Category: Bipolar Disorder

Aftermath of the Election

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Aftermath of the Election

I woke up early this morning to use the bathroom and then I checked Facebook to see who won the election. To my horror, the bigot won. Then one of my childhood friends was very happy about it. I sent him a message saying that he was basically homophobic and racist and then I deleted him from being my “friend”. I don’t regret having done this.

I am worried what the next four years are going to entail. I wonder how suicide prevention is going to work now that we don’t have a democrat in the office and the whole senate and congress is republican now. More closely, I worry about how the LBGT community is going be over the next four years. I am really hoping that this misogynist gets arrested or impeached within the first six months of office, before he can do real damage to this country. That’s not to say that in six months time damage might already have occurred but it might be fixable.

I fear those that have Obamacare right now because I think that is going to be the first thing to go in this dictatorship. Healthcare will now become a joke. But Colorado now has assisted suicide so maybe there will be an influx of people moving there to end their suffering. My state has passed a law that legalizes the use of recreational MJ. Now I fear that every Zipcar I reserve will be filled with that god awful smell.

These are my thoughts that I have this morning and I am sure there will be others. I’m going back to bed because my ankle is screaming at me and my pain meds are making me tired.

therapy, eye appt and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Therapy eye appt and other things

Today is the US election day. I had voted last week so I didn’t have to go near a poll today. I pretty much tried to stay off social media because it was filled with “go vote” or “I voted” followed by selfies with the “I voted” sticker. Who the fuck gives a shit. After the 20th message, I just said I was done, on both Facebook and Twitter. It was difficult because I am on both mediums all the time but I kept myself occupied with trying to sleep and then I had therapy.

I was and am so sleep deprived because I only had about 3.5 hours of sleep consistently last night. I was up till around 0600 because the pain was so damn bad nothing was helping me, not even my trusty Ativan could knock me out. I was so overtired and cranky that I sent messages to both my psychiatrist and therapist saying that I fucking hated them and they sucked for allowing me to live. I didn’t care. It was around 0400 when I sent off these messages. My psychiatrist wanted me to call her to check in, which I did after I took a damn shower when I woke up at 0930 and then made breakfast. She is really worried about me because I never talk like that.

I have no idea what went on in therapy. She said I had the floor but I know I didn’t talk. I just answered questions. She skipped the text message about canceling tomorrow. Not my problem so I got out of it. She wanted to fill it in with a session on Thursday but I wasn’t having it. I am all therapied out. I just want to sleep all day tomorrow, without interruptions by a pesky therapist. After therapy, I tried to nap for 10 minutes before having to catch the bus to the Square so I could get my espresso. I wanted 5 shots today and got it dammit. It helped keep me awake as I had my eye appointment.

I love my eye doctor. I have been seeing him since I was like 18. He is a very cool guy and very caring. I told him I needed an eye exam and to check the growth that was at the corner of my right eye. And also to figure out why my eyelids were so dry. I have some kind of virus thing that is causing the growth and it’s both eyes. The ones on my left eye (7) are small and the one on my right is slightly bigger. It’s a cosmetic thing so there is nothing to be done about it. Not that I care as long as it doesn’t interfere with my vision. The thing with my eyelids is eczema. I have to get a cream to put on it. Just great. I have eczema in my ears and now my eyelids. Fucking lucky me. Two places that make it hard to put stuff on. UGH.

I had to email my doc because I noticed a change in the prescription from the previous one to the one he gave me tonight. I just want to make sure it isn’t a typo when I get my new glasses. I won’t be going to one online. It will be more money to go to an optical place but I don’t care. The ones I bought were good but even my doc said they needed to be adjusted and I never got them adjusted to fit right. Live and learn

I haven’t had anything to eat since this morning and I am too lazy to make something. Actually, I am not really lazy, just too tired. I’d order something but I don’t have cash on me. My choices are either a tuna sandwich or pizza. I am opting for tuna because it’ll be a lot quicker than pizza. Our oven takes at least 20-30 minutes to preheat and then it’s another 25 minutes to cook. I’ll be digesting my tuna sandwich by the time the pizza is done. I don’t know what happened with the celery I bought. It might have gone bad or my mother froze it. She loves to freeze things. I wanted to make pasta with my sauce but making a sandwich will be easier. I will make the pasta tomorrow for lunch.

I better have no problems sleeping tonight or I might get myself admitted. I am going insane with no sleep. Last night was so horrible. I really don’t want another night like that. It’s getting late and I am getting tired. I think I am just going to take my meds and call it a night. Screw eating. My meds will be my meal.

