I had two major cycling accidents in the 1980s which caused a spinal fracture and severe whiplash.I quickly got over the accidents and was fine until the early 1990s when I started to have migraines. This gradually progressed to daily migraines by 1996.
When I was 25, I was living life to the full. Then, literally overnight, I became ill. It was 15 April 1998, a date I will never forget, when I woke up in severe pain. I had to crawl on my elbows and knees to go to the bathroom. I had pain in all my joints – it even hurt to breathe.
September 23, 2006 was a beautiful, still, sunny autumn day.I was in the UK to visit my elderly mother and other family members and had taken the train to London to visit a friend.
It happened on 28 August 2008 at 8.28am. Everything after that is a bit of a blur, but the moment the accident happened will be stuck in my memory forever.
I first incurred a serious back injury at work in 1985. It was not able to be evidence-based for five years (at the time of surgery).
My first taste of pain and injury was when I was only three years old.We had a car accident and I had my lower lumbar joints damaged as well as whiplash injuries to my neck. No one knew this at the time, though, and by the time I was nine I was having X-rays on my back to find out why I was in so much pain.
My problems started in the early 1980s with the introduction of computers in most public service departments.In 1986,
Before my accident, about six years ago, I worked at a prestige car dealership in Brisbane. This work was physically demanding as well as being quite social. We all had to get on well as it could be quite a pressured environment and humour often kept us going.
I was an advisory teacher when I suffered a spinal injury in 2007 that landed me in a Brisbane hospital emergency department.Thanks to a neurosurgeon, I regained the use of my left leg and the crushing pain eased. 
As a chronic migraine sufferer I've lived with pain since I was a small child. With the help of sub-occipital electrodes and an implanted pulse generator (IPG implant) I can now manage my daily pain and rely less on heavy medications.
I injured my neck in 1993 while attending a Scout Jamboree in Canada as a carer for a child with cerebral palsy.My pain symptoms didn't really show up until 1997 when I started getting lots of neck and arm pain. 
My injury happened over two days – August 30-31, 2001 – when I was asked to reorganise the office's new filing system.
I'd survived the traumas of a major motor car accident, the ignominity of a prostatectomy, and the despair and exasperation of three separate cancers and their harsh therapies, but nothing had prepared me for the greatest challenge of my life, dealing with chronic pain
I was nine years old when I damaged the ligaments in my left leg in a hurdling accident.After a year of treatment my leg hadn't healed – in fact the pain had worsened and I was diagnosed with chronic regional pain syndrome. 
It was during a long jump attempt at my school's athletics try-outs when I was nine that I first hurt myself.As usual, I ran and jumped but as I hit the sand I felt pain in what I thought was my ankle.
Harry Perkins, son of Olympic champion swimmer and Painaustralia Director Kieren Perkins OAM, was diagnosed with chronic migraine at the tender age of eleven.
6 when I was 17. Unrelated to any incident, I began to experience extreme back pain. I later discovered it was a degenerative disease with no cure, but at the time I thought it could just be 'fixed'.
That Friday in June 1990 began like any other Friday – two adults, three teenagers, family pets, all heading out. I was totally unaware that this was the day "Super Mum" would die and life as I knew it would be over.
I woke up one morning in 1988 with a sore back.As the pain continued to increase, I consulted my general practitioner who referred me to an orthopedic surgeon. After some tests, I was told that there were no problems and that the pain should go away. It didn't.
In 1962 at the age of 21, Renée was involved in a serious car accident that kept her in an English hospital - in a 40-bed geriatric ward - for nearly two years.
Breast cancer is a diagnosis heard all too often these days at 13,000 diagnoses a year in Australia.
"Fortunately", the pain from my neck injury was so severe that it was taken seriously from the start.Jacqueline: Hip Pain
One day in Year 8 I was playing with some classmates when I hurt my hip. Stuck on the ground and unable to get up, I was taken to hospital by ambulance, but doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me.
Over the next six months, I experienced increasingly frequent episodes where the muscle in my right hip would slip, causing debilitating pain and immobilising my leg. It would take three years to diagnose hypermobility as the cause.
Each time the pain would leave me collapsed and sobbing on the ground, with people panicking or telling me to 'stop faking'. Even teachers found it difficult to believe me.
I was forced to sit out of PE at school, had to give up the piano, and felt increasingly lonely. I went from a bubbly child interested in learning to a quiet, withdrawn girl who flinched every time she moved.
Every few hours I took a combination of paracetamol and Nurofen, and I did this over several years.
By November 2007, I had received various false diagnoses from different specialists, and at times disbelief and rudeness. Having developed a lot of mistrust towards doctors, my mum and I decided to go it alone.
We designed a rehabilitative program, based on physical therapies and the latest research, which I undertook over the first six months of 2008, while continuing my studies from home.
I was able to return to school for the second half of 2008, sustained by painkillers, but only managing to attend part-time while completing a full-time load. By the end of 2010, I was unable to walk without the use of crutches and could only attend two or three days per week, so I decided to drop out of school in order to focus on my physical health.
2011 was my year of change. In June I was admitted to the ADAPT program at the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, and I finally learned to deal with my pain.
By understanding chronic pain, I learned to cope with it. I learned that exercise is good for me, and I learned to take my focus off the pain; I learned to have hope.
Within a week of starting ADAPT, I was off painkillers and within two weeks I was able to walk without crutches. By the end of the third week I was happier than I'd been in years.
I still have chronic pain, but today I accept my pain, I don't fight it, and I put my energy into managing it. I'm now on my way to completing the HSC equivalent at TAFE and have found a part-time job – something I never thought I'd be capable of doing!