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'.
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.
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.
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.
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. 
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.
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.
"Fortunately", the pain from my neck injury was so severe that it was taken seriously from the start.
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 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.
Harry Perkins, son of Olympic champion swimmer and Painaustralia Director Kieren Perkins OAM, was diagnosed with chronic migraine at the tender age of eleven.
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 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. 
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'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 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).
My injury happened over two days – August 30-31, 2001 – when I was asked to reorganise the office's new filing system.
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. 
Margaret: Hurt Shopping
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.
After work I did the weekly grocery shopping and arrived home just as a shower of rain was starting. As I rushed to get the groceries inside without getting too wet, I lifted a heavy carton and twisted awkwardly at the same time. Although I felt no severe physical injury at the time, during the night my back went into spasm and when I woke I was unable to stand upright.
Eventually I phoned my family GP, and he and my local pharmacist became key members of my "rehabilitation team". After numerous tests over the next few months I discovered that, in that awkward moment, three of my lumbar discs had herniated, impinging on my spinal nerves and sending radiating pain into my legs and feet. It also caused all manner of strange sensations in many different parts of my body – including aching teeth!
I got to know numerous healthcare professionals and had two shopping bags full of various medications. I also had a library of books on managing chronic pain, as my spinal condition had progressed after three surgeries and an implanted dorsal column stimulator.
I went from being an optimistic, confident "Super Mum" to a helpless, depressed (suicidal), patient, with no self confidence, believing that I was useless to the family and my husband. Isolated, lonely, unable to cope with the constant, severe, intense, draining, exhausting pain night and day, I was totally exhausted.
I always believed that the next treatment would fix me, and was thoroughly devastated when it didn't. My only comforts were my pets, a couple of wonderful, understanding friends who never left me, and, of course, my husband.
My recovery began when I attended a pilot of the ADAPT course, then run by Sydney Pain Management Centre. There I learned that I had nothing that could be fixed, rather, I had developed a sensitized nervous system causing chronic pain that could be managed.
I also had an epiphany when the grief process was explained and I realised I was passing through the grief steps. "Super Mum" had indeed perished, but it was possible to reconstruct a new "me" who could still lead an enjoyable, useful life by learning how to manage pain.
I am also indebted to the American Chronic Pain Association and its founder, Penney Cowan, who trained me to become a support group leader. Their leaders' manual reinforced all that I had been taught in my pain management course and I was able to regain my self-respect and confidence. Eventually I led many support groups all over Sydney.
The other essential element in my recovery was a wonderful pain specialist who worked with me to titrate the dose I needed of slow-release morphine. Once this dose was reached and strict conditions on its use understood, this medication allowed me to behave normally and also gave my body respite from its continual fight against pain. Through nerve pathway regeneration, I was able to gradually reduce my dose of morphine until I needed it no longer.
Today I take no medication, have no pain, but always exercise, stretch and scan my body for stress. My life has been fulfilled in a direction I never imagined. I have built the new "me".