I had the privilege of working with Sherri as her coach for the two months prior to her passing. We talked often of her desire to change the way pain patients are treated through telling her story. She made it clear to me that she wanted her story told, even if she wasn’t here to tell it herself, and gave me permission to share this with you. Sherri also traveled to Toronto, Canada, to be interviewed by Tina Petrova with Give Pain a Voice, who told Sherri’s story in the documentary Pain Warriors.

During the two months Sherri and I worked together, we tried to find Sherri medical treatment for her Clostridium difficile infection. This proved to be an essentially impossible task. Sherri called numerous doctors all over the country. 

While I was working with her, Sherri was unable to eat solid food, and survived on juice delivered to her home. Even the juice was hard to keep down, with all of the nausea and chronic diarrhea, which lead to Sherri becoming severely dehydrated. Sherri likely lost 20-30 pounds over the last year of her life due to being unable to eat and absorb nutrition.

On Friday afternoon, July 3, I received a voice mail message from Sherri saying that she was going to the ER at Cedar Sinai Hospital due to her dehydration. That was the last time I would ever hear from her. She passed away just a few days later. Lynda Mannion, Sherri’s mother, struggled for months to obtain copies of the coroner’s report to find out exactly what happened. Although Sherri died in July 2015, Lynda did not receive the report on Sherri’s death until early 2016.

The coroner states that Sherri’s death was a suicide due to “combined effects of medications.” However, I can say with 100% confidence that we cannot blame Sherri’s death on medications. 

We talked many times about her pain, life, and death. It makes me angry to think that Sherri’s death might become a statistic used to deny chronic pain patients medication that could make their lives bearable. There are a lot of questions surrounding Sherri’s death, but for me there is no question about why she died. Sherri died because her pain wasn’t controlled or illnesses treated properly.

If Sherri’s death can teach us anything it’s this:

untreated pain kills.

I feel fortunate that I came to know the vibrant, passionate, and deeply caring woman behind the face of Sherri’s pain. Most people didn’t get to meet that Sherri. We talked often about how hard it was for her to make friends as a chronic pain patient. She struggled to get the support she needed for even the simplest things, like getting groceries or going to a doctor appointment. It was her dream to set up a foundation which could provide this kind of support to other pain patients.