Co-Founder of Pain Relief Network Died of Cerebral Hemorrhage Due to Out of Control Pain
August 24, 2006
Press Release
Painreliefnetwork.org
SEAN EDWARD GREENWOOD
Age 50, of Santa Fe and of New York City, died in the early morning hours of August 23, 2006 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, of complications from untreated pain. He was the loving husband of Siobhan Reynolds and the devoted father of their 14 year old son Ronan.
He was preceded in death by his mother, Mary Louise; and by his brother Glen. He is survived by his sisters in Texas: Lisa Craven, Megan Myers, and Meredith Brown-Greenwood. He is also survived by many nieces and nephews.
Sean came to Santa Fe to attend St. John’s College from which he graduated with an essay prize for his senior essay in 1986. He worked as a legal assistant at Montgomery and Andrews law firm where he served as a litigation coordinator for partner Sarah Singleton.
As he became more and more debilitated by an inexplicable ongoing headache, he and his family moved to New York in search of progressive pain care. He pioneered an experimental neurosurgery, later performed in South Africa, which terminated his headache. But because he had suffered for so long without pain relief, his neural anatomy had morphed into a pain generating system, a phenomenon known as central sensitization. Pain had engulfed his entire body.
As a victim of chronic pain, Sean was destroyed by the same brutal barriers to relief faced by millions of other Americans so afflicted. After his physician, Dr. William Hurwitz was arrested and thrown in Federal prison, (and whose conviction has since been overturned) Sean, along with his wife Siobhan, began the Pain Relief Network in 2003 to challenge the US government’s deadly crackdown on Americans in pain. While Sean lost his personal fight, and will be sorely missed by those whose lives he graced, his struggle lives on. You can view a film he made with his family, and the family of Richard Paey (featured on 60 Minutes) in which he explains the outrageous predicament of people facing chronic pain at: http://www.painreliefnetwork.org/media/
Sean was a brilliant, gentle, courageous and devoted father, husband, brother and son. He loved people, music and great literature. He was an inveterate fan of movies from the 1930s to early 1940s and an early admirer of the novels of Great American novelist Cormac McCarthy. Never did a man love his family more.
