Breast cancer is a diagnosis heard all too often these days at 13,000 diagnoses a year in Australia.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 problems started in the early 1980s with the introduction of computers in most public service departments.In 1986,
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.
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.
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'.
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.
"Fortunately", the pain from my neck injury was so severe that it was taken seriously from the start.
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. 
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
My injury happened over two days – August 30-31, 2001 – when I was asked to reorganise the office's new filing system.
Harry Perkins, son of Olympic champion swimmer and Painaustralia Director Kieren Perkins OAM, was diagnosed with chronic migraine at the tender age of eleven.
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. 
Elizabeth: Managing pain
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.
However nerve root damage from the injury left me with radiculopathy.
When I returned to work, the injury was aggravated because my employer did not comply with my medical restrictions. Another round of spinal surgery partly resolved the problem to the point where I could lie on my left side for a short period of time.
Over the next year I put together a very supportive healthcare team consisting of a GP, a physiotherapist and a pain specialist who provided effective treatment through medication and an exercise program. I learnt to manage my pain levels and be unafraid of re-injury so that I could regain moderate levels of function.
After attending a private pain management clinic I was more-or-less able to gradually resume normal function with the assistance of my medical team. However, my employer resisted my efforts to return to work when it became evident I could not return to my former position and my superannuation fund deemed me to be totally and permanently incapacitated for full-time employment.
Following the pain clinic program, I established a consumer health charity for people suffering from persistent pain, the Australian Pain Management Association (APMA). This stemmed from difficulties pain program participants had in finding community-based support for sufferers of chronic pain.
We determined that if we could help others manage their persistent pain, we could also help each other and, significantly, control our own ongoing pain.
I concluded at this point that, left unmanaged, my pain levels would hover around seven to eight out of 10. Medication could improve this rate by three to four points and physiotherapy and changes to my reasoning about pain by another three to four points. This way the pain could be well managed. It was always there, but if it was under five then I could have a reasonable quality of life and enjoy my increased leisure and "different work".
One of my goals was to be able to travel to Singapore for my brother's wedding at the Raffles Hotel in August 2009. I went and had a wonderful time, with a week in Penang as well and despite the pain, it was a holiday to remember.
I have left teaching but teaching hasn't left me. Some of the most inspiring activities that APMA engages in are attending respite centres and seniors organisations to give presentations on managing chronic pain.
The learning often goes both ways as we pick up "tips and tricks" from others who have often been managing pain for decades. It is encouraging to be able to share the hurt and the humour that our life with persistent pain brings.