Category: chronic physical pain

Difficult Day

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression

Difficult day

I had a hard time sleeping last night. Pain kept me up till almost 0300. I then slept for a few hours and then it was every hour I was up. I really wanted to sleep after my therapy session today but I had to babysit my niece. The pain last night was horrible. I couldn’t move my leg or ankle without severe pain. Every time I got comfortable, the pain spiked, forcing me to move to an uncomfortable position. Then spike again after I had settled down a little bit. I never had such attacks before. It was very weird. But because I had taken my pain pills around midnight, I couldn’t take anymore at least until after 0400. I was exhausted so I just took an Ativan to help me sleep and calm me down as the pain was so anxiety provoking.

I really don’t remember much about what we talked about in therapy. I think we talked in circles without really going any place. I told her about Marsha Linehan’s story, or the pieces I was getting from the Twitter feed that day. I guess she didn’t read my blog about it, just the blog I wrote detailing my reasons for suicide. We didn’t talk about that blog at all. I was shocked that she found the time to watch Jobes’s video that I sent her. I didn’t think her phone was going to be able to play it because it is older than my phone. She has had the same phone for more than six years now. I don’t know how it still is able to play YouTube videos. The important thing is that she was able to see how CAMS works for Jobes and in clinicians working with suicidal patients. He addressed the important key factors of his engagement. He, so far, has been lucky that none of his patients have killed themselves. I think that is incredibly lucky to work with an at risk population and not have someone die in the thirty years he has been practicing. My therapist liked what he was talking about “drivers” (aka reasons for suicide). I am glad I watched the video too, or I would be clueless as to what she was talking about. Course, Jobes is my idol so why wouldn’t I watch a video with him in it? I am sort of his professional stalker. I look out for anything he has written and take it as the word. I hope one day I can be a successful therapist like him.

My therapist also talked a lot about how I am the exception and not the rule today. It was making me roll my eyes. She has told me this about a million times. And every time she tells me this, I take it as a challenge to prove her wrong. I don’t know if that is one of the reasons that “drive” me to suicide. I figure I am supposed to be dead anyway with all the stats against me. Yet, I am still here. And it pisses me off because I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to lose anymore sleep and have ongoing nights of pain and misery. I know tonight I run the risk of having yet another night of pain because I was going up and down the stairs today most of the day. My sister made some food that I liked and I had to babysit, twice. Already my ankle is throbbing. I would take some pain meds but I know in an hour or two I will be saying goodnight. Least I hope I will. Last night, the pain meds didn’t tell me good night until almost 0300. I really thought I was going to have an all nighter. I just could not sleep.

Tomorrow I have my appointment with my PCP. I hope it goes well or I will be in bad shape mentally. I know he is going to give me a lecture about my weight. I wish he wouldn’t because I already feel bad about it. I didn’t even have a chance to talk to my therapist about it today. We were all talking around the elephant in the room (suicide). We also talked about my Twitter buddy Jay and how I think she knows him. I sent her a pic of him and his name. It will be really funny if they had worked together at the same place.

Other than feeling really tired, I am fed up that I have been in pain for almost a week now. I haven’t left my house since Thursday when I saw my father. Tomorrow, I will have to go out to see my doc. I canceled my therapy appointment so I wouldn’t have to finagle the bagel trying to find a spot for me to talk with her for an hour. I like talking with her in the comfort of my room. So she conned me into talking on Thursday.

In a writing mood

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

In a writing mood

I had my coffee soon after I woke up and now I got the “writing bug”. I have been reading my old blogs from two years ago. The sentiments are the same. I go to Starbucks, have coffee, and then talk about how I am going to end my life because I just can’t stand it anymore. Funny, it’s two years later and I am still here also talking about the same shit. I guess the saying, “same shit, different day” applies.

I am trying to be hopeful but it is very difficult. I emailed my psychiatrist and asked her why I should continue living. Point blank. No beating behind the bushes. I have been in a pain flare up the last two days and it has shaken me to my core. I really don’t know why I am still here. Fear perhaps, that I will again fail to execute my intentions. Fail to actually succeed in ending my life. And this fear somehow keeps me from going through with my half-assed plans.

In one of the blogs I was reading, I was saying how I was going to go take a summer college course. I never did. The money ran out before I could take it. I had a wedding to attend that year and also had to finish paying off the debt I owed the college. That didn’t leave me with much left over. Now that I am getting my LTD payments again, though not in the amount it once was, I can maybe get new glasses. Thing is I have to get two pairs, one a single vision and the other bifocal. If there is anything left over, I would like to get prescription sunglasses. This will beat having to figure out a slip on kind. I don’t know. Either way I need to see as the pairs that I am wearing are out of date and are causing me problems. Even word I have to have it on 150 enlargement to see what I am writing. And that is with my glasses!

