Balancing act with Chronic Pain

I stayed up pretty late last night as the baseball game was on the west coast time. We kicked “King” Felix’s butt and seeing as we took care of Sonny Gray the other night, I have to say this road trip is going fairly well. Sure we have had a couple strings of losses but overall, the hitting and pitching has been much better. I hope it continues. Today’s game is at 1600 so I will most likely be lurking in the BPD chat. It happens every Sunday at that time. Last week was a good chat.

I slept till 0330 today, so my day did not start off well. I just woke up from a nap as I so needed it. I even had coffee before I took a nap and it didn’t keep me up. I feel rested. I didn’t go into a deep sleep, but slept enough to feel better than I did before the nap. I didn’t have any dreams. Lately, my dreams have been really weird. But I don’t remember them long enough to write down or keep in the memory banks. I just wake up feeling discombobulated.

I made breakfast when I got up late morning. I had a bacon sandwich. I really don’t feel hungry for lunch or dinner right now. My bowels have been going most of the day. I guess the senna is working really well, maybe a little too well. Only thing that I think I am going to eat next is rice or a grilled cheese. My mother is most like going to call me soon. I don’t care that is what I want for my dinner, when I get hungry. And I got no appetite right now.

I need to take a shower today but my back has been acting up while I stand. Even sitting, my lower back just wants to cramp out. I don’t know what that is about. I haven’t done any heavy lifting or twisting of any sort. But there has been a change in the temperature so that probably is what is causing this havoc. I can still move, just gingerly. I had set a goal for myself today to shred some old prescription papers. I still haven’t done it, yet. I keep meaning to when I go downstairs but I just don’t grab the stack to take with me. I probably will do it after the game as I won’t have anything to do this evening.

I have been feeling really low today. Actually, the last few days my mood has been lower than it should be. I haven’t thought of suicide but I am not that far from it. It’s always in the back of my mind. It’s when it’s in the front of my mind that things get from bad to worse. Every day I do this Mood Traces app activity. It lists all the criteria for depression. Each day you rate how your mood is. If this app is accurate, I have been pretty depressed the last few days. Of course, I don’t really need an app to tell me this. But it’s nice to monitor my symptoms. It is going to suck when I switch phones. I don’t think I am going to keep the app. As great as the app is, I find it depressing to know how depressed I am every day. It kind of makes me feel guilty about my moods, like I am not trying hard enough to make myself feel better. Every day it also records your daily activity levels. Even on days when I don’t leave the house, I can get a few minutes of activity as I walk around my house as I am always carry my phone, usually. But then there are days when I have 0 minutes of activity and it makes me feel bad that I didn’t go out or at least try. Mostly those days are rest days because my ankle needs to rest. If I have too much activity, my pain levels are going to spike. Then I am going to be in a worse mood. It’s always a balance act in dealing with chronic pain.

I read my “idiot” book today. The plot thickens. I am really enjoying reading this book. I think the next book I am going to read from Dostoevsky is “the Double”. That was a very interesting story. I finally wrote the review for the “Graveyard Book”. I posted it on Goodreads and Amazon.com. It was a short review, nothing elaborate. Just short and concise, which I think every review should be. When I was reading the reviews for the book (which was over 1200), I couldn’t believe how long some of them were. It was like reading a book report on some of them. And if you didn’t read the book, the reviewer gave away most of what the book was about, which I thought sucked.

any thoughts?