Tag: cauda equina syndrome

Balancing act with Chronic Pain

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

I stayed up pretty late last night as the baseball game was on the west coast time. We kicked “King” Felix’s butt and seeing as we took care of Sonny Gray the other night, I have to say this road trip is going fairly well. Sure we have had a couple strings of losses but overall, the hitting and pitching has been much better. I hope it continues. Today’s game is at 1600 so I will most likely be lurking in the BPD chat. It happens every Sunday at that time. Last week was a good chat.

I slept till 0330 today, so my day did not start off well. I just woke up from a nap as I so needed it. I even had coffee before I took a nap and it didn’t keep me up. I feel rested. I didn’t go into a deep sleep, but slept enough to feel better than I did before the nap. I didn’t have any dreams. Lately, my dreams have been really weird. But I don’t remember them long enough to write down or keep in the memory banks. I just wake up feeling discombobulated.

I made breakfast when I got up late morning. I had a bacon sandwich. I really don’t feel hungry for lunch or dinner right now. My bowels have been going most of the day. I guess the senna is working really well, maybe a little too well. Only thing that I think I am going to eat next is rice or a grilled cheese. My mother is most like going to call me soon. I don’t care that is what I want for my dinner, when I get hungry. And I got no appetite right now.

I need to take a shower today but my back has been acting up while I stand. Even sitting, my lower back just wants to cramp out. I don’t know what that is about. I haven’t done any heavy lifting or twisting of any sort. But there has been a change in the temperature so that probably is what is causing this havoc. I can still move, just gingerly. I had set a goal for myself today to shred some old prescription papers. I still haven’t done it, yet. I keep meaning to when I go downstairs but I just don’t grab the stack to take with me. I probably will do it after the game as I won’t have anything to do this evening.

I have been feeling really low today. Actually, the last few days my mood has been lower than it should be. I haven’t thought of suicide but I am not that far from it. It’s always in the back of my mind. It’s when it’s in the front of my mind that things get from bad to worse. Every day I do this Mood Traces app activity. It lists all the criteria for depression. Each day you rate how your mood is. If this app is accurate, I have been pretty depressed the last few days. Of course, I don’t really need an app to tell me this. But it’s nice to monitor my symptoms. It is going to suck when I switch phones. I don’t think I am going to keep the app. As great as the app is, I find it depressing to know how depressed I am every day. It kind of makes me feel guilty about my moods, like I am not trying hard enough to make myself feel better. Every day it also records your daily activity levels. Even on days when I don’t leave the house, I can get a few minutes of activity as I walk around my house as I am always carry my phone, usually. But then there are days when I have 0 minutes of activity and it makes me feel bad that I didn’t go out or at least try. Mostly those days are rest days because my ankle needs to rest. If I have too much activity, my pain levels are going to spike. Then I am going to be in a worse mood. It’s always a balance act in dealing with chronic pain.

I read my “idiot” book today. The plot thickens. I am really enjoying reading this book. I think the next book I am going to read from Dostoevsky is “the Double”. That was a very interesting story. I finally wrote the review for the “Graveyard Book”. I posted it on Goodreads and Amazon.com. It was a short review, nothing elaborate. Just short and concise, which I think every review should be. When I was reading the reviews for the book (which was over 1200), I couldn’t believe how long some of them were. It was like reading a book report on some of them. And if you didn’t read the book, the reviewer gave away most of what the book was about, which I thought sucked.

Marathon Bombing Sentencing and Other Things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, mental illness

Marathon Bombing Sentencing and Other Things

The bomber of the 2013 Boston Marathon explosions has been sentenced to death. I was kind of hoping that he would spend his life in prison but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I feel very sad that another life will be taken, however justified. I am for the death penalty and believe that people who do horrendous things should die, and he did do horrible things, taking 3 lives at the Marathon and then an innocent police officer. He and his brother terrified the city for almost a week before getting caught. I hope the victims and their families can rest easy now that justice has been served. He wasn’t convicted on all his counts, just some and that was enough to warrant the death penalty. I am sure there will be appeals that will go on for months before the death occurs.

I have been in a rotten mood all day and this sentence just didn’t help it. There is a sense of relief as now maybe he won’t be in the news as often anymore. I don’t have to be reminded everyday of that day when my world came apart. I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak. I have been moody as all hell. I think it’s partly because I have not really eaten today. I had breakfast early this morning, a slice of pizza left over from last night. I really haven’t eaten since then. I went to Starbucks and had my free mocha. I had earned the reward from my 12 purchases. I no longer use my Starbucks app because hackers have found ways to siphon money from your bank account using the app. So I just use my gold card.

