Category: depression

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!

It’s Pain O’Clock

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

It’s Pain O’Clock

Pain started around 2015 and has slowly increased. I took a pain pill about an hour ago, just to be able to stand long enough to take my night time meds. Because I didn’t fill my pill box today, it was hodgepodge night. I just take what I want and not the whole kit and caboodle. I will try and fill the box tomorrow morning when hopefully, my pain levels are lower. I hope I have a good night’s sleep. I can never know if I am going to wake up between 4-8 AM. Today I slept till almost 0800, which is highly unusual for me. But pain woke me up, actually, it was more my bladder, but I was still in pain. My right leg has been hurting all day, from hip to toes. I almost never have pain in my right leg. I think because I am a side sleeper and hadn’t moved for more than four hours, I was in pain. I am hoping the pain meds take care of that and my left foot pain. Right now it feels like someone is hammering my metatarsals. Just the last three. I think I would hit the roof if it was all five.

I have noticed that since taking the vitamin D again, my mood has changed, for the better. I still think about suicide, but the depression is not as heavy as it once was. I can breathe a little better, though I have been having awful anxiety with this pain flare up I have been having. I tend to breathe faster than I should and my heart is palpating. I have to take deep breaths to slow things down. I don’t know why I am so anxious with pain. I know it’s not going to kill me, though I am always in danger of attempting, or cutting. I still have it in my head that if I just cut the swelling, maybe I will be in less pain, that if the fluid is released, I will be fine. There is NO proof this will happen. I might just make things worse. And if I cut to the point of stitches, that will be a problem.

In two days I see my doc. I hope that he can give me something that will help my mental state. I can deal with the physical pain with medication. But I just want to figure out why the hell I have hammers hammering my bones! And why I sometimes feel a crushing sensation all along the edge of my foot. I haven’t been really active the last week and I have been in horrible pain. I see him in the morning and that is not going to be good. I wish I could see him at eight in the evening when the pain starts to flare up all the time, every single night. I am not going to be in horrendous pain at 0930 in the morning. I will have to stop my pain meds entirely the next few days if I want that to happen. I don’t want to go through that because I just got the pain under control again. I might have done the stairs a little bit too much today. I wish I could do a drawing of my foot and show you where it hurts the most. But I am not creative that way and I have no idea what program/app to use to make it. I don’t even know how to make a meme. I just am not a creative person when it comes to stuff like that.

I hope he won’t be mad that I stopped going to PT. I hated going because it just brought me more pain. And I could never remember the damn exercises the PT gave me, even though she gave me sheets on the exercises. I have too many things going on in my brain and so I just couldn’t retain what I was being taught. After my last session with her, my foot exploded and I barely made it home. So if he should tell me I need to go back, I just am not going to. The pain is just too complex at this point. What I would like is an MRI of my ankle and foot to see if there are any changes since my last one.

As far as meds go, I don’t think he will prescribe me another pain med. The NSAID hasn’t worked out as well as I was hoping it to. That would be the only change I could see happening. The baclofen has helped, though it doesn’t help all spasms. It has helped ease the tightness that I had surrounding my ankle and calf area. But it hasn’t helped the back spasms or hip pain that I have been experiencing. I am going to tell him about my hip and see if he can do something about that. My PCP hasn’t been too worried about it but this has been going on for more than eight months now. Today I was sweeping the floor and it caused my hip to flare up. I could barely stand afterwards. And it still is hurting me. It’s odd because it hasn’t bothered me in a few weeks and now with me sleeping on it, it flared up again. I know it is still weak from my surgeries. And I haven’t strengthened it since I pulled it out back in December. I sneezed and my back went out. My hip muscle is what hurts the most and I just can’t seem to stretch it enough to get it loose. It sucks. All the exercises that I have learned to deal with it haven’t helped at all. Course I don’t know what muscle it is that I have pulled so that kind of sucks. Knowing my luck, my hip will be fine come Tuesday morning.

Waking Up in Pain Sucks

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

Waking Up in Pain Sucks

It’s another morning where I am greeted by pain and have to take pain meds to control it. Thing is, it’s my right leg that hurts, though my ankle is still bothering me. I took a walk to Walgreens to pick up my prescription and was hoping to get some gravy and instant mashed potatoes. But they didn’t have the gravy. So I got a box of chocolate chip cookies and Oreo ice cream instead.

I then check Facebook and was appalled that a stupid aunt fixed a picture of a missing girl with a girl that was found dead last week. The picture is two years old as she has been “missing” but the police refuse to see it that way. The girl is with her father so I don’t understand how she could do such a thing. People have foolishly been sharing the post. So you have a live girl and a dead girl in this post. Disgusting. I feel for the missing and dead child. I just think it’s wrong to add the missing girl to the dead one, especially as she is not “missing” and the picture is old. Really pisses me off that people would want publicity that bad. Why not post ALL the missing children with the dead girl. Then the dead girl will never be known! Least the missing girl has a name and a family. Nothing is known about the dead girl, no name, no nothing. She isn’t in a missing database, that we know of. It is just sad.

I know I am in a rotten mood because of pain. I tried to make a good appearance with my sister today. We had coffee and breakfast together, something that doesn’t happen often. But she wanted me to see her yesterday and I just didn’t want to see my father, who was there. I already spent three days with him this week. I had my fill.

I need to take a shower today. I was going to take one yesterday but I got lazy after watching the movie. I really got sleepy and didn’t want to leave my comfy bed. Plus my ankle was acting up again and I really didn’t want to be standing on it. It sucks that pain dictates my activities. I really want to go to the Square today but there are no buses that go there directly. I would have to walk or go around the world to get there. And today is Sunday so the buses don’t run as frequently. I will have to wait until tomorrow and hope that they still have my summer coffee that I like, Kati Kati. It is so good! And I need another bag of regular coffee, too, as I am running low on my Breakfast Blend. They no longer have my Brazil Nova Resende coffee, but they have another Brazil coffee that is excellent. I might get that if they don’t have the Kati Kati. So because the bus schedule sucks today, I won’t be going out, again. I told my sister while we were having coffee that I would be editing. I told her about my writing seems good when I first write but then sucks when I edit. She didn’t comment. I don’t think my sister thinks highly of my writing. But then, whenever I say that I am writing, my family makes me do something else. I don’t think they get how serious I take my writing.

I am deleting my Facebook page today. I am sick of the flags, American and Confederate debate, the stupid “should the national Anthem be played at sporting events” question every single fucking day. I am tired of the damn memes. I am just sick of it all. I’ll just stay on Twitter because that stuff is original, for the most part. You can post memes but it’s far and in between. And at least the pics aren’t offensive. I will miss the baby pics and cute animal pics that my friends share but they are not shown frequently like the other junk that is pissing me off.

I will probably write another blog today. It’s going to be a long day as I have been up so damn early in pain.

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.