Category: mental disorders

just a blog 2

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Today I got a Christmas letter from a good friend of mine. He sends out a Christmas letter every year since I have known him, going on fifteen years now. He is old fashioned and types his letter on a typewriter. For those not familiar with one, it was an old keyboard with ribbons that transfers what you write on a scroll type mechanism. If you watch episodes of M*A*S*H, Radar is always typing on one for his daily reports.

I will not be sending out Christmas cards this year. I thought about it and I certainly have the time to do so, I just don’t have the energy. This is the first holiday season where I am out of work. I thought about sending out a Christmas letter with an update about what I have been doing and that I am no longer working, that I am on disability from work, and that I am a writer or at least working on my writing through a blog and other professional work. I am not getting paid for any of it but they don’t need to know that. Since not being able to work, I have found that my writing is my solace. It is the one place I can be free at and be at least content with it. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my severe bouts of depression, my suicidality that peaks whenever a flare up occurs, and being suicidal in general. Just because writing makes me content doesn’t mean that my illness has been cured. Far from it as my psychiatrist and therapist can attest.

Last night I had one of my flare up that lasted until almost four in the morning. I was not a happy camper. I couldn’t sleep because my foot exploded in pain. I wrote to my psychiatrist at two thirty in the morning, telling her exactly what is going on. The police has not shown up at my door so I am guessing she is ok with what I wrote. I was venting because I needed to and I wanted to let her know what goes through my mind during these awful episodes.

Last night I also emailed a psychologist but for a different reason. I wrote to him thanking him for coming up with his pain scale and the reasons why I use it and how effective I have found it. I have not heard back from him as of yet. Maybe I won’t. Or maybe he is just too busy right now to answer something from someone he doesn’t know. Or maybe he saw the email and thought it was junk and deleted it.

I had a busy night writing last night. My hand was still sore for typing so I used a pen to write down most of my thoughts. My journal entry has at least three pages of writing. Write, write, write. Seems like that is all I did last night. I couldn’t read because I just didn’t have the mindset to do so. I just didn’t have the concentration necessary for it. I was too much in pain and in restless spirits to lay down and read. I really need to catch up on my Hamilton book. This is a 600 page book and I am only in the one hundreds. I have been updating my Goodreads website about my progress which I haven’t done in quite some time. It is an interesting book and keeps my attention. It is just very, very wordy.

a migraine rant

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

3-Dec-2012

I got a migraine today and it sucks. My face is numb and it feels like someone is driving an ice pick in my right eye. I don’t think I will go out today as the weather is too bright. Sometimes I wish I could put a dimmer switch for days like today.

 

I am scheduled for an MRI tomorrow night. I find this kind of scary because I know my head is going to be examined and my back is going to pay the price. I can’t lay flat for too long. I am going to need a muscle relaxer and pain meds to get through this. The reason I am going for the mRI is because I have been experiencing blurry vision despite getting new glasses. I don’t know if it is migraine activity that is causing this or what but I don’t like it and my eye doc is concerned. I have made an appt with a neuro-opthlamalogist. I saw this guy last year when my visual field showed some new defects. I still have the unexplained defect. The doc thinks it is just an atypical migraine causing this. I just hope that that is the case and nothing more serious is going on.

 

Sometime this week I have to trek out to Brookline and pay a parking ticket so I can renew my driver’s license. Sucks that this is the hold up to me renewing. I already paid Cambridge. Hopefully this is the last time a parking ticket stops me from renewing. Last time I had three tickets, all from the city I live in because of “ticket day” A.K.A street cleaning. I swear it is just a way for the city to collect revenue as the machines do not clean the streets anyways. I am glad I don’t have a car anymore to worry about which side of the street to park on. It’s now I think $100 per citation. CRAZY!! Just to “clean” the street. It is awful.

 

I think I’ll make myself some coffee. Maybe that will kill this migraine…

Never made the coffee as I was too lazy to clean the pot. I use a French press and I have not cleaned it out. I did tonight so I can make coffee tomorrow. Migraine has subsided though my vision is still messed up. It keeps on going in and out, the more I try and focus, the worse it gets. It is pissing me off to no end.

