Category: blogging

traffic and therapy

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

Today I realized the reason why I like talking on the phone with my therapist than seeing her in person: TRAFFIC! I left my house at ten o’clock and literally got there around 12:30. Normally I get there around noon but the traffic when I got to route nine, well, was just horrible. I don’t know why they have traffic cops at a construction site when they DO NOT DIRECT TRAFFIC!! There was at least a three mile back up and they were just sitting in their cars watching! I couldn’t believe it. But then it is typical of these guys. I don’t know what they are supposed to do, really, other than get paid overtime with our tax dollars for doing nothing. I want that kind of job.

My foot is better today, though I didn’t think I would be able to walk down the street. Half way down the block I needed to walk to get to the bus stop, my ankle started hurting really bad. It is still throbbing and I can’t take anything for it because I still need to pick up my sister as I have her car.

I was proud of myself today as I know my trucks. There was an F350 behind me on the way home and I knew that it was just by looking at the grille of the car. I love the Ford trucks. I fell in love when my friend’s stepdad picked us up at the airport when I first visited his parents. We spent a good amount of time in the truck as we had a long drive from Omaha to his hometown of Sargeant. The ride was nice and roomy, my first time in a truck and I was in love! I always wanted to own one but I don’t think I can drive one. I have a hard time with perception and am afraid of side swiping another car. That is why I am afraid of driving my bro-in-law’s jeep cheroke. It is a wide vehicle and new so I don’t want to damage it. I am not saying I am a horrible driver, I am not, but if something scares me I tend to stay away from it.

My therapist would call that trauma. We talked about that today with that weird dream that I had about my back surgery. I dreamt about it a few days after I got discharged from the hospital. I still have flashbacks of everything, from the time I was told I had CES again to getting admitted the next night and then surgery the next morning. I remember waking up with my left leg feeling weird. I thought it was just post-op stuff but it turned out to be a missing disc fragment was imbedded on my nerve root. I lost total feeling of it. I had no strength in it. I couldn’t lift it up if you paid me a million dollars, it was that weak. It took me a month to regain strength and another four months of physical therapy to get back to my baseline. I shopped around for a physical therapist that had experience in nerve injury and cauda equina syndrome. I didn’t go to the Spaulding rehab because 1) they were expensive and 2) they were not willing to work with me. I knew that if I did go with them, they would want to do things their way instead of what was right for me. I found someone at a local hospital rehab center that helped me get back to where I was before surgery and then a little more. I had to fight for the extra sessions and have my surgeon, then my primary care doc order physical therapy because I did not want to go through what I went through the first time I got this bloody condition, which was just surgery over, care ends too. I still had foot drop in my left foot that took months to regain strength the first go round. I wasn’t going to let that happen with my entire left leg.

Turns out that no matter what I did, this stupid, fucking condition ended up disabling me anyways. I still ended up with an AFO (ankle foot orthotic) for my left foot. I still end up with panic when my foot flares up in pain and I think that CES is going to happen again. No matter how much time has passed, and it has been years, I am always going to have that trigger soon as I can no longer move my toes because of inflammation/pain. And because I still have a fucked up spine nice and full of herniated discs, there is a chance I will end up with another diagnosis of CES. I fear that if I have to have another back surgery, I will need a fusion. If that happens, I will never be able to work again. As it is, I can’t walk more than a few blocks and stand for more than twenty minutes. The thing that I have to be aware of is trying to lose weight, which is tricky and wicked hard. But one doc told me that even if I weighed eighty pounds, I still would have a messed up spine. I just have to watch what I lift, making sure to do it properly, with the legs and not the back. But I don’t do much lifting of anything other than my Gatorade bottles. My biggest fear is getting rear ended by another car. That will hurt!

