Category: suicide

medication and feeling scared

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, psychosis, suicide

Meds and being scared

Yesterday I was in a panic more so when I have to take a bus some place. My hands were trembling uncontrollably for several hours. I was scared. Then when I started writing with pen and paper, it got worse. The only other time this has happened to me was when I was on high doses of trilafon. But I am not taking trilafon for my psychotic symptoms. I am taking another medication called Abilify. And it is causing these symptoms. I am scared because it might mean I have to get off this med and if I do, the voices will run rampant and I will have to be back in the hospital. Usually, taking the Ativan will help bring me down and so far today I don’t have any symptoms. I emailed my doc and she has not responded so I think I am on my own with this. I wish she would respond so that I know I am on the right course. I skipped my dose last night and I am only taking half the dose tonight. We’ll see if I get any symptoms tomorrow.

I have been on this drug for more than a year now. I have never had to take a long term anti-psychotic drug before. Usually the bad voices would go away after taking the meds for few weeks and then I could stopped taking them but after my psychotic break in 2008, this has not been the case. One doctor called me schizoaffective because my symptoms were so bad they were considering putting me on clozaril. But then during one of my admissions I was placed on Abilify and it worked for me better than any other drug. I can no longer take Seroquel or risperadone because they give me worse side effects. I rather have the trembling than my legs kicking uncontrollably or my heart giving me palpitations.

Right now the voices are under control. I am still having break throughs. I have a new voice that likes to talk to me just as I am falling asleep. She just pops her head in and starts talking away. I don’t suffer from visual hallucinations but if I did, that is what I imagine is happening. Then the other voices start up and chime in with their own questions and wondering why I am still here and why am I not working so I have to go into that whole debacle. Or the other voices will talk with the new voice and the whole thing will keep me up because I get agitated by them interfering with my sleep. I sometimes have to referee them. It is very exhausting keeping up with them while listening to music to try and drown them out.

If I have to stop this medication, things will change. I really don’t want the paranoia and delusions to come back. I don’t want the commanding voices to start up again. I will not be able to function. I will really hate not being on this medication. But I am hoping, that I can take another medication to counteract its affects. I kind of feel like Dr. Pearce from Perception where he goes through life unmedicated and still be able to function to some degree. He is able to embrace the voices that he knows are not real. I don’t want to go through that. I went through it once and it was not pleasant. I can handle the three or four voices regularly but I can’t handle the paranoia and delusions. That is more debilitating to me than a conversation of voices in my head.

You know you’re having a bad day when

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, physical pain, suicide

You know you’re having a bad day when…

You know you’re having a bad day when you wake up and a half hour later you are in severe pain. I just can’t believe my foot acted up. But then, this has been happening for the last few weeks. I can’t stand it anymore. I lose sleep because I am in pain and then when I do wake up, I am in pain again? It’s not fair! Usually my day time hours I am in manageable pain. It has gotten to the point where I don’t even notice it anymore. Now all that has changed. I don’t know if something else is going on with my foot, if I did something to cause it to be this way or if it is just nerve damage. I don’t really care of the cause, I just want pain relief. Luckily taking pain meds in the morning are working but it leaves me exhausted the rest of the day, even with a cup of coffee. Though my Starbucks funds are running low, I won’t be going there soon until my next pay period. I guess I over indulged when I bought myself some treats. Can’t help it. I love their coffee cakes.

Yesterday I was reading my support group email and a friend was telling the group how you need to mourn the loss of your old self as you are never getting back to it. Then a fellow blogger wrote the same sentiments about her illness and how disabled she felt but didn’t realize how much of herself had gone by the way side since becoming ill. She was crying as a way to mourn that loss. It got me thinking…maybe I am so suicidal because my grief is just too great. I got CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, at the age of 25. It is a syndrome of nerve damage caused by compression of the cauda equina nerves, the horses tail, that is at the end of the spinal cord. These nerve control the function of everything below the waist, from leg movement, to going pee and having a bowel movement, to sexual function. It also controls sensation and proprioception, the awareness of where your legs and feet are. Once this is gone, your balance is affected. You might lose control of one or both your legs. You might not walk correctly anymore.