 

On another note:

I am HATING the commercials for Cymbalta. I am hating how they are promoting an antidepressant for back pain. I take Cymbalta, and it does not help my pain one bit!! And I have been taking it for a long time. It does help with my depression. I find that I am less weepy and suicidal when I take it. Hence why it is an ANTIDEPRESSANT!! I think it is false advertising in the FULL effect for this drug. It also helps with the neuropathy some what that I have, which is another use of this drug and I am on a low dose (20 mg). I find that my burning foot hurts less when I take, though it will do nothing for the flare ups I have when I spasm/cramp up. I can see people overdosing on this because they will just think it is “safe” because it is not a narcotic. So when they are in pain, they will pop it like Tylenol. I find this disturbing. And I don’t like the depression hurts bullshit. I have also found it does NOTHING for my psychic pain. Yes, depression does hurt. In fact it can lead to suicide and hence kill you. But like I say, people who are in pain can become desperate very quickly, like I did and maybe a little more should be paid to that. Would it kill a PCP to ask if they are suicidal before prescribing this medication? I don’t see how anyone but a neurologist or a psychiatrist can prescribe this drug for the safety of their patients. My neurologist takes the time to get to know me and actually wants me to live a happier lifestyle. But I can never be happy because I am not a happy person. I suffer too much and when you suffer you just cannot put on a happy face all the time. It becomes exhausting. I think that is why since going on disability I have felt a certain freedom. I know it is because I am no longer forced to pretend that I am happy, to show the world the other side that no one sees. Course I will say I am kind of lonely because I don’t have any contact with my co-workers nor do I have an active social life anymore. I might go out with a friend once a month, if that. But that is it. I have not left the house since Friday. I just cannot be bothered to get dressed to get a cup of Joe. I just sit in my room, playing on my laptop, writing blogs, and listening to my Taylor Swift. I order food and have gained a lot of weight because of my inactivity. Do I care, not so much. I have never been concerned about my weight. Course it is a thing I hate about myself but the only other thing I can do is starve myself and what fun is that? I love food and it loves me. What difference does it make I don’t know. Should I diet? Yes, I should but diet implies that I actually give a shit. I just got a twitter message that says the human body needs 1000-1500 calories a day to survive. If I stay within that limit, maybe I will lose weight. I will eat protein bars and have smoothies. Which reminds me I still have yogurt in the fridge I have not eaten yet. I am addicted to Chobani’s Champion yogurt. It is a Greek yogurt and is mixed berries. I love it!

ramblings 16

by Midnight Demon, posted in CES, Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Been staring at the cursor of a new document for the past fifteen minutes and still nothing is coming to me about what to write. This writing project that my friend has involved me in is draining me. I am having to come up with new material every day and how can you possibly do that every day? I am not used to writing on demand. I have a migraine today so my thinking is kind of slow. All I want to do today is sleep but I just can’t because I have this restlessness inside. I want to go out but it is just too bright out. I am getting lazy. I am hardly leaving the house for anything these days. Not even the temptation of Starbucks makes me want to leave the house.  Last time I left the house was Friday for a doctor’s appointment. I spent that day at the medical center because I was to be seen for my blurry vision episodes. Tomorrow I will have to leave the house to go for an MRI.  I will have to take pain meds and an Ativan to get through. I know that it is going to be tough because the damn thing always hurts my back. I simply cannot lay flat for the 45 minutes or so it takes. I am always hurting afterwards. I have had numerous MRIs as I have a chronic back condition that needs monitoring. I have not had a back MRI in some time but I have had a brain MRI last year. It was similar to the same condition I am experiencing now. Except I just have blurry vision and not a visual field problem.

