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.
Breast cancer is a diagnosis heard all too often these days at 13,000 diagnoses a year in Australia.
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
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.
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.
My problems started in the early 1980s with the introduction of computers in most public service departments.In 1986,
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).
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. 
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'.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
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.
"Fortunately", the pain from my neck injury was so severe that it was taken seriously from the start.
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. 
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.
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.
My injury happened over two days – August 30-31, 2001 – when I was asked to reorganise the office's new filing system.
Renée: Car accident
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.
Regulations meant she was unable to see her baby son as she recovered from major surgery following which she was treated with morphine and later aspirin coupled with barbiturates to help her sleep.
While in hospital, Renée's famous father Sir Eugene Goossens, the chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and director of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, died. Renee was devastated to hear this news on the hospital radio while lying helplessly in bed.
When she was finally able to leave hospital, Renée's husband left her for his pregnant girlfriend. Wheelchair-bound and with a two-year-old toddler to raise, Renée discovered that a pram made a good walking frame. She used it to walk every day to get strong, beating the odds to be able walk unaided again.
She managed for about 20 years without a wheelchair until her spine collapsed while lifting a computer. Renée has required a wheelchair since 1994.
Her pain requires percutaneous neurotomies to the cervical spine twice yearly. These are done at Prince of Wales Hospital by "the wonderful Professor Matthew Crawford". She said that often nursing staff and some registrars did not understand that additional pain medication was required post-surgery.
"This procedure is painful and frequently hospital notes post-surgery have not always been signed off on, meaning I am denied even the medication I have at home," Renée said. "This is a very common occurrence for almost all chronic pain patients and must be addressed."
Since returning definitively to Sydney in 2001, Renée has had 15 such procedures, all requiring four days' hospitalisation and time off her various voluntary government committee duties.
She said that the treatment and care that enables her to participate in community life, "so vital to one's feeling of belonging and also usefulness", is ongoing and will be for the rest of her life. Like many other sufferers of chronic pain, she remains unable to work for financial gain due to bad days as well as good ones.
"I have had to endure the much disliked 'You look perfectly alright to me' sneer from those who do not know what an effort it is even to get dressed let alone to be out and working for a few hours each day," Renée said.
"The National Pain Summit is hoping to address, amongst other issues, the fact that many of the 3.2 million Australian sufferers of chronic pain are only able to work as volunteers as their condition is too unstable to allow for paid work. This is a fact of life they may accept but also adds to the difficulties of financial management."
It took Renée five and a half years of research and forty five years of living with pain before she wrote Pain Management: learning to live with pain in which she shares not only her own coping strategies, but those of over one hundred families she has interviewed in England, France and Australia. It also includes the advice of medical practitioners and complementary therapists.
Pain Management is a practical guide for families suffering from physical and emotional pain and includes insights on how to recognise the right doctor or specialist, the medical management of pain, methods of distraction from pain for adults and children and pets as therapy.
Pain Management and other information and Renee's other reflections on pain management can be found at http://reneegoossens.com
"There is no family anywhere in the world who has not experienced pain, be it physical, emotional or in the form of grieving for a loved one," says Renée.