@musikbliss Yes, everything about being a Mayo patient was great for me. I also did everything I could to be a good patient that doctors wanted to help. I had spent 2 years with spinal cord compression looking for a surgeon to help me, and none of the local non-Mayo surgeons would help because they misunderstood my case. A lot of surgeons don't want to take on complicated cases if they don't know if they could fix it because they don't want to fail. As a patient, you may run up against this too. I found medical literature with cases similar to mine, so I knew what the doctors had missed. With that literature, I requested an appointment at Mayo and told them about being denied by 5 non-Mayo surgeons. Previously, I had watched videos of spine surgeons presenting at conferences and instructing other surgeons on how to choose patients. One of the surgeons who had refused surgery to me was saying not to do surgery on patients with mental health issues because you can do the best surgery in the world and they won't appreciate it. The reason I am saying this is because you want doctors to help you, so it would be in your best interest to get the help that you need emotionally first. I have a good friend who has been suicidal at times because she has a painful condition that doctors have not been able to fix, and it brought back suicidal thoughts that had been in her past. By finding a new doctor and getting her psychiatric meds optimized, she does much better in functioning so much so that if I didn't know her past, I would not know that she had ever thought about suicide because she is happy and positive and fun to be around. She is also getting nerve block injections to control the pain and is really doing well. It's all about advocating for yourself and getting your life back in control.

I cannot speak for Mayo as I am not a medical professional or employee of Mayo, and I do not know how they review applications for appointments, but I want you to have the best chance you can to be accepted as a patient, so please work with your doctors to get your emotions into positive territory. You can do that now. You have a lot of power over your own healing when you believe that you can do it. I came to spine surgery knowing in my heart that it would resolve my all over crazy pain even though none of the doctors could promise that to me. I was right, and decompressing my spinal cord resolved all the pain I was having everywhere.

When doctors think that you may harm yourself, you will be directed toward mental health help instead of trying to solve the issues that are causing your pain. I do understand how frustrating this is, and I was frustrated also for 2 years while I was drawing diagrams of pain all over my body and trying to find a posture that would lessen my pain and going through a parade of doctors who didn't want me as a patient. My physical therapist sure did help a lot by realigning my spine and relieving muscle spasms and doing the myofascial work. I read a lot of medical literature about physical issues and I have learned a lot from my physical therapist, so I have learned to question how the body works and have an understanding about alignment issues that can cause problems. That is why I sent you the information about the hyoid bone and temperomandibular dysfunction in case that was relevant to you. These are things that a physical therapist would treat, so that may also be something to pursue now with your current doctors.

If you do feel like harming yourself again, please call the Suicide Prevention Hotline like Amanda suggested. You will get someone right away instead of waiting hours for us to find your post here. I hope that I have been able to help, and please do not feel like any of this is criticism. It was pretty shocking to me to hear a surgeon talking about choosing which patients he wanted to help and to know that I was not one of them. I always thought that doctors wanted to help everyone, by that is not how it is when there are big risks to consider. Sometimes doing surgery would cause more harm than good, so it is a balancing act. If you need the MFR provider search link again, here it is.
http://mfrtherapists.com/

And I need to say this too... I'm glad you came back.