Category: blogging

Pain O’Clock Continues

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

Pain O’clock Continues

I woke up again in pain so my plans for going to the bank and the Square went out the window. This time, my pain meds knocked me out and when I woke up from my nap, it was too late to go. I really wanted to get a burrito today, too. But my ankle is killing me, still. It’s not as bad as it was on Friday but I am still miserable. I haven’t eaten too much today because it’s wicked hot and humid today. My mother will be making chicken cutlets for supper, which is good because I haven’t had any protein other than the egg I had this morning. And that was some time ago.

I have to leave the house by eight tomorrow morning. I hope I get up. I will have to set my alarm just in case. I can’t rely on getting up before seven because I never know when I will wake up anymore. I went to bed late last night, around 2ish so I slept till eight. Six hours is good enough. I am reading “Game of Thrones” and Harry Potter. Talk about contrast between the books. I am enjoying Harry Potter more because I know what to expect. I am a huge Potter fan and have read each book at least three times. I know JK Rowling, the author, is coming out with a new book, but it will only be available online. It’s too bad because I can’t read from a computer screen for long. I can read Twitter but eventually that bores me and there is no updates. I never read an online book before. I am sure it will be good. Maybe I can print it off.

Since I didn’t leave my house, I didn’t go to the post office like I hoped to. I have an article I am sending to a staff member at the hospital I was in last year. She is interested in CAMS and found an article related to CAMS and inpatient units. I know she won’t have much pull about implementing CAMS as the unit is DBT oriented, but this just gives fruit for thought. I also gave her an update about how things were going. I told her I am trying to stay out of the hospital as things are going so well. I didn’t go into anymore detail.

Marsha Linehan was at the NAMICon2015. I had two friends attend her talk. One was on Facebook and the other was on Twitter. The Twitter friend was more informative about it because he lived tweeted the entire session. It was a good talk. The important lesson was that you can use the skills and it doesn’t have to be a trained person to teach you, i.e., a therapist. There are some self-help DBT skills that you can find online that are useful in the management of suicide ideation and other self-harm behaviors. It was interesting that even substance abuse use was listed as disorder helped by DBT. So if you know someone with a substance abuse disorder, PLEASE tell them about DBT. It might helped them recover better than NA, AA, alone.

I tried to get an appointment with my therapist but she didn’t have an opening today. I really could have used a session. The pain is driving me nuts and I am almost ready to go to the ER because I am doing so poorly. I just don’t know if I should go to the medical ER or psych to talk with someone. Thing is, they wouldn’t understand chronic pain, so I will be stuck and feel more frustrated than I already do. Maybe I should just email my psychiatrist and ask her opinion on what I should do. I could just page her, but I don’t want to worry her. I am just in the throws of another pain flare and it’s wearing me out. I really wanted to go out today. Tomorrow I have to go out whether I like it or not. I have the appointment with the physiatrist. I hope he can help me because if not, I am done. It will be over. I am tired of struggling with pain all the time. Pain O’clock must end!

Saturday Blog 26

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

Saturday Blog 26

I had a rough night of pain. I didn’t sleep well. I spent the day just resting my ankle as I really didn’t want to make it hurt again. The pain and swelling had really gotten bad. So I stay in and only went downstairs to stuff my face and use the bathroom. I plan on taking a shower soon. I think it will relax me. I haven’t taken a pain pill all day, so that is good. I will probably take a couple tonight just so I can sleep without worrying about pain creeping up. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow.

I watched “Gone with the Wind” after the baseball game. I never knew how much Scarlett was a two faced bitch. But then, that is what the character is. I couldn’t bare to watch the end as I know the child dies and wrecks the marriage even further with Rhett Butler. It’s just sad.

I wrote a distressing status on Facebook last night. I think it was like three in the morning when I woke up in pain again. I was pissed and hurting. I didn’t get any responses, none even in the morning. Only response I got was about posting that I was watching the movie and that was a cruel friend of mine calling me a racist. That really pissed me off. I should unfriend her as I am tired of her jokes. This is the first time she has called me a racist. I don’t care if it is in jest. You don’t call people that unless they truly are and I don’t think I am. I have never been prejudiced against another person for the race, religion, or creed. I don’t know how to hate a person for these things. I do hate a person if they are an asshole or not. You can be an asshole of any color, religion, or creed. Half the senators running for president are, well, they are more brainless than most people. How they got elected to their positions I will never know. Nor do I care to know. I just hope the country has sense not to make them president or this country will be a cesspool more than it already is.