my heating system sucks

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

Today started off ok. I got my niece ready for school and walked her to school. We took the way I normally take because there are no inclines or hills, which is normally good for my foot. But I guess all the up and down stairs yesterday and the few that I did today to get my clothes finally took its toll. My ankle and three toes are aching like no tomorrow and feel like I have my foot submerged in a bucket of ice water. I have it wearing a sock and under 3 blankets. There is no warming this foot up and frankly, I don’t want it warm because I will be in more pain. It will get warm then VERY HOT, like it is on fire. Happens all the time. The weather is very cold today even though the weatherman says it is 56 degrees. They are lying as Google just told me that it is 42 degrees. It is so cold in my room, despite the heat being on, that I think my radiator finally shit the bed. It was hot last week. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I didn’t turn the heat up high enough. My heating system sucks. It has to be the worse heating system on the planet. The only way to get it to turn on is putting it higher than 70 degrees. Then the house melts, you lower it and it stays warm for a little while. I am not as cold as I was earlier but it doesn’t matter. My foot has its own heating/cooling system since it has nerve damage. That is why I try to keep it as warm as possible during the colder months of the year. It is not easy as even in the summer it will be cold. I have to wear socks 90% of the time. I miss being barefoot but I just can’t risk getting my foot cold, especially as we have ceramic tile floors. They get REALLY cold, and fast.

I did nothing this weekend but vegetate. I needed some time away from the blog and my book. I got wicked stressed out Friday and didn’t want to risk another psychotic break so I stepped back. I had to for my own sanity. I thought I would be able to get back to editing today but I didn’t sleep very good last night and then had to wake up early for the kiddos.

Today’s WordPress challenge is about Dear Abbey. I thought about posting a good piece of advice but that is not what my blog is about. Most I have is to have a good therapist that is willing to work with you, and that goes for all professionals, from doctors to physical therapists. If the doctor already has it in his mind about you before you walk in the door, see someone who has a brighter bulb in their head. It is hard for chronic pain patients to get treatment because these doctors have been sidelined by the fake patients who say their back hurts and get pain medication just to use it illegally or to sell it. But the sad part is that these pain patients are undermedicated sometimes which leads to possible overdoses because they cannot get a flare up under control. I know, I have been there. I might not overdose myself all the time, but when I do, it is for a good reason. And that reason is PAIN. I don’t mean overdose in the sense I take the bottle. NO I DO NOT DO THAT, though I may be thinking that. I mean that instead of my allotment of 4 pills a day, I might take 6 or 8 a day. Fortunately for me, those 6 or 8 pills a day are far and wide in between. My doctor trusts my judgment. I am fortunate that he does otherwise I would be six feet under, NO JOKE. And it all stems from that day that I saw a chiropractor to adjust my spine and she ruptured my disc, permanently disrupting my life forever. I always will have nerve damage. I always will have weakness in my foot. It might not be visible to the world but I can assure you it is felt every single day. My minimum pain level is always a 3 on a scale of 1-10. That is what I live with on a daily basis and my surgery is coming up on 13 years. So that is why my heating system in my foot is all messed up.

actors and depression

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

I previously blogged earlier today but wanted to post this before going to bed. I have learned many things about depression and although I know some of you are suffering from this horrendous disease, knowing that what FEELS like forever is not, in fact, FOREVER.

I have been a fan of Wil Wheaton since I was a teen. He was, you can say, my crush. My school had gigantic photos of him in our school cafeteria in middle school and I was able to take them home and literally poster my wall with these posters. I became a member of his fan club, WilPower. He spoke his true heart about his life in letters he sent out to the group that were his thoughts, not those of his publicist or agent. I have been following him on twitter the since I became a member of twitter and he sends some of the funniest things, nerd things, that make my day. But what he doesn’t talk about often, is the black clouds that sometimes follow him around. He talked about them today because he got over his bad day yesterday and the day before that in his blog that he writes. I have included it here to inspire you to know that what I say is true. Depression is a black dog that can haunt your life, but it ebbs and flows like the tide. Some days are really, really, bad. Other days it might not be so noticeable. He talks about that and I am so proud of him and his accomplishments. He is way nerdier than I am as some of his stuff is over my head but he does have talent. I love him and always will, though not in any other way than in a respectful and admiration kind of way. He is not the gender I prefer. But that is not what is important. If I could, I would send him tweet every day saying that I love and care for him and hope that he is having a good day but there is only so much you can do with 140 character limit. And if I get too overzealous and send him tweets he might block me and I am too afraid of that. His biggest thing is that he just wants to be treated as a guy. His motto is “don’t be a dick”. I can respect that.