I also want to get a new cell phone as mine is slowly shitting the bed. Last night, I couldn’t get it to turn on. I don’t know how many times I was hitting the power button to get it to turn on, unsuccessfully. And now, every other call I get “contacts not responding” message. The phone is almost three years old, same as my glasses. Guess you can say, it is a dinosaur. But I will continue to use it until I know I can afford an upgrade. But my glasses must come first.

I was finally able to take a shower today. The pain in my foot has gone down enough that I could stand for a few minutes to shower. It’s a cool day so I didn’t put the heater on in the bathroom. I wish I did, because when I got out of the shower, I was freezing! My feet were especially cold so when I went back up to my room, I immediately put on socks to prevent cramping. My pain increased slightly, but not enough to warrant taking a pain pill. I see my PCP this week to get my monthly refill. He is not going to be happy with my weight as I have not lost any since I saw him last. I fucking hope he doesn’t bring it up because I will be flip with him. Losing weight is on the bottom of the list right now because I am still struggling to prevent myself from killing myself. So does it matter? I got other things on my mind and it isn’t like I am eating junk food every day or even take out. I just am not active enough to lose weight and I can’t be active because it brings on pain. I have tried to cut the calories, drink more water, etc., but the weight still won’t shed a pound. I needed two days to recover from my one day of going over my limit. That hasn’t happened in a while. And, hello, but if I wasn’t in pain all the time I wouldn’t need pain medication. Thus, losing weight might be easier. But I know it’s his spiel. I just find it harder to swallow than my pills and it just reinforces more hate toward myself because I used to be such an avid walker. It also makes me sad because I can no longer do the things I used to do to control my weight. When I was working, I could have salads and grilled chicken sandwiches. Now I don’t remember to buy lettuce and then when I do, my mother boils it if I don’t use it in a few days time (don’t ask, I think she is part Irish). Salads never really filled me unless I had some protein to go with it. And I am not keen on boiled eggs in a salad. I much rather have chicken. But that means preparing and cooking and I can’t do that because I can’t stand too long. Just making a batch of cookies one time killed me. I can’t imagine what making a few pieces of chicken will do. But I think they have pre-packaged grilled chicken so problem solved. I will get that the next time I go food shopping! It won’t be the same as the kind at my work (theirs was fresh off the grill) but at least it helps me off my feet and maybe helps me to lose weight. I don’t know, I am just throwing my thoughts out there.

two days of pain

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

I woke up around 0630 in pain, again. It was the continuation of last night. I took some pain meds and then hobbled to the kitchen to make some breakfast. After that, I went back to sleep and stayed asleep until my mother called me around 1515. I heard her come home and was going to yell at her for not telling her second mother (aka my aunt, her sister) that she went to the doctors this morning. My aunt, who definitely has an anxiety disorder, was flipping out because she couldn’t contact my mother. She was calling the house like every fifteen minutes. I luckily had turned off my phone because if she woke me up, not like she didn’t with the million phone calls to my mother’s line, I would have screamed at her. She left me a panicked message and then when I called she was even more panicked but sly. She said she was going to go to the house (which I doubt as she never goes anywhere outside her home). She lives a few houses down from me. But the whole situation and the excess worry was for nothing. She had forgotten my mother told her she was going to the doctors and when she couldn’t remember, she was in a panic of her own anxiety making, calling the doctor’s office to see if she was there. Surprising to me that the office would tell someone that they were at the office given that is what HIPPAA is all about. I guess someone didn’t care this morning and gave my crazy aunt the information she was looking for. Not ever going to that doctor’s office. I am just bullshit that my sleep got interrupted, again by this crazy bitch. And it’s not like she waits three rings, nope. She calls and lets the phone ring for an eternity or at least until the damn answering machine kicks on. I am so annoyed. When my mother called me around 1515, I did yell at her. I don’t know why my aunt is so fucking nervous about not getting in touch with my mother fifty times a day. And if she doesn’t get a hold of her, she fucking panics, like the world is coming to an end.

I tried going along with the conference tweeting today but I just wasn’t as interested. They had someone tweet Jobes this morning and the tweeter kept misspelling his name, so I would modify the tweet and correct it. She has done this a few times in the last day or so, misspelling people’s names. And it is annoying me. Get it right or don’t tweet at all, for crying out loud. People are not going to know who Jones is or Quinet. Then I got a tweet that one of the past presidents of AAS was doing a panel with students. I cringed. I hate this guy and the fact that he is trying to influence fresh minds, well, it bothers me! He just rubs me the wrong way.