Last night I was editing as I felt up to it. It was once of the few activities that I could do without moving too much. Half of what I wrote is getting tossed out. My therapist might disagree with me but I am the one writing this thing, not her. The stuff I am tossing out are the blog posts that aren’t really dealing with mental illness at all. It is just a blog post of how my day went. I don’t know what made me think that it would be good in a short story when there is no story or theme or even connecting points. I wrote a blog about coffee and therapy and it was more about how I drink my coffee than it was about therapy. That is when I started questioning what I was writing. Maybe I shouldn’t come out with a second book. My writing doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me anyway. Not like I can write on demand, I can’t. But I should be able to be creative enough to write something about mental illness.

The Boston fireworks are going off. Big bangs are being heard. I hate noise like that. Sounds like bombs going off. It scares me. There also seem to be helicopters flying in the area. That almost never happens. I know they were having some flyovers with some military jets but I didn’t get the memo about helicopters. Just weird. Maybe they are filming the fireworks. I don’t know. I lost interest in the works when I was a kid. I used to love 4th of July but then things changed after I lost my hearing in one of my ears. It wasn’t appealing to me anymore.

I heard there is a case in Belgium where a 24 year-old was granted the right to die because she is depressed. It will be, I think, assisted suicide. She apparently wanted to die since the age of six. In the story, it told of her wanting to kill herself with a pistol. I didn’t think a child that age could have those kind of thoughts. I started having thoughts of dying when I was eight. But I had an abused childhood. The article didn’t say if this girl was abused or not, or even go into specifics on why she wanted to die. Only that she was granted the right after being committed for two years. I have mixed feelings about this. She thinks she is a hopeless case, but all depressed people think that. I even think that. I know that if I went to my psychiatrist and told her she had to help me kill myself because I was hopeless, I would be committed too. I guess the laws in Belgium are different than the states because a two year commitment at a hospital is unheard of these days. The article also didn’t say what kind of treatment she has had. I am curious to know only because as bad as my depressions have been, they seem to get better over time. Granted the suicidality of my condition doesn’t change. I always want to die. I just don’t act on those feelings. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I am just not desperate enough to want to die. Or my despair isn’t that great as it once was. I don’t know. I do know that I don’t want to hurt people with my death and that keeps me going, sadly.

Ramblings 77

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

I am in pain. I don’t know what I did, but my ankle is swollen and painful. It was hurting before I left the house and I think going out caused it to flare up more. I really want some rice but will hold off until the pain meds kick in before venturing downstairs again.

Had therapy today and am going to try for tomorrow as well. My therapist wants to see me more now that her vacation is moving up in terms of time. She is here next week and then the following two weeks, she is “gone”, as she puts it. Her talking about being gone is not helping my anxiety. She knows that my pdoc is around and will be keeping a closer eye on me, now that they know the plan. My therapist didn’t have a chance to read any of the blogs that I sent her. I told her one was longer than the other, so beware. She is so dense, that she forgot that she only seen me yesterday. She said that it felt like “ages ago”. She is gone with the wind, I’m telling you.

We talked more about Hyde, mostly because she didn’t read the blogs so I had to explain things. We talked about how I have decided to write at least two blogs per day. My writing bug just doesn’t seem satisfied with one. I have time I put aside in the afternoon for my blog and then I feel like writing later in the evening. I always tend to write the darker stuff then because that is when darkness will hit me. Sometimes I will write in my journal before writing another blog. But lately that hasn’t worked out too well. I feel the need to express myself, otherwise, I think I will end up killing myself.

She tried to do a psychache assessment, which I shot down because it was stupid, at this point. I am sort of not really registering my emotions. I will either feel depressed or suicidal. I have no other feelings. I don’t feel emotional pain that much anymore. I am too numb to feel it, or jaded. I introduced her to all of this so I can bypass the assessment. If she had come up with it, it would be a different story. Some tools therapists just don’t have. They finish their training thinking they know everything and it is far from the course. Pisses me off. But at least she is open minded to new assessments, even though I know she doesn’t do this with any of her other clients, which is a shame.