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

http://www.mdedge.com/clinicalpsychiatrynews/article/100017/depression/aas-acute-suicidal-affective-disturbance-proposed

I read the above article with interest. One of my Twitter buddies shared it with me and wanted my opinion on it. I think that it is right on queue and I hope that Dr. Joiner eventually sees this as a diagnosis. But I worry that if the stigma of suicide is not dealt with, it might just be an admitting diagnosis and thus cause more harm than good.

According to the criteria lined out, I meet this diagnosis, though at this time, I am unable to rule out whether a medical condition or conditions exclude the diagnosis. There have been many a times that while I am in excruciating pain, this condition is activated and I am acutely suicidal. The only thing that has saved me from actually making an attempt on my life is that I physically cannot walk and have refused to kill myself in my own home. Then in the morning (most of these attacks have occurred in the midnight hours), I no longer feel so suicidal.

It used to be that what I would call a “switch” would be activated and I would be suicidal until I fell asleep. Now I know that it’s this disturbance that occurs and it makes sense to me. But in every suicidal occurrence that has happened over the past two years, it has been because of physical pain or some kind of dissociative state brought on by physical pain. Very rarely has it occurred solely with psychache or psychological pain. Granted not every episode is psychache free and physical pain free. I will have what Shneidman calls the three Ps, Psychache, Perturbation, and Press as well as physical pain that causes me to be severely suicidal. These nights, I swear to myself I will end my life the next day when I can walk again. Fortunately, I don’t feel as suicidal the next day because I had a few hours or more of respite from these kinds of pain and perturbation. That isn’t to say that I won’t be activated the next night or come up with a suicidal plan to end my life the following day. These plans are usually a few weeks away to give me time to think things over and essentially put off today what can be done tomorrow. These plans have also given me time to work through my feelings and usually by the time that date comes, I no longer feel suicidal enough to go ahead with the plan.

Suicidality is a tricky business and not everyone’s suicidality is the same. What triggers my suicidality might not trigger someone else’s. There are mitigating factors that might be similar in nature like the criteria states but I would love to see the data in the context of ruling this a diagnosis. Just because I find this disturbance fits my suicidality, doesn’t mean that it will someone else’s and that is the difficulty with the nomenclature I think Joiner talks about in his article.

Back Pain, editing and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders

Back Pain editing and other things

I think I had a good night sleeping because I woke up around 0900. I had to go to the bathroom but my mother was using it to get washed and dressed. I waited till she was done so I could brush my teeth. I had back pain throughout but I managed. I really wanted to go out today but walking around the house while waiting to use the bathroom helped ease out the kinks.

After the bathroom, I decided to say fuck the back pain and go out. I really wanted to try and get a huge chunk of editing done and, of course, get my espresso. I waited for time to pass as I was early for the bus. I was debating going to the pharmacy to drop off my prescription but I wasted too much time and had enough time to get dressed and to get to the bus stop in time. I took a pain pill for the back pain and left.

Starbucks had this promotion where if you bought three items, you collected 150 points. Today I bought the third item with my espresso drink. Then I got to work on my book. The first few stories were fine and didn’t need too much editing. The fourth story was a mess, formatically. Apparently, word decided that every paragraph needed its own page. I was in a panic because I had no idea how to fix this. And there was not much I could do about it then because I wasn’t at home. I moved on to the next story and sort of noticed the same pattern. I was freaking out. It was too late to catch the bus at 1230 so I had to wait an hour for the next one. I decided to get something to eat and then write in my journal. Starbucks had their turkey stuffing sandwich, which I love, so I had that for breakfast/lunch.

Fixing this format error was killing me. I was hoping that saving the document as a txt and then loading it in a new doc would fix the problem. It worked. I then started playing with the next story to see if I can manipulate it to be not so spread out but it wouldn’t work. I would have to do the same thing and by that time, I was so stressed out, I said forget it and will save it for another day. I am not sure I can fix it because it’s a new paragraph and there is just an inch of space on the preceding page so it might not be that big of a deal, even though it bothers me. I don’t know if the rest of the book is like this or not. I hope not because it will totally fucking suck to save this as a txt and then transform it to a document, play with the fonts and add paragraphs (txt takes them away) and then paste it in the main file. I have over 70 pages to do this with and it will be such a pain in the ass to do.

Before I came home to this editing bullshit, I went and dropped my prescription at the pharmacy. To my surprise, they didn’t go ballistic on the prescription and it’s ready to be picked up! Score! I might pick it up in a little while as I am totally out of it. I might just put on my jogging pants rather than jeans because I really don’t want to change but I can’t go in my PJs. I also emptied my recycling bins today so I call it a win.