Tag: bipolar disorder

Twitter and CES Anniversary

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

I checked Twitter soon as I got up this morning, like I always do. A Twitter friend had written something like “it was nice knowing you Twitter” with the hashtag #RIPTwitter. I just thought he was saying goodbye to it. He doesn’t post often. Then I noticed the hashtag was trending so I clicked on it to learn more. Apparently, Twitter is thinking about changing their timeline to an algorithm rather than chronological, like Facebook. WTF. I like Twitter because of it’s chronologically set timeline. I dislike Facebook because of its stupid algorithm. You never know what your friends post currently unless you change the settings to “most recent”. It’s so annoying. I sincerely hope they don’t change because then I won’t be on any social media sites. I will be alone and isolated. It will be very sad.

I slept pretty good despite waking up at 0345 in pain. I had breakfast at 0430 and then went to sleep. I didn’t get up till around noon. I had lunch then and now I am thinking about making biscuits and gravy. I haven’t had it in a while. I might have rice with it.

I’m feeling depressed. I had leg pain when I got up and it was just a reminder that even though my CES injury was 15 years ago, I still have pain. It really triggers my PTSD whenever I have pain down my leg because I never have gotten over the injury. It was very traumatic. Tomorrow is my anniversary and I just can’t believe that after 15 years, I am still trying to recover from it, emotionally. My body failed me. I took things for granted like walking, going to the bathroom, even wiping my own ass. The whole time I was in the hospital, I had to have someone wipe my butt every time I had a bowel movement. It was humiliating. I am sure that the way I wipe it now would be frowned upon by some professional, but it is what I learned to do because I can’t reach the way I used to.

I have relearned to walk three times in my life. There was a time when I thought I would have to walk with a walker the rest of my life. There was just this uncertainty that I would not recover. No one told me I would recover. They just thought I was lazy and didn’t want to get “better”. I did what the physical therapists told me to do, even though it hurt like hell. I think the greatest thing that got my strength back was doing stairs in my house that I was living in at the time.

I was in a relationship at the time of my injury. But afterwards, it made sex difficult. I would hurt so bad that I just couldn’t orgasm. It was just too painful being touched and getting excited. The relationship suffered because of this. I was also raped during this time. The partner I was with thought that I could get pleasure but she just didn’t know I was in pain, despite me telling her to stop multiple times. I lost interest in sex. I still do. It doesn’t interest me like it once did. Even when I shower, I have to be careful not to excite myself. You don’t realize how sensitive the genitals are until you get hit with this type of nerve injury.

But these things you take for granted until they are lost on you. You don’t appreciate walking and all the muscles it takes just to take that first step. How the hips are connected with walking in addition to the other muscles in the leg. It took months to walk just to walk with a cane. Then I was told I was “babying” myself because I was still walking with a cane. I think that was the worst someone could tell me. I think that maybe, looking in hindsight, that if I continued to walk with a cane, maybe my ankle wouldn’t have been so fucked up as it is now. Now I am truly disabled. I can’t walk too far without pain. I can’t stand too long without pain. And I walk with a cane now so that I can try and walk farther without pain. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. All depends on the day. I once measured that I could walk 0.4 miles without pain. Now, with my current back injury, I doubt I can make half that distance. My hip would explode. Maybe after physical therapy this go round, I will be able to.

I just don’t know what to do anymore to not be in pain. I can’t sit in a chair for more than a couple hours without my ankle swelling up. Yesterday was a good indication of that. I had sat at Starbucks for a couple of hours before having the appointment with my father for another couple of hours. I still wish that someone had noticed that I wasn’t walking correctly all the times that I was having physical therapy. Maybe I wouldn’t be disabled today if that had happened. But then. I really didn’t think I would get CES again. It’s hard to know if the second diagnosis caused the ankle to behave the way it does now or if the original injury did. Chicken and egg question. I will never know.

Pain Flare up while out

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

Pain flare up while out

I didn’t carry my cane today though I should have as the weather was nasty. I thought I would be okay until I around 1330 came around and my ankle exploded in pain. I didn’t have any meds on me. It was about an hour later we left the hospital and I had to wheel my father to the exit. It was twinging on and off but there was nothing I could do about it. Damn nerves were inflamed. I was wearing boot so I am not sure if that set it off or not. I just tried to keep my ankle in a somewhat stable position and tried not to move.

We had a wait but not as long as it was on Wednesday. I brought my tablet with me but I didn’t feel like reading it. I did some reading when the called my father in. I finished the chapter I was on and then called it quits. People talking were disrupting my reading voice and there was a kid that kept laughing. It was annoying after a while. I just wanted to take a nap but I couldn’t relax enough to get comfortable. Plus my ankle going off every now and then kept me on my toes, so to speak. I wish I brought my writing with me. I could have written something or made some more edits.

I went to Starbucks to have my latte, sandwich, and a donut. I got really full after all that. I started writing in my journal. I basically brought the journal up to speed with all that is going on. It’s been a while since I last wrote in it. I wrote about how difficult yesterday was and that my psychiatrist still hasn’t answered my emails. At this point, I will be shocked if she replied. I haven’t heard from her in weeks.