I asked my therapist what my diagnosis is. She said that it could be either Recurrent Major Depression, treatment resistant with psychotic features NOS or BP2, depression. I’m going to go with the MDD diagnosis. It is more familiar to me rather than BP2. She also said that I have some DID, NOS (Dissociative Identity Disorder, Not otherwise specified). The PTSD is a given. I have had that most of my life and continue to experience it. We didn’t talk about personality disorders. I don’t think I have one anymore. But will ask tomorrow if we meet. If not, I will definitely ask her Tuesday. I just looked at my schedule and it is going to be another busy Tuesday. I have the appointment with my physiatrist in the morning. And just as predicted, the pain that I was feeling in my toes has dissipated. I am sure if you press on them (I won’t), I will have pain. The new medicine he put me on did not help as much as he wanted it to. The only thing that has helped me is baclofen. I don’t take it twice a day like I used to but even taking it once a day helps. I am on a low dose so I think he might want to increase it the next time I see him. I am fine where it is and less is always better. I am nervous about seeing him though. It’s been at least six months or more since I last saw him. I was supposed to see him in Feb but between the snowstorms and the T being down, it was difficult. I just canceled the appointment and never rescheduled. Until my foot started acting up again, driving me crazy.

Random 399

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

I didn’t sleep good last night again. Same old story these days, except I kept waking up in pain. Then my father’s stupid PCP’s office called to confirm the appointment for tomorrow morning. I was afraid they were going to reschedule it and I was not going to be happy if they did. But all is good and tomorrow is going to be a long day as I got to be up around 0630 so I can get dressed and get my coffee before picking my father up. Maybe get some breakfast, too. I talked to my sister and I can use her car for most of the day, which means I can see my therapist tomorrow. I just hope the PCP appointment doesn’t take forever. I would like to get to my therapist’s town and do some editing. Course it all depends on how much sleep I get tonight. Usually when I have to get up early in the morning, I don’t go to bed till 2. Not going to be good if I have to be up four hours later.

I am hoping for a session with my therapist tonight but it doesn’t look likely. I just feel stressed out about a situation with my editor and need to talk it out with someone. I know she isn’t going to understand the problem that I am facing, but I really need to figure this out before I continue with my book. Finding another editor is not easy or cheap. Sure, I can do my own editing, but sometimes it is best for another person’s eye to look at something.

I haven’t done anything today but I need to take a shower. I haven’t showered in days. And I really haven’t eaten much today. My sister made some lunch. I had a few pieces of buffalo chicken that made my stomach a wreck so I don’t think I will be eating anything else today. I really wanted to try the new hamburgers I bought but I just am not looking forward to them. I am not sure if I am going to like them because I didn’t realize they had onions in them. Maybe I will make a deep dish pizza tonight, instead. You can never go wrong with pizza!

I am getting to the end of the “Idiot” finally. I feel bad for Myshkin. He is being treated so poorly. Everyone is just talking to him cursedly and then wants to be his friend again. Or they make fun of him and then make up. Sadly, I don’t think he realizes he is being made fun of. I should finish the book off today, if not sometime tomorrow, if I feel up to it. I know I am going to be tired tomorrow so if I don’t finish it tonight, then maybe Wednesday.

Seems like every fricken week I have medication that needs to be refilled. Just when I think I am stocked on everything, I run out of one of my medications. It is so annoying. I just get annoyed because the pharmacy staff knows me so well. I am there almost every week with something. I am almost out of my baclofen and Ativan. I keep them in business. I have a few days before I can refill my Ativan so I will just wait. I have to wait till the 3rd to refill it. I just hope they have my baclofen in stock. Last time, I got a partial refill. Nitwits gave me just 15 pills of the 90 they were supposed to give me. I don’t know why they even bothered to fill it. It’s so stupid. But I think I better refill it now in case they have to order it as the holiday is this weekend.

I am still thinking about suicide, though the thoughts have been oscillating the past few days. Sometimes they are very intense and others they are barely audible. I still haven’t give in to the thoughts of coming out to my mother. Though I have no idea how I am going to do it without the support of my sisters. It’s really killing me inside to have to continue to live this way, in a family with no support, well, emotional support. I never ask for much and usually keep my problems to myself.