I have been through a lot the past year and a half. I have been diagnosed with a nerve condition called complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS), which is the chief source of my foot/ankle/leg pain. It is caused by already damaged nerves and aren’t I the lucky one to get both conditions. Since I have been diagnosed, I have been really depressed. I know there is no treatment other than opioid therapy. Though I have been in therapy with the same therapist for the last twelve and a half years, I still have not thought how much these conditions have affected my life until now. I no longer can work. At one time I was working three jobs. Now I can barely do one. Before going on disability, I was working two jobs. I wasn’t happy. Both jobs were stressful and caused me sometimes sleepless nights. But then I sprained my ankle and everything started to go down hill after that. I couldn’t figure out why the ankle, which should have healed in the allotted time, was still causing me pain. Why my leg still had swelling, why my foot and ankle were swollen. It didn’t make any sense. I saw one doctor after another. Podiatrist, orthopedists, physiatrists, neurologists. None could give me a clue until the symptoms became worse and a picture of CRPS started to emerge. By that time, I was having difficulty working both jobs. I ended up going to the emergency room in severe pain, pain that was causing me to think of suicide as a solution to end it because nobody could help me. I went to physical therapy and they were the ones to notice I wasn’t walking correctly. My foot does this swing thing that pulls at muscles it’s not supposed to while I walk, but only does so when I become fatigued. Which, one physical therapist showed, happens very quickly. And that is because I never regained my strength in my foot after getting CES. I never thought that at the age of 36 I would be disabled. And it hurts. Not having the social support of my coworkers anymore hurts. Not having contact with people outside of my family hurts. My friends that I thought would always be there are there no longer. They all went on with their busy lives and stopped texting and calling to see how I was doing. I don’t blame them. But I do miss them.

I guess when I have had uncontrollable sobbing episodes it was because of my grief that I have been avoiding all this time. I don’t know how to deal with it. I never thought that I would be in mourning. I never thought that I would lose my job because I couldn’t walk anymore. I still am able to walk just not for long distances. I can’t stand for more than twenty minutes without pain. I used to be able to do so much and now I can’t do anything. And because I am not financially stable. I can’t even go back to school while I ponder what my next move is. College is too expensive for me to afford. Even at the state school. I know I should put some time into getting a grant or something but I wonder if I am too “old” to get it. I have had to put my college education on hold because of my mental illness back in 2008 and I have not returned to school since then. But then I am not sure I can walk around campus and do the stairs like I used to. There is a lot of loss in my life on a very personal level. How do you mourn the loss of your functions? How do you get used to not doing something as “simple” as walking. I have had to relearn to walk again twice in my life. How many people can say that?

It makes me angry at times. I guess that is why I have been having fits of anger for no reason. I will just be in my room playing on my laptop or writing when all of a sudden these waves of anger will wash over me. I guess it is all part of the grieving process. And isn’t one of them denial?

400th blog post: A post about Edwin Shneidman, PhD

by Midnight Demon, posted in mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

This is my 400th blog. I want it to be meaningful so I thought I would write about Dr. Edwin Shneidman. He was a wonderful man that I really admire. He was the father of suicidology and really pioneered the field.

His famous quotes, one of many, was that you should not kill yourself while you are suicidal. I think he meant it to be as a sort of giving yourself time before acting on such a dangerous act. I know that in my time I have been putting it off. It keeps me here.

My favorite book that he wrote was called “the suicidal mind”. I swear this guy was in my head as I was reading it. It perfectly described everything that I was feeling. The psychache, the despair, the guilty worthless feelings, all of it. He was the one that termed the word psychache, which is feelings of psychological pain that can best be described as feelings of despair, frustration, guilt, worthlessness, hopelessness, and helplessness.

