Category: suicide

pain, pdoc appt, and other things

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

Pain, pdoc appt, and other things

I once again woke up around 330 in pain. I took my pain meds and couldn’t go back to sleep right away. I think I fell back to sleep around 5ish then woke up one minute before my alarm went off. I got up to brush my teeth and use the bathroom. Then I got dressed and caught the bus to the Square. I had to stop and deposit money in my checking account because I was short on funds. I’m glad I checked my balance because I would have been overdrawn. A transaction I made the other day I forgot about. Oops. I then went to Dunkin to get some pumpkin donuts. Then I went to Starbucks for my espresso and a breakfast sandwich.

I got on the train to get to my pdoc appt. The appt went well. I told her about the bitch coordinator for the pain group. If she knew who ran it, she would contact them. I told her not to bother as I don’t want to go anymore. This bitch just ruined it for me. She went over the notes from the neurologist appt yesterday. She has no clue about the bone scan he ordered. I have no clue either but I gather through my Twitter buddies that it’s a radioactive test. Guess I’ll be glowing in the dark, haha. We also talked about my mood and how sucky it has been. She agreed. She said that if I need to contact her this weekend, to use her cell phone number. I said ok.

I had to go home a different way because the bus I take from the Square was being detoured. It took me longer to go home. My ankle/foot is not happy with me right now. I am in a lot of pain. I took some Neurontin and my strong pain pill. The weather is cold so my spine is aching, too. I thought of going to Rite Aid for some half and half as I was out but changed my mind. I’ll go tomorrow. It will give me something to do. I also need to go to Walgreens.

My mood sucks right now. I’ve been thinking of suicide for most of the day, partly due to feeling hopeless about my ankle being FUBAR and partly because the depression is just so bad right now. I really hate this and sometimes I am scared that I will go ahead with my crazy plan I keep fantasizing about. I don’t know if I will act on it. I really want to but I know my immediate family will hurt and that keeps me here, as long as I don’t have constriction (blinders). I hate that I have to suffer so others won’t. It’s a real struggle when you lose all hope of getting better. I know that if PT is successful, I might not be in as much pain. Which might get me a little more active than I have been but as I told my pdoc today, I don’t think it will rehab me enough so I can work again. Hell, just walking the 3,342 steps today going out and back home is doing a real number on my ankle right now. I was only out of the house for a few hours and I am toast. I really need to rest this weekend, though the only thing I have planned is to change my sheets and try and find that backpack I’ve been wanting to use. It’s driving me crazy that I don’t remember where I left it last. It might be in a different part of my office, under some jackets or something.

I really would like to do some writing in my journal again. Lately I have been so tired because I wake up in the middle of the night that I just don’t have time to sit at Starbucks and write like I used to. Or I just been too distracted to write. Lately, I just can’t focus on anything. I can’t remember the last time I opened a book. I just am not interested in reading anymore.

My ankle is really hurting me right now. If I had a chainsaw, I would chop it off. It’s bad enough I feel like slicing it open with a knife. Somehow I think that will stop the pain by cutting out the pain. Weird thinking but it’s driving me crazy having to take this pill and that pill then waiting for the pills to work. It’s aggravating. You just want relief now and it doesn’t happen. I’m starting to have anxiety so I took one of my blood pressure pills. I didn’t take it this morning, again. This is the 3rd day I missed my morning dose. Luckily, when I saw the neuro yesterday, they took my BP and it was normal. I hate having to be on two medicines for my blood pressure. I especially hate having to take one twice a day. I should put the alarm in my app back on so I don’t miss the dose. I only stopped it because I was waking up in the middle of the night or going to bed really late and I didn’t want to be disturbed. I need some sleep.

in a depressed state

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

In a depressed state

I wanted to write another blog last night but I couldn’t get the words out. I felt super depressed about being in pain and it just caused this downward spiral. I just wanted to die. I still feel this way because my pain is really bad. I didn’t go to PT today because I didn’t sleep. I went to bed after 0400. I thought I would be able to go but I just could not get myself up. I called about an hour before my appt to say I wasn’t going.

I tried calling the courthouse to set up a time for Tuesday. For some stupid reason, I said 9. WTF was I thinking?? So 9 am Tuesday I go with my paperwork to get my name changed legally. Then the headache of calling everyone and their mother starts. I’m going to try and go to Social Security the following week. Depends on how I feel. Once that is done, I will go to the RMV to change and hopefully renew my license. My license expires in Dec so I don’t know if it’s too early to renew. I have to go in person, which is going to be a pain in the ass.

Around 4, I emailed my psych telling her I had enough and that I had a plan and I was going through with it. She wanted me to call her this afternoon. I paged her after I had something to eat. As I was going back to my room, my foot bones exploded with pain. I was again suicidal. I just wanted to die. There is no reason for me to continue going on. I don’t see the point in talking to her, I really don’t. My pain is not going to change, well it will but only for the worst. I’m still waiting to hear back from her. I really don’t care if she doesn’t call. I’m not really in a talking mood.

another month of existing

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

Another month of existing

Despite being suicidal for almost 16 days straight, I lived to tell the tale. I honestly don’t know what gets me through the hardest of moments when I am in so much pain and all I can think about is death. I think fantasizing my death has gotten me through, only because I was so immobilized by pain, I couldn’t act on my thoughts. Then the next day, the pain was down and I didn’t feel so terrible. I didn’t feel like ending my life.

