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A Silver Spring woman who took her own life last month outside a Damascus church did so because of a diagnosis that her back pain was incurable and would worsen, eventually leaving her partially paralyzed, her family and friends said.

Doris Ann Steele, 53, left a note composed March 4 while she sat in her car outside Tri-County Baptist Church on Damascus Road, in view of a sign that read: "If not today, when?"

"There are so many things worse than death — arachnoiditis — is one of them," Steele, known as Dori, wrote in the note.

Arachnoiditis is an inflammation of the arachnoid, a membrane that surrounds the spinal column.

Those close to Steele were upset that police initially reported that her suicide followed a history of depression.

"We normally don't release that type of information and we shouldn't have released it," said Capt. Paul Starks, spokesman for the Montgomery County Police Department.

According to the state medical examiner, Steele died of an overdose of oxycodone and alcohol.

Robyn Zeiger, Steele's partner, said Steele suffered from back pain for a long time, but the problem intensified after a surgery in 2006. She searched for years for a remedy.

"When the investigators interviewed me and Dori's sister and brother-in-law in my home, we clearly stated that she did not have a history of depression. But, of course, we said that she was depressed due to the current chronic pain situation," Zeiger wrote in an e-mail to The Gazette and Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger. "In fact, she often said to me, ‘I'm not depressed, I'm just in so much pain.'"

The pain created a sensation that Steele would say felt like she was being burned alive, Zeiger said.

"Dori made a rational and brave decision to end her life, given the dire circumstances of her severely painful physical condition," Zeiger said. "It was based, not on depression, but on the fact that she could no longer tolerate the pain."

The day Steele drove to Damascus, the pain had traveled from her back down to her legs, said her sister, Donna Flynn of Clifton, Va.

"She was in tears she was in so much pain," Flynn said. "She didn't have a history of depression; she was in terrible pain and anguish from a medical condition."

Pain management was difficult because Steele was allergic to opiates and other pain killers, Flynn said.

Until the pain forced her to stop, Steele worked as a massage therapist.

"Dori's purpose in life was to be a healer, a helper," Zeiger said. "She couldn't do that anymore."

Steele was also a poet and writer and joined her partner in fighting for equal benefits for same-sex couples.

Zeiger is a licensed clinical professional counselor and a senior lecturer in the University of Maryland's Department of Family Science. The couple had fought for years to get same-sex partner benefits at the university.

The couple had a commitment ceremony in Hawaii in 2003 and was wed in Quebec in 2006 and again in California in 2008.

"What people don't get is this is not about sex," Steele said in an interview with the University of Maryland Diamondback newspaper in 2007. "You can have sex with whomever you want; that's not illegal. This is about who you want to be your family, and it's like they are saying, ‘Well that's not a legitimate family member.' But for Robyn and me, we have each other and our three dogs, and that's our family."

A week before her death, Steele and Zeiger had celebrated the decision of Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler that the state would recognize same-sex marriages performed out of state.

Gov. Martin O'Malley invited the couple to the bill-signing ceremony when state inheritance laws were changed in July to treat same-sex married couples the same as heterosexual married couples. When the state extended benefits to domestic partners, the couple no longer had to pay ballooning premiums for Steele's medical insurance.

But Steele was unable to bear the pain.

"I just cannot see any more doctors, have any more procedures, MRIs, pills," Steele wrote in her final note.

A "Celebration of Life for Doris Anne Steele" will take place from noon to 2 p.m. May 23 at the University of Maryland Memorial Chapel in College Park.