His other connotations are constriction and perturbation. These two words are the most dangerous in a suicidal mind. The constriction means there is a narrowing of the mind, a kind of tunnel vision that is set on one thing: easing the psychache at any and all costs, by killing oneself. Perturbation is the agitation, frustration, the “must do something now” type feeling that provides that person to think about suicide and it is difficult to calm or settle these feelings once constriction is in full gear.

Another word Dr. Shneidman often uses to describe suicidality is press. This word is sort of a disambiguation. He uses it to describe a lot of things but mostly the pressure one feels to act on suicidal feelings and thoughts. It can also be used as a sort of perturbation. In Dr. Shneidman’s eyes, the level of the perturbation, press, and psychache will ultimately lead to suicide. If you were to rate each on a 1-5 scale model and have a 5-5-5, the likelihood of completing a suicidal act is greatly increased. In fact, he has stated that prolonged feelings of these three things are a major cause of suicide. No one can endure psychache, press, and perturbation for any length of time. You can have fluctuation of the these three things but once they have been at a sustainable level for any length of time, suicide is likely to follow.

Dr. Shneidman was a man that I greatly admire and respect. And what is very special to me and what I will always remember is him calling me out of the blue one day to discuss my paper that I sent him on “ten faces”. It was a paper that I wrote up for the AAS 41st annual conference and was my first poster session for this organization. I will always be grateful for that phone call.

distressed

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, Chronic pain, suicide, suicide attempt

I know I have been writing more and more about my transgender issues and more of my identity crisis that I am. I am deeply distressed right now and don’t know what else to do but write. I started working on a blog for my 400th blog but the meds are interfering with my thought process. I took 2400 mg of neurontin to calm down the horrible burning pains in my foot that I have been experiencing all day. I just can’t take it anymore. I took some of my pain meds with the neurontin and I am kind of feeling kind of out of it but I still haven’t passed out yet. I think I will in a few minutes as I can barely hold my head up anymore as I am fighting the fatigue. I am just so damn upset over the stupid menses. I know that even if I get to my doc there is nothing really she could do. I will still have to wait at least three weeks to see if the next treatment works, that is if I stop bleeding. I would be ok if I would just stop bleeding. It so distresses me and usually I am able to handle it but now this is going on for almost three weeks and I am losing my handle on the rope that is holding me together. I think tomorrow if my flow is still the same I will stop the patch and see what happens. I don’t know what else to go. i will go a few days of not wearing the stupid fucker and see if that helps.

I am deeply suicidal and yet deeply concerned about someone who just wrote to me that she is planning her final affairs. There is nothing I can do to stop this lady, she has her mind set on killing herself. I don’t blame her. I really don’t. There is only so much pain you can take before you finally snap and have to do something to get rid of it. I have been where she is right now. She doesn’t have a good support system and I think she is mad at me in some way that I have abandoned her. I feel bad that I have not called her like I have said before but I just don’t feel like talking. I guess I am afraid of calling a stranger and letting her in my life. I am scared. I once got close to a member of the support group and then she just stopped contact. No more emails, no more phone calls, no messages returned. Nothing. I later found out through her husband that she just got tired of her condition that she became constricted and didn’t want to reach out anymore. It was too painful for her. I lost my friend to this horrible condition because she has the active form due to another dreaded condition that is worse than the other. I would name them but they are conditions that no one really understands. I might as well as be talking about the moon and the stars and how far away they are. I think they name them these big ass names so that no one can understand and push us further apart from the human race.

So Ms. M, if you are reading this, I am sorry that I failed you. I wish there was a way that I could stop you from doing what you are planning but I guess there is no way to stop you. Just like no one can stop me in my planning. I hope that we both succeed. I know that dealing with constant, excruciating pain and loss of bodily functions really suck. I know this first hand. I can’t stand it that someone so sweet could hurt so much and no one notice. It is not fair. But I understand. I really do.