Others have anxiety, I become psychotic

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

My sister and niece took me out for breakfast this morning. It was a very cool day. We got to the restaurant and these two guys were competing to be heard in the noisy atmosphere. I thought I was going to go nuts. Well I did. Loud noises make the voices come out more than anything and I was starting to feel uncomfortable. While others would get nervous or have anxiety over that kind of stuff, I become psychotic. Lucky they were just finishing up their breakfast and they left a little while after we were waiting for our food. I was grateful for them to leave.

My day started early. I emailed my writing partner around 7 am to let her know I was editing my book. I guess it kind of frazzled me as I realized a whole couple of sections were missing from the printed manuscript I had and the edited version of my document. I was freaking out. Sure enough I had deleted so I panicked. I had to get the original version of my file to copy and paste what I really wanted in the edited version. I was beyond frustrated and have decided to go with an editor. I found one on Facebook and she is reasonably price. I talked with her today and is going to charge me only $250 for my book, where I was looking at other editing services it was 10 times that amount. I think I am getting a good deal. But then this is my first book, I have no clue what I am doing or even if this book makes sense. I have not made a table of contents yet, nor have a solid introduction or forward or something like that. I was hoping to get this published the end of November but it will take me some time to get the money for the editor and the editor can’t take me right away anyway. She has told me that she can’t get to my work until a “few months”. She posts on FB every day that she is working on her projects with other authors and I guess her business is booming from the sound of things. And she did cut me a deal as her normal charge was $350 (USD) for less than 100K words. I just hope I get my money’s worth. This is my baby and I will be trusting it to a complete stranger.

So today I spent a good few hours surrounded by my manuscript pages trying to put it back together. I was frazzled, which did me no good with the psychosis already looming in the back of my head. But I didn’t need a PRN (take as needed) medication. I handled the situation ok. I think what might have helped is taking a Benadryl earlier in the day for my stinking allergies. They are so bad that right now my left eye is swollen. I have been using eye drops and Benadryl and that seems to be helping. It has not been as sore as it was last night. It really freaked me out as I normally don’t get allergies that bad. And of course, my eye doctor is in Brazil and I can’t seem him for another week or so.

The only scary thing when I take the Benadryl is I am afraid of overdosing on it. I bought like a huge bottle to do the deed a few years ago and these capsule are small enough to take a large dose. Course now they are expired times four years ago but I still hold on to it because I don’t really believe that medication expires. I believe they might lose their effectiveness over time but they don’t stop working completely. I know I should just toss them out to the medication dump or something. I am no longer suicidal, or going with that method anymore. But I just can’t seem to get rid of them. And I need to have a couple of Benadryl around me anyways because of these stupid allergies. My regular Allegra doesn’t seem to work since it became over the counter. It says that it is the same stuff but I don’t believe it really is. Otherwise, it should have worked as I have been taking it while I was in the hospital and out of the hospital. I take it every night. But the Benadryl seems to be working more than the Allegra. I guess always trust the older medication than the newer.

I have been up since very early this morning. I had another weird dream where I was at my old job and I had to return library books. But when I got there to pick up the books they also handed me a ton of paperwork that I had accumulated since my absence from work. Very weird dreams I have been having.

I didn’t go out for coffee today. I had coffee at the restaurant when I had breakfast. I thought of going to Starbucks when I got home but I didn’t feel like it. I was already dressed and stuff but I just didn’t feel like taking a bus to the square. My niece is funny as she came in yesterday and said it was her Starbucks! She felt like I had invaded her private space or something…too funny.