I suffer from a rare ‘suicide disease’ and have died three times

A man who was declared dead three times has revealed he is living hell in his battle against a rare condition called ‘suicide disease’.

The 47-year-old, whose name is 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 born when his pregnant mother mixed toxic chemicals in an attempt to end her own life and “almost died in the bathroom.”

Separately, Josh was stillborn a few months later, no breathed for 15 minutes before finally being revived.

And not long after, he suffered a third death, after his brother rubbed his nose and mouth with baby powder to stop him crying.

The man said he was found ‘blue and cold’ and required CPR for 20 minutes, but regained consciousness with no lasting effects.

At six o’clock he choked on the skin of a piece of chicken: ‘By the time the nurses found me I was no longer breathing and had no pulse, but one of them continued to try CPR long after they were told to stop. They saved me.’

Josh described surviving being trampled by a horse and being the sole survivor of a car crash 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 causes users so much pain that they want to be dead.

At age 22, he was diagnosed with trigeminal neuralgia (TGN), “a disease so painful (doctors said) that I would probably commit suicide.”

He revealed his experience in an anonymous Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA).

The condition is called ‘suicide disease’ because the unbearable pain makes people want to end their lives. The condition causes sudden pain so severe that Josh compared it to “being burned alive.”

Despite the irony, his near-fatal incidents and condition are unrelated. However, the man said he could feel like death was coming for him.

He and his doctors believe his TGN was caused by a sinus infection he dealt with.

Although most sinusitis, also called sinusitis, can be treated with home remedies and antibiotics, the disease spreads to the trigeminal nerve, the largest cranial nerve in the body.

They believe this has led to the rare neurological condition that causes intense pain on one side of the head.

He compared his pain to “being burned alive, frozen to death, electrocuted, stabbed everywhere, flesh peeled off, nose hairs plucked.”

Although the exact prevalence is unknown, experts estimate that 10,000 to 15,000 new TGN cases of varying degrees are diagnosed each year in the US.

The cause is not always clear, but may be due to a compressed blood vessel near the trigeminal nerve or conditions such as multiple sclerosis that damage the protective layer around 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 comes on suddenly and without warning, but can be caused by triggers as minor as shaving, touching your face, eating, brushing your teeth, putting on makeup, the weather and smiling, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Mount Sinai describes TGN as “unpredictable attacks of severe pain that make daily life unbearable. Every aspect of life is enveloped in currents of unrelenting jolts to the face, causing both physical and mental pain.”

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 condition, as they had suffered attacks only three times and had been symptom-free for 12 years.

But in all three cases he was put into a coma because anesthesia was the only way to relieve the intense pain.

He wrote: “There are weeks I don’t have anything except bits and pieces after the first few hours. A few hours was more than enough. I try my best not to remember them.

“I haven’t had a single problem in 12 years, so hopefully that part of my life is over.”

For people whose TGN does not resolve 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 relive pressure on the trigeminal nerve.

One study found that 87 percent of patients experienced complete pain relief and 78 percent continued to experience relief five years after undergoing a PFE.

One patient who underwent this procedure is Claudia Hirsch, who experienced 100 episodes of intense pain per day from her TGN, and for whom the medication stopped working.

According to one case, just four days after undergoing surgery to write from Mount Sinai, Mrs. Hirsch was pain-free.

She said, “I don’t even think about it. I don’t think about pain…I don’t worry about what it will feel like to stand in the shower or what will happen when I brush my teeth…it’s like a ton of cinder blocks are off my body taken back.’