Sometime in the beginning of September or the end of August, I thought that if I had 41 consecutive days of suicidal thoughts, that on day 42 I would end my life. If by some chance, I had a day that I didn’t think those thoughts, I would have to start all over. I kept a spreadsheet of the days. Some nights when I was in pure agony, I would bargain with myself saying just x many days more and then I would end it. I kept these thoughts pretty much to myself. I had texted my therapist this plan but we never talked about it. I don’t remember if I let my psych know either.

I don’t know what really changed that stopped the suicidal feelings from occurring. I still had pain every day and night. But after my PT evaluation, I felt like things could be better. I was sad that the days of me working were truly over because too much time had past for me to recover. I was diagnosed too late with CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Now I just want to be able to make pancakes without having to take breaks in between the prep, the mixing, and the cooking. Small stuff but it would be a goal. I left the PT office feeling a little hopeful that things might change for the better. It didn’t take away my suicidal feelings completely. I still thought about ending my life, but there was no urgency to it. I just put it in the back of my head.

Suicidal thoughts have become so much apart of my life that I can’t imagine my life without it. Will I my life end one day at my own hands? I don’t know. I think so and have felt that way for quite some time. Little things stop me. My nieces or nephew’s love and care. A friend online that needs me. Having a low pain day so I could get out of the house to have my espresso at Starbucks. Being able to shower, make breakfast, and then go out to do what I have to do. It doesn’t happen every day as some days I can barely get out of bed, either because of pain or my mood. Sometimes both. Sometimes a good word from my therapist or psychiatrist is enough to lift the heavy coat to make it through the day. I honestly didn’t think I was going to make it through September without making a suicide attempt. But I did.

Tomorrow starts a new month, with the same challenges. Hell, I have appts all this week with no rest days at all. It’s going to be hard. I hope it doesn’t set me off in a flare for days on end. The weather is also going to be cooler. If it remains stable, I should be okay. If it fluctuates more than 10 or more degrees, I am going to hurt more than any activity that I do. I have a lot of appts this month. I don’t know how that is going to make me feel, physically and mentally. Dealing with chronic pain every day is difficult to say the least. I have mixed feelings about this month. I hope that I survive and I hope that I die. We’ll see if I make it to Oct 31st.

My Thoughts on Zero Suicide as a Person with Lived Experience

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

My thoughts about Zero Suicide as a person with Lived Experience

There has been a lot of talk on Twitter about Zero Suicide and it’s mission to reduce the suicide rate to zero, because 1 is just too many. At first, I was appalled that clinicians think that is possible. I for one think that it is outrageous because there is always going to be someone who dies by suicide. Maybe not in their organization but outside their organization. But then I learned that it’s not an individual’s practice but an organization or health system that strives to achieve this goal. They have trainings and meeting with those in the suicidology world.

Something kept bugging me about this. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to anger those that are for it, though I think there are a few blogs that I wrote about it before I understood the mission. While talking to a friend that is a suicide loss survivor, the bells went off. She said that it goes against Shneidman’s questions, where do you hurt and how can I help?

I am a big supporter of Dr. David Jobes work with his framework called CAMS (Collaborating, Assessment, and Management of Suicidality). I don’t know if Dr. Jobes trains these Zero Suicide clinicians. And even if they are trained, I am not sure it will be used. Most clinicians have the attitude that their skills on suicide risk are good enough when it could be faulty. Worse, they go through the training yet don’t use what they are taught. That drives me up the wall. Why bother going to a training (unless it’s a mandatory thing) if you aren’t going to take away from it?

I really think CAMS is a tried and true framework to prevent suicide based on my experience of using it in my former therapy. I also used the Suicide Status Form. Unfortunately, my therapist did not want training in CAMS and we drifted apart, thus ending our relationship. We did, while we worked together, use the initial and tracking forms but unfortunately, we never got to the outcome form. She wasn’t committed enough to see it through and that kind of pissed me off. Every time I had a suicidal episode, she just wanted to know one question on the form, The one thing that would help me no longer feel suicidal. It is an open ended statement where the client fills in their thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I could never come up with a satisfactory answer as I really didn’t know the reason for my suicidality. I just wanted to die and that was that. I wrote a blog about CAMS if you would like more information about how it is formed and the use of the Suicide Status Form.

I went on the website for Zero Suicide but could not seem to find the specific training that they went through. From what I gathered on Twitter from their live tweets, some of it is CAMS and some of it is using risk factors for suicide. Unfortunately, risk factors alone are not predictive of a suicide attempt. CBT has been useful in reducing suicide attempts but not all clinicians are trained in this modality. The book by Craig Bryan on CBT for preventing suicide attempts is a good book to learn more about it. I also wrote a review on the book that you can see here.
The other thing that gets me is that no where among Zero Suicide is there talk of a person’s psychological pain. There are measures, if you look for it. Dr. Holden at Queen University in Canada has created a scale to measure what Dr. Shneidman calls psychache. See my review on the research article for more information. I think it is a good psychometric to gauge a person’s level of suicidality and pain, which ultimately leads to thoughts of suicide. This must be included in any talk of preventing or intervention of suicide and also postvention, should a suicide attempt occur.

My final thoughts of Zero Suicide is that it is a novel idea but as Dr. Shneidman says, “How many suicides do you want, and I say I don’t want any, but I want there to be the freedom to do it. I study suicide but I am not pro-suicide. I’m for suicide prevention.” I share his sentiments. I do not like the talk of “suicide is not an option”. To me, that is hindering free will. I do hope the rate of suicides goes down, but the way that health care and mental health are going, I think there will be more before it lowers, especially among the chronic pain patient population.