I wrote a bit while at Starbucks in my journal. I wasn’t too distracted by people or what was going on outside, which is rare. I wasn’t even on my phone that much checking Twitter or Facebook. I lost 6 followers in the last 4 hours. I got a bunch of followers in the last few days so I am guessing they were bots or because I didn’t follow back (I hardly do, unless they are a bona fide real person) right away. I am not likely to follow someone with a name for “music xxx”. A lot of authors have followed me in the last few weeks. I still don’t know how they find me. Today I got a follow from a guy in the UK who is an author. Never heard of him before but his English isn’t too good as he had some grammatical errors on his profile page. I didn’t follow him back.

I was a block away from home when my ankle gave out on me. It exploded in pain and made it difficult to walk. I am still hurting. I took a pain pill about a half hour ago so I should be getting some relief soon. I just hate when this happens. My foot wasn’t doing too good before I went out but sometimes when I forced myself out, it settles down. The drawback is that I will have severe pain on the way home or after. Seeing as it just hit the early evening hours, I am going to have a long night of pain before I even hit bed time. Baseball game is on late tonight so maybe I will listen to it. Last night, I was out cold before the game. I woke up around 0400, which sucked. I then went back to sleep and I had a weird dream. The dream was that I was back in East Boston doing some police work. It was weird. When I woke up, I really wanted to go back to sleep to see if we caught the guy! My stupid medication app alarm went off, waking me up.

Despite my sleeping difficulties, when I woke up at 0400, I felt rested. Though I was kind of pissed at waking up that early. I must have slept for a good seven hours, a record for me. I really should have made coffee when I got up this morning, before my nap. I think I would have done better had I stayed up rather than fallen back asleep. But with me having to take pain medication, I don’t know if I will be up late or not. It’s weird that if I take the same dose during the day, I get sleepy and have to take a nap. But after seven in the evening, it can keep me up. I don’t know if my anxiety over the pain contributes to me staying up or not. Sometimes, I have to take Ativan to calm down some, just to get sleepy. Sometimes it works and other times it doesn’t, depending on the level of pain. I know by now what will keep me up and what won’t. If I have it in my mind to sleep, I usually do. It’s just when I get the writing bug in me during this time that I find it hard to sleep. If I don’t write, the longer I stay up and that means Hyde can show up. He will come out if I am exhausted, in severe pain, and can’t sleep because I need to write. It’s terrible. And the anxiety of not writing is sometimes worse than the physical pain itself. I don’t know what lies ahead of me tonight or how many pain pills it is going to take to get it under control. I am sort of dreading it. But I will have my baseball tonight and that usually calms me down enough so I can sleep, sometimes. If it is an aggravating game in which we lose, I can get hyper. And that usually means I am up till 0300. The only thing I have to do tomorrow is pick up my prescription. Hopefully, the pain levels will be down when I wake up and I can do this errand.

Don’t Want This Night To End

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression

Don’t Want This Night to End

This is a song that I love by Luke Bryan. The video is fricken awesome. Though I don’t really like the follow up video. I was kind of hoping it was going to be another song on his album Tailights and Tailgates.

I had therapy today. It went okay though I don’t think we really talk about anything that was of importance. I brought up the letter and we talked about Hyde. I felt him brewing inside but she and I really didn’t want him to come out. He really is another part of me that is purely suicidal. And I think my menses has something to do with it as well as being in chronic pain. The perfect storm for him to come out is when I am in severe, excruciating pain, late at night, and I can’t sleep. It is the midnight demon quality. I also have to be in a writing mood. For some reason, he expresses himself through writing the most suicidal letters possible. The reason we didn’t want him to come out is because there is always the chance I could attempt suicide while in that frame of mind. I have never really attempted with him in control but that doesn’t mean that I can trust him. She didn’t say, exactly, what the letter did but it apparently had a devastating effect on her.

I went to Starbucks after session like I usually do. I had a Snicker’s latte (2 pumps mocha, 2 pumps caramel, 2 pumps toffee nut) and was contemplating something to eat but didn’t get anything. I journaled a bit while drinking my latte. I wrote a little more in detail about the session as it was fresh off my memory banks. I then wrote about other things. I think the last thing I wrote about was the horrific Amtrak train accident this morning. Seven people are dead because the train was going really fast in a slow zone, 100 MPH in a 50. It’s so sad.