I still am in pain and might go back to sleep. I emailed my psychiatrist with a “why” subject line and then realized, I never asked her a question. She never responded. I might email her again and ask what is the point of living this crap when I am in pain all the time. And I don’t mean mentally this time. Two days of being in pain is not fun. I really feel like a HUGE hypocrite because I am for suicide prevention for others, just not my own. I know one day I will die by my own hand. Question is when.

I just am not a happy person. I have accepted myself as being chronically depressed. I don’t think things are ever going to get better, for me, anyways. My mood is like the stats of blog. One day I might be hitting 80 views and the next I might hit 9. Or vice versa. I never really know who will be reading my blog just like I don’t really know how my day is going to go. I do know that if I am in pain, I am screwed. I stay home, I don’t go out. I take my pain meds that either knock me out or keep me up. I am just glad I have Starbucks coffee that I make at home. It might not keep me up the entire day, especially when I take my meds, but it sure clears the cobwebs so I can write or read.

Right now I am reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. My therapist asked me what it was about and I wouldn’t tell her. I was not in the mood to give her a book report. Frankly, this book has taken so many turns in the first part that I don’t think I am following it. But it keeps you wanting more, and so I read more. I haven’t read it in a few days because my head just couldn’t get into it. Plus, the print of the book is tiny and I am having trouble reading it as my glasses are now expired. I hope with the new set of glasses, the print is better. I am going to get new glasses sometime next week, if I can get to Harvard. But it all depends on if I get my LTD payment or not and my level of pain. I really wanted to get out today but waking up before 0700 just sucked and I got depressed. I said the hell with it. I didn’t even make coffee today.

hopeless yet hopeful

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

Today is the first day of the American Association of Suicidology’s annual conference. I have been getting tweet updates all day from my fellow Twitter buddies. One of them won the writing contest that I had also entered in. I posted the blog earlier today.

I have been astounded that researchers are finally getting a clue that psychache and hopelessness goes hand in hand when dealing with suicidal thoughts. Shneidman would be proud. And they are finding this across the age groups, including youth suicide. I know from experience that was what lead me to self harm and also to think of death constantly. It wasn’t until 2007 while working on a term paper did I realize that only Shneidman had made the connection so brilliantly. Course he never did an empirical study of it. He was out there in the trenches doing the actual work to help decrease suicide. If I hadn’t come across his work and then the work of Jobes, I doubt that I would still be here.

Reading these tweets always makes me feel like I am missing out. Though I know that if I was there, I wouldn’t know how to tweet during a lecture. I would be more interested in what the person was saying than trying to remember it and then post it on Twitter. I suppose I could take notes of what they were saying and then tweet. They had Marsha Linehan today and she told her story of how she was mentally ill with borderline personality disorder, was hospitalized for a good number of years and that the treatment was awful. She made a promise to God that if she got out of her hell, she would try and get others out of theirs. I hate when I am feeling like scum of the universe, feeling hopeless as anything, and then this conference happens to lighten the load so to speak. I truly was in awe that Dr. Linehan came out and was inspirational. She said that to decrease suicide, you have to decrease the pain. And also to use skills to cope. Of course she would say that. She is the founder of DBT! But I think she has softened in her rigidity of DBT as a cure all over the years. She is the one that pushed Jobes into research for CAMS and why would she do that if she thought that DBT was the answer to everything. I minimally respected her before today. But as I am getting to know her more, the more I am respecting her.

Jobes was also at the conference. No surprise there. He was on a panel of speakers but between the tweets, I couldn’t really figure out where he was coming from. The message was that even though he has trained thousands of clinicians in his modality, it didn’t change their behavior toward suicide. And that is sad. He wants the younger clinicians to step and do the research as to why that is.

Last night I was in a pretty bad state of mind. I still don’t want to live. But if Marsha Linehan can come back from mental illness, then maybe I can, too. I know the suicidal thoughts are always going to be there. It is my default coping mechanism. Over the years, I have learned what it took to distract me from going through with these thoughts. I have only come close to killing myself twice in the last two years, no matter how dark and dreary my depressions got me. But figuring this out wasn’t easy. It mostly comes through in hindsight and after the episode has passed. And then I am left feeling like, “did that really happen”? My therapist assures me that I go through these bouts frequently. Which is why she is adamant about me keeping my appointments, no matter how hopeless I get.