Category: bipolar

Long Day With Little Sleep

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, blogging, cauda equina syndrome, depression

I wanted to blog yesterday but I was so tired from being up early that it just slipped my mind. I took a nap around 1700 and I was toast after that. Course that meant I woke up around 0430 this morning. I had to be up early anyways because my father had his surgery today. Everything went kind of well, though he still is leaking fluid and the docs don’t know why. They put in a drain to suck out the fluid and are hoping for the best. We’ll find out tomorrow whether he will be able to go home. I am hoping not because I know my father is not going to put up with the drain and it will be a disaster at home. It just isn’t going to happen!

I am so tired that all I want to do is take a shower because I didn’t wear a diaper today. That whole concept escape my mind and I ended up leaking, which left me smelling like an old urine cup. I know I also shit myself a little bit because my ass has been burning since my bowel movement. Got to love CES and damaged nerves. Tomorrow I have to go back to the hospital early so that I can talk with the doctor about keeping my father until the fluid situation is taken cared of. It will mean another long day at the hospital and I am just dreading just thinking about it.

My mother kept my dinner but I am not hungry. My sis bought me a tea and I guess you can say that was my dinner. If I get hungry later I will just make some eggs. I haven’t had anything to eat since around noon time when my father came out of surgery. I am so damn beat I don’t feel like eating anything. I just want to shower and sleep.

One positive thing today was that I wrote a few pages for my next book. I was so happy to be writing again. Tomorrow I will write some more, I hope. Depends on if I have the time and inclination while visiting my father. Sometimes it is not easy to write or read with him because he has to bug you while you are doing it. He is just an ornery bastard. I really can’t stand him.

I seemed to have developed a damn dry cough the last few days. It is annoying as all hell and I know it’s because I haven’t been sleeping good and just am run down. I also have the damn sniffles that won’t go away despite taking an antihistamine and Nyquil. Been three friggen weeks now that I have been like this but all the discharge has been clear so I don’t have an infection. It’s just annoying to deal with.

My sister has got my mother’s finesse for shopping. After the hospital, we went to the grocery store for milk. She bought quie a few extra items. I only bought what I went in there for, my Powerade and some half and half for my coffee. I really wanted to get some other items but I am low on cash because of my damn prescriptions. I still have two to get and can only afford one. I am hoping my cousin sends me my birthday card early so that I don’t run out of one before my next paycheck. Otherwise I will have to borrow money from my sis. I really need to find a part time job. When I visited my old workplace while at the hospital, they were begging me to come back. I really wish I could be back. I miss the place so much as much it annoyed me at times with the idiot phone calls we got. But I like my coworkers some of the time. I just can’t work right now, least not there, because I am still not able to walk long distances without pain. Which reminds me, I forgot to call my physiatrist today. Could have done that will all the waiting I was doing with my father. I am an idiot. Oh well, another call for Monday!

pissed off therapy session

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression

Pissed off therapy session

I took a nap before my therapy session which probably wasn’t the brightest idea in the book but oh well. I usually wake up just before session but this time I overslept and woke up to the phone ringing. Rats! I really wasn’t looking forward to talking to her today, especially after what “didn’t” get talk about yesterday.

I told her I didn’t see the point in seeing her and she told me this was a “place to process things”. I laughed. Really? Because that hasn’t happened in ages!! She dropped the issue and I didn’t want to pursue it anymore as I could feel my anger rising. I seriously don’t think she has a fucking clue as to how I am doing anymore. We spent the majority of the conversation talking about how many spoons are going to be spent dealing with my father over the next few days. That is all she seems to want to talk about lately: Spoons. “Spoons” is another word for energy spent on stuff. I got it from a lady with Lupus and you can read the article here. I thought that paper she wrote was typical of all that I go through on a daily basis, from getting dressed, to taking a shower, to making breakfast, etc.

Lately my “spoon” supply has been low and I guess dealing with my therapist just drains it lately. By mid session, I am wanting out of talking with her. I can’t stand 50 minute sessions with her anymore. They are driving me crazy when I don’t feel like talking. And I don’t feel like talking not because there is nothing to talk about, but because I am tired of the way therapy is. I thought that after a while, I would find therapy helpful and insightful. That it would bring meaning to my life but those are just fantasies that never get fulfilled. Granted the last 10 years have been tough with my suicidality and such. But you would think by now she would be used to it and handle it better. She doesn’t and it just makes me shut down. I feel more alone with every passing session because the one person in the world that should know me, doesn’t. I kept thinking about the Mockingbid song my Rob Thomas. The lyrics are stunningly close to how I feel about therapy. The Chorus is right on target:

Everybody else is smiling
Man, their smiles don’t fade
You don’t even wonder why
You just don’t think that way

Maybe you and me got lost somewhere
We can’t move on and we can’t stay here
Maybe we’ve just had enough
Well, maybe we ain’t meant for this love

You and me tried everything
But still that mockingbird won’t sing
Man this life seems hard enough
Well, maybe we ain’t meant for this love

We have tried everything to keep this therapy going. Consults, different therapy avenues, etc. But they never seem to help. I might get a transference session in where I talk about what is wrong with everything but then the next session is like I didn’t speak at all. Things are back to status quo. It really pisses me off. Now I am just hounded by thoughts of whether I should be here or not and I am again alone in dealing with them because my bozo therapist is too anxious to hear what I have to say. She doesn’t listen and she just talks the talk in circles now. I am not asking her to cure me of my thoughts but not having a place for them is really hurting me. But I understand that therapists have their own shit to deal with. But I just once wish that my therapist of 14 years would take a Xanax and let me talk. Otherwise, I think I will just give up therapy once and for all as much as it pains to be even type these words. There is getting nothing out of it if you cannot share your inner most, darkest, thoughts.