So this writing binge is because my friend need help writing her book and I sort of need to write my book which has to do with how I deal with my suicidality all the time and my chronic pain that can send me over the edge. My last pain attack was two weeks ago and it ended ugly. I ended up taking more medicine than I should have because I just didn’t care any more. I could have ended my life that night and the only thing that stopped me was that I couldn’t walk the three feet, yes three feet, to my bureau to get even more medicine. I still wish that I went through with it. Maybe I would have slept more and not woken up the next day. I don’t know. I am so sleepy now that I just want to go to sleep than to talk about this…

I think my friend has an ulterior motive for me writing. It’s to know that 1) I am alive and 2) to try and control the demons. The demons are what control me to try and take my life when I am in severe pain, either mental or physical. I can’t seem to tolerate one or the other but when I have both, I am in trouble. As what happened that night, things escalated very quickly and I found myself staring at a bottle of pills to end my life because I couldn’t stand the intense pain. I still am in disbelief about how this happened and the intense grief in surviving it really got my head spinning.  When you feel suicidal you have a plan about what to do. You call someone, your therapist, psychiatrist, PCP, a hotline. But I didn’t use any of those resources and that is what is killing me. I didn’t have the time to practically think about what is causing me to feel suicidal. I just wanted the pain to end and was willing to take a bottle of pills to end it. Stupid yes and for the suicidologist in me couldn’t distract, how is someone that I am treating or a friend that is in crisis supposed to do this? It makes no sense. I couldn’t step back and see that this pain would pass, that I just had to give the meds time to work. I see this now but I didn’t in the moment.

a painful night

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

Right now my left foot is on fire and there is no calming it down. I think I did too much when I made my chicken wings today. God forbid I should make a meal. It really sucks when you want to make something other than a bologna sandwich for dinner. That is why I eat out so much. It’s so I don’t have to cook.

A friend has told me to write when I am in pain so that is what I am doing…not to say it is helping me with the pain any but it is making me tired that I want to sleep…

I am to see my psychiatrist in twelve hours from now. I am afraid to see her because I have not told her about my pseudo suicide attempt last week. I keep thinking it was months ago but in actually, it was only ten days ago.  I am afraid that if I tell her I might get put into the hospital for it. The crisis has passed. I have not felt suicidal since that night, well, not really felt like acting on it since that night. It is a curious thing. I will share things with my therapist more than I will my psychiatrist. I know it is because I talk with my therapist more than my psych. Don’t get me wrong, the relationship I have with my psych is longer than my therapist. I have seen the same psychiatrist since I was seventeen. I am coming up on our twenty year anniversary. I can’t believe how far I have come and that I am still alive. I know it is because of her care that I am still here. I think most psychiatrists would have dumped me a long time ago but for whatever reason she stuck by me and I by her.

I have not processed my feelings about this last suicide attempt. I cannot believe I threw out the window all my safety plans. It is easier said than done to call someone when you want to down a bottle of pills. I think that there is no telling what might have happened that night had I been able to walk the three feet, 3, stinking feet to my bureau to get more pills. Not being able to walk three feet is what saved my life. Three feet. That is how close I was to taking a whole bottle of pills. My therapist is grateful for this. I am sure my friends are. I have been in a weird state since this has happened. I have been neither depressed nor euphoric nor anything since that night. I have become numb. And I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. This is the first time I really want to document what I am going through because I know there might be someone in similar circumstances. Pain is awful but that night I was so full of despair and hopelessness, my mood changed on a dime and the demons came out rearing their ugly heads. I remember just this feeling of panic since that night. This overwhelming desire to get away from myself, the overwhelming pain knocking whatever senses I had out of commission and wanting to just die. Both of my feet were useless. Both of my feet were in agony. I couldn’t straighten out my legs. I couldn’t let the sheet touch my feet. It was awful, so truly awful not being able to do a damn thing but lie in agony and knowing that my meds were just a few feet away and my misery could have ended once and for all. But no, I could barely stand long enough to gulp down two of my night pills. So I skipped my dose of some of my other meds. What did that matter when all I could think about was death. After I took my meds I waited an eternity to pass out. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen, then twenty. I felt like nothing was going to work that night. My feet seized in spasms again and all I saw was blackness filling me way deep inside such that I have never felt before. I had to do something. I had to get this demon out. I had to end my life. But I could not get up and walk the three stinking feet to do so. Moving my legs was agony. If I really tried I could have but then I would be in big trouble. I might not be here today writing this.