I drank a lot of liquid between the latte and the iced tea I had for supper. I didn’t feel the need to go to the bathroom until I left my house to pick up my prescription at Walgreens. The leaking started and I didn’t feel anything. I hate dribbling. Even as I was approaching the house, the urge to go wasn’t strong, yet I had a full bladder. There was no way I didn’t. You can’t have a twenty ounce drink followed by a sixteen ounce and not be full. That’s over 1000 cc’s of fluid right there! I also wasn’t happy to find out that I am having break through bleeding. Looks like I will be stopping the pill next week so I can have a mense. I went through five packs of pills so it was a good run. I am averaging about 5-6 packs between break throughs. It just sucks because I have to wear female underwear and feminine products for a week. It’s just a big blow to my ego.

Cinco de Mayo 2015

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

Cinco de Mayo 2015

I got my S’mores frappucino with a shot of espresso. I had to have a real caffeine kick. I didn’t think I was going to go out because all the stuff I took for my bowels suddenly worked, all morning, for me. But things settled down after lunch and I was able to go out.

Had therapy and my therapist doesn’t remember reading the blog I sent her last week. The part she did remember was the nest part, which to me is similar to a hope box. She didn’t call it that and said she wanted to have things remind me of how important I am to people and such. It’s hard to do that when I am still in an environment that doesn’t fully support me in my illness. Today, I told her that my mother made me feel bad because I don’t do things “useful” around the house. My mother wanted me to put her breakfast plate in the sink to be “useful” and it made me upset. I don’t get why my mother has to be mean to me. I feel that giving her half of my paycheck every month to cover the bills of the house should let me live here, too. I just don’t get it.

I got really angry today so I posted on Twitter my feelings. A fellow CES sufferer saw a doctor today for her disability claims. He discounted her having CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, saying she HAD CES, but once you have surgery, you no longer have it. That infuriated me. Infuriate is my word today as I have used it several times. I don’t get how a doctor can say something like that. If she had a stroke, the result would be the same. I just don’t get it. I really don’t and the more this happens, the more I distrust the medical profession. To me, despite their high degree, are all bozos, unless proven otherwise. I have yet to find a doctor that helped me with my ankle. No one wants to believe that I still have nerve damage in it. That the weakness is just from tendonitis. Just pisses me off, big time. So I have to take pain medication to quiet the pain. Normally, tendonitis heals with rest and therapy. I have been resting for three years now and I still have flare ups of pain. And no one can tell me why I am in pain or why my ankle swells up and all the veins in my foot pops out when I am in severe pain. Course, a doctor has yet to see this happen because it only happens in the after hours, late at night with the pain so bad I want to kill myself. It doesn’t flare up during appointment hours or even during an appointment. I am hardly in pain during the day, usually. But after seven in the evening, almost every night, the pain will rise and if I don’t start taking pain meds it becomes out of control. I have been fortunate that lately I have stayed on top of it. I am kind of lucky that I no longer work because if Friday was any indication, I would not be able to walk and stand eight hours a day. I would be in too much pain. Friday I walked more than I should have and paid heavily for it. Only reason I walked too much was because the eyeglass place made my glasses wrong. If the idiot explained to me what he meant by distance, we wouldn’t have had this problem. I still haven’t gotten my glasses back yet. I will call tomorrow and find out when they will be ready. I need them to read Dostoevsky. The glasses I am currently wearing can only go so far and then I start straining my eyes to see with them. It sucks having bad eyesight. I have been wearing glasses since I was in first grade.

My therapist and I talked about the chat that had me upset Sunday night. It’s like, am I smarter than all these clinicians and therapists in this chat when it comes to suicide prevention? I understand they want research and evident based treatment, but the research is there. If I know about it, why don’t they? I don’t get it. I don’t even hold a bachelor’s yet I know what needs to be done for a suicidal patient. Understanding, compassion, empathy, and the client telling his story. Treatment can be DBT based or CBT. I understand not everyone is trained in these modalities. There is a “short” kind of CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, that seems to help veterans in as little as five sessions. This is from what I have gathered on the internet vines and through the research of Jobes. So why do they not trust these kind of therapies is beyond my understanding. If they are looking to predict a suicide, they will have to wait a really, really long time for that to happen. You can’t predict a suicide anymore than you can predict cancer in a patient. And if this prediction is what they mean by prevention, they don’t understand anything about suicide at all.