight more screws were added to the six I already had in the front, making that fourteen screws total in my neck.

When I awoke, I had no memory to speak of and the pain was unreal. Even staying still, I hurt horribly down my arms and in my chest. I had lost everything by this time: my homes and my construction company. I couldn’t do building inspection because I couldn’t look up or down much at all. I had lost all hope of ever having any type of life worth living. At this time, I was living in a hotel with just one suitcase. My sons were very upset and my family did not understand what was happening to me, and I wished they could. I was gone, inside and out.

Out of the blue, my insurance company called me and sent me to see a pain psychologist. This doctor helped put in place a team of doctors—a neurologist, a pulmonary doctor, a pain doctor, and himself—with a case manager to oversee it all. They found all the issues that were present and started to address them.

All I could think about was how to get rid of my pain and have my old life back. My psychologist suggested to me that my life (as I once knew it) might be gone. I felt totally hopeless and helpless. That was my bottom right there. I really thought that my life was truly over. I couldn’t just bounce back from this. I was cornered and scared. I looked at the doctor and he said, “We are going to work on getting you a new purpose for living.” (Later on, the Steps would help me find a life worth living with my disabilities.)

Then, while doing an online search about pain, I stumbled across CPA on a website. It looked like it could be exactly what I needed, so I started a face-to-face meeting at the local hospital. Five to six patients met every week. We would talk of a better way of thinking in order to cope with our pain. Some were ready, some were not, but I certainly was. I was tired of living like I had been. We registered the group on the CPA website and started a book-study meeting. From that point, my life kept getting better. I was now showing up for something bigger than me, and it gave me a purpose, a reason to leave my room.

I believed in a Higher Power, and I had come to call him “God.” But I didn’t feel him at the time. I knew about the Twelve-Step programs; I went to AA meetings with my father as a child and have been sober in AA for twenty-three years, but it never occurred to me to use them for my pain. Now I was desperate enough to try. I started with acceptance and recognizing that my life was unmanageable. I had a little trouble accepting some of my physical problems, but I knew for sure that my life was unmanageable. That was Step One.

When I fully accepted all my problems and understood I would be like this from now on, I started to look for a Higher Power again, especially to help during my lowest points. I noticed that whenever I either talked of God or read about recovery, my pain would become more manageable, even lessen, and become more livable. When I was agitated, my pain would fly through the roof. When I saw this pattern clearly, I came to believe, right there—Step Two. My next question was, how do I control this? I still wanted to control the situation.

Still trying to manage things, I found myself in fear very often. When the fear would come, the pain would get horrible. I didn’t medicate those spikes of pain. That just created other kinds of pain, so I turned to God again for the fear. I found he would take fear from me when I gave up trying to control it. That’s when I stumbled on letting go and doing the next right thing. I would say, “God, you can handle this fear; I am going to do the dishes. Talk to ya later,” and I noticed my pain would lessen enough to do the dishes. I had to pay attention to remember to do this, which was hard—I had a severed nerve root and two nerves pinched in my neck, and my breathing was bad. Still, daily I made a decision to turn my fear and my pain over to God as I understood Him—Step Three.

As time went on, I found it absolutely necessary to be honest with my doctors—about the medications and all my activities—if I was to expect the health professionals to be able to help me. That realization came to me after doing my inventory in Step Four.

My mother passed away several years ago. That was one of the hardest days in my recovery. I still showed up at my meeting for CPA. I was able to manage my pain without turning to medication, but my thinking went up and down. Still, I used what I knew at the time to help me through all that pain. And it worked.

A couple of years ago, I had respiratory failure and was back in the hospital. This time the doctors gave me a left thoracotomy, trying to stabilize my lung. I had friends in the program now that were there for me. I was no longer alone. My family showed up, too. Working the Steps got me through that one, and I recovered from it faster for that reason.

My expectations—how I used to want my family to react to my pain and my not being able to do certain things—have now changed. I no longer want them to know how I feel; that would mean they would have what I have. I would not want that. I just simply say “yes” when I mean yes and “no” when I mean I can’t do it. I don’t feel guilt anymore. That is a miracle. They accept me now, as I am, and I do the best I can with them.

I have recreated my life through the Steps of CPA. As I work this program of action, I have a new purpose in life that becomes more fulfilling every day.

I never dreamed when I was younger that I would be helping other people in order to save myself, but that is what is happening. It’s been five years since I started that first CPA group. Now I have a meeting at my house and a meeting at the hospital where we share our experience, strength, and hope with other people who suffer from chronic pain and illness. We learn how to live fully, with our chronic pain and illness.

It would appear that my purpose, what that doctor so long ago was hoping I’d find, is to help others with chronic pain and illness. I go wherever I am called. When I am reaching out to help another, not thinking of myself, I’m actually helping myself get better. There is nothing like watching the light go on when you’ve helped another person recover and find a new way of living. My hope is that if you have lost hope, you too can find a new life through CPA.