I’m glad the pain didn’t cause an anxiety attack while I was out. That would have been awful. I never know what brings about the anxiety. I wish I could say this or that, but it’s hard to pin down. Sometimes I do have anxiety with pain and other times I have it without. Usually, I will have it as an anticipatory attack if it’s around the time I usually get it. It’s just so weird.

I didn’t wake up with my shoulders hurting me this morning. Yesterday I slept wrong and was in some pain until I got the kinks out. It was still bothering me throughout the day. I know I sleep funny on my right side and my shoulder sometimes acts as a pillow for me. Bad habit but I am sleeping most of the time so I can’t break it. What I did to my left shoulder, I have no fricken clue. There is a spot that hurts like a SOB and I try to avoid touching it because it hurts more if I touch/rub it. I haven’t lift anything or moved my shoulder in a weird position. It just hurts.

I mailed off Valentine cards today. One of them I sent to my therapist. I just felt like I should send her one as I have never sent her one before. Sunday is my 15th anniversary of my first cauda equina diagnosis and subsequent surgery that left me with my ankle being messed up. I spent the rest of the month in the hospital. Two weeks after surgery, I developed a staph infection and had to go under the knife again. That really messed me up. I developed kidney failure, my liver enzymes were through the roof, and I just felt like shit. I almost needed a blood transfusion as my crit dropped to a dangerous level. Luckily, it stabilized on its own, though I was still anemic. I had to take iron pills for months afterwards to build up my blood.

Three Mississippi

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

I’m feeling really depressed right now. All the events of this afternoon’s session has hit me. I don’t want to fucking live anymore. I should do what Hyde wants and just end things. I just can’t handle being in pain every single day/night anymore and my mental bar keeps fluctuation toward good and bad. I am sick of it. Sick of it all.

I am so pissed off. I don’t know why I let my therapist talk about Hyde. I knew it wasn’t a good idea but what the hell, she is the professional, what do I know. I am stuck in this suicidal mindset. Time is ticking. I have already chosen a date and this time I am not telling my therapist the date. I am hurting too much and I want to end things. I would do it tonight but I have to settle things with my damn father first.

I have been listening to Terri Clark for most of the evening. I heard “Three Mississippi” and it reminded me that I am past the number 3. I have given myself a lot of Mississippis and I haven’t gotten anywhere. I have tried to get help but it doesn’t matter. Year after year I still fight the urge to kill myself and I am so damn tired of fighting it so I am giving up. My life is just not worth living anymore.

I know my therapist will be devastated. I have tried to warn her to drop me but she still holds on. She should have dropped me years ago. I don’t know why she didn’t. I will see her one last time the week that I die. I have tried everything I could think of to keep the demons at bay but they are just too powerful for me. She has tried, too. I just can’t be fixed. I am too broken.

Difficult therapy session

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders

Difficult therapy session

I had sent my therapist the “Hyde here” blog that I wrote the other night. We ended up talking a lot about my “parts”, mainly Jack and Hyde. She wanted to know more about what brought Hyde out and I told her I was exhausted but felt the need to write. Hyde always comes out when I am in that state. Jack has been elusive. He only seems to come out if I am angry at my therapist or something she says triggers him. I don’t know too much about him but I think today I figured out that he has been a part of me longer than I thought. I think he has been a part of me since my teen years when I was cutting. There was a dissociative episode I had when I was 17. I had started cutting and spaced out. As I was telling her this, I could feel Jack saying it was him. It is possible. A lot of anger and pain was expressed in all the cuts I was doing over the years.

She was trying to engage the parts but I can’t call them up on command. She said that it was important to talk about this. I had texted her before our session I didn’t want to talk about my father at all. I felt like we had spent enough time talking about him on Tuesday. But she brought him up anyways. I was vulnerable and something triggered me crying. So I spent the last few minutes of session crying because I couldn’t stop. I had gotten angry at one point and that almost always leads to a crying spell. But I was crying tears of sadness because I know my father isn’t going to be around much longer, if things progress the way they do. I never had a good relationship with him because he is a liar and an abusive one at that.

We also talked about my suicidality a little bit. Hyde is tied to my suicidality. He wants to die and so do I. But I have been failing at it because of my therapist. She wanted to know when he was formed and I have no idea. He is a part of me that comes out when I am extremely exhausted, usually doped up on meds, and am fighting sleep yet have the urge to write. I also feel slightly suicidal when he makes an appearance. He has been quiet a lot lately because I haven’t been so suicidal for whatever reason. The psychache has been relieved. I don’t feel as much psychological pain lately as I did in the past. I think it’s due to increasing my mood stabilizer. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel sad and depressed at times.

My therapist stirred a bunch of stuff up for me today. I found it very exhausting. I am glad I don’t have to talk to her till Tuesday. I was thinking about writing my recovery from self harm but I don’t think I will do that today. It’s just too triggering for me and I don’t want Jack to come out. My therapist called him like a bodyguard. Maybe he is. I don’t know. He is elusive and only came out at least twice since “finding” him. My therapist brought up the woman I can’t stand as she had told her that my “parts” need a voice or they will kill me. As whacky as this woman is, I think she might be right about this one. It makes sense. But I won’t tell my therapist that.