I have been down this road with my therapist for some time. It is a well beaten path. I just wish she would restrain herself some and listen more to what I have to say than get all bent out of shape when I mention suicide, or being gone, or leaving therapy. A seasoned therapist should know how to do this by now and I shouldn’t have to write this blog to get the message across, yet again…

Who do you turn to when you have no one to turn to?

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, chronic physical pain, depression, mental illness, psychology

I finally got out of the house today and went to Starbucks. It was a little rough getting there but I persevered. I wanted a latte and by dog gone it, I was going to get one! It wasn’t as sweet as I was hoping it was, but it did it’s job. And I got some writing done while I was cruising through Facebook and Twitter. It doesn’t make any sense right now, but I think I will work on it later tonight to see if I can make it make sense. It was like once I started writing I “threw up” and my brain couldn’t make sense of the thoughts anymore.

Back and bowels are having a fight as to who is going to win the pain shoot out. I almost lost control of my bowels twice since coming home. I fear that if I do, I will commit suicide. I am that vulnerable.

I tried to bring up my suicidal tendencies to my therapist today but she got all panicky so I dropped it. I could tell from her voice she was not going to be listening to me and just freaking out about losing me. I never felt so low as I did in that moment. I felt like I had no one to talk to about my ideas or frustrations to do with suicide. It’s just up to me to deal with, once again, on my own. I can’t talk to my pdoc, she is out of commission for a while. And the most she can offer me is a hospitalization. I don’t need to be hospitalized, least I don’t think I do. I just want to talk about what it would be like with me not in the world anymore to someone non-judgmental and criticizing. And also, not be freaked out by it. My therapist is a good therapist. She has kept me alive the past 10 years, some how, some way. But she still gets fucking juiced up and down right untalkable when I bring up suicide or feeling like ending my life. If I can’t talk about it in therapy, who can I turn to? Sure I have my blog, but last time I posted a post on being suicidal someone hunted me down to make sure I was ok and scared a few people in the process. I was lucky they didn’t call the cops. So now I am hesitant to put that on my blog for fear of being taken the wrong way. And if I don’t have my blog to vent to, what the hell is the point of writing this blog every day?? I have been keeping things neutral since that incident. I keep to myself and I hardly write in my journal anymore. Since being discharged from the hospital in August, I really have been questioning things. I am unhappy in therapy, with the process itself, and I am not sure after 15 years, it is going to change. I know my medication regiment is stable and doesn’t need to be played with. I guess I just miss talking with someone, and having intellectual discussions with people about psychology and suicide. I miss being in academia. I miss having the research tools at my finger tips. (Call me a geek!) But I no longer have that and that makes me depressed. I know that if I were in school and pursuing my passion, I might be feeling better but I can’t afford school. It just costs too much for a bachelor’s education and I don’t have the money. If I didn’t screw up my student loans, I would be going back to school now. It would give me routine and sociability with my fellow classmates. I sometimes feel like holding a cardboard box in the square and say “college tuition” just to see if I would get a response. Be a fun experiment, from the sociological viewpoint.

I have thought of passing this on to my therapist, but I figure why bother. She doesn’t “listen” anymore…

somehow, someway

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, blogging, depression, mood disorders

I started writing this blog in the early morning hours but then I fell asleep and deleted what I wrote. Again, I am in pain from my back. I tried massaging the area and that caused me more pain so I know that it is muscular in nature, which is good. I just have to ease these muscles so they don’t tense up on me. I planned on calling my physiatrist to get his input on whether increasing the baclofen will be beneficial or not. Otherwise, I am stuck taking Ativan to calm down the spasms. I cannot be upright, standing, for more than 5 minutes without intense spasms in my back. It’s hard to walk or do anything with this intensity. I have to be better by Friday because I will be carting my father around the hospital for his surgery date. That will be hard to do with a bad back!

I texted my therapist because I was/am having a hard time with all of this. I am not suicidal but staying cooped up is driving me crazy. And I have to go to Walgreens to pick up my BP med. That is one of the last medications I needed refilled. Now I just got to save my money until I run out of the pink pill so I can waste $25 on that. I tried this new prescription service. You pay $14/month and they have your meds on a tier that is HIGHER than what I am currently paying. My pink pill costs $172 for a 30 day supply. There is no way I can afford that with my disability. That is like paying for everything and still have nothing to show for it.

The thing with McAfee has been resolved, thank god. My money was restored to me, in full, today. I am glad I didn’t have to wait 5 business days. I would have been stressed out and worried about fees and such. But I think I am okay right now.

I hope my therapist doesn’t give me a lecture about my back like everybody seems to be doing. They all think I should go to the doctor but the docs aren’t really going to do anything for me because it is all muscle pain. I am not having urinary or bowel problems. I don’t have weakness in my legs. I don’t have new numbness anywhere in the saddle area. I am “good”. I just have to give the muscles some time to heal and I will be fine. Unfortunately, this takes a long time and it is already driving me crazy because I want to go out and write but I can’t walk from here to there without spasms. It’s annoying me! I hate being incapacitated.

My writing friend wrote me an email today with the subject line “Our birthday month”. I could care less. I hate this month with a passion and I really don’t like my birthday. I rather be under a rock than celebrate it. It just depresses me. And what is the point of getting a year older? I never wanted to be older. I wanted to die young and that was thwarted. So now I am a cranky, old bastard. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my chance of killing myself one day, and sadly, that keeps me going. Because if I didn’t have that, I think I would kill myself right now, somehow, someway.