Tag: cauda equina syndrome

Baseball Season is officially over

by Midnight Demon, posted in baseball, cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Tonight the San Francisco Giants swept the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. My Baseball Depressive Disorder has peaked. Now I have no baseball games until Spring training in March, a mere five month wait for something I love more than anything.

I went out with a friend of mine who I haven’t seen since May. He finally sold his house in Boston and is now temporarily living in Marlborough until things are settled for his condo in Revere. I hope that he likes Revere and he is by the Blue Line as he works in Boston. Traveling can be hard between these two cities by car. He wants me to help him with his Facebook page and I have agreed. It is freelance work, though I have told him I know nothing about eye conditions but he is willing to teach me. He is an eye doctor, and in my opinion one of the best in the Boston area. I have been seeing him since I graduated high school. This volunteer work will help me keep busy. I love learning new things and I am sure it will help him and his work.

I still am feeling kind of weird since I am living and I have not attempted suicide. I feel like it is a loss that I am never going to recover from. I know this must sound weird but it’s true. I have been trying to attempt to kill myself since 2005 and have not made one single attempt despite all my planning. I have come close a couple of times but I have never really gone past my planning stage. What changed? The fact that more people need to be aware that there are people like me who think about suicide all the time yet do not tell a single soul about how dark their thoughts are. I have my therapist to talk to about this and she is the ONLY person that knows how I really feel. I don’t confide in anyone else. I would talk to my psychiatrist but I have been avoiding her. Mostly because I just feel like a burden to her. That is the hardest part of this illness is knowing you are a burden to others even though you may not really be in reality.

I still have yet to go back to my comparison paper. I really am just procrastinating on it. I want to be able to work on it while I am sitting at a Starbucks. And because my depression is so bad I hardly leave the house, I just have not been in the mood to bring my laptop around the city to go to Starbucks and sit for a few hours. I have been becoming more reclusive and I hate leaving the house for any reason. I just like staying in my room all the time goofing off on my laptop while Facebooking or blogging. I haven’t had that many emails to respond to. My online CES support group has been quiet lately. Like everything else, it ebbs and flows. Sometimes there is a lot of chatter and other times there is very little. It all depends on what is going on and if people have things to add or suggest. This group has been a life saver for me because without it, I would feel totally alone with my nerve condition.

disability

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, depression, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders

For the past eighteen months, I have been in chronic pain with my left ankle. It started as a sprained ankle and blossomed into CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I have nerve damage in this ankle from Cauda Equina Syndrome (CES) and CRPS affects 80% of those affected with this condition. In my case I am repetitively inflaming my peroneous muscles and tendons as I do not walk correctly. The result is constant burning and swelling of my ankle and foot.

This condition limits my walking due to pain. In December of 2011, I decided to go on medical leave of absence to try and give myself a mental and physical break from working two jobs. I was working as a lab assistant in both research and clinical areas of a large hospital. Four and a half months later, I was out of both jobs. I had decided at the end of January to work just one job and that proved to be an error on my part. I think that if I was working with research my life would have been simpler as I wouldn’t be walking so much anymore. I am now on disability and I have to say that it sucks. I went from a working member of society to nothing in just four months. I just couldn’t do the work anymore. Walking around the huge lab was killing me. I had put in job restrictions and it was rejected. After working fourteen years in the same place, I was sure to get “special” treatment. But that was not the case. I had to move to do something more sedentary. That caused me to have a mental breakdown. I was in the hospital in April of this year and then again the end of June. June was a long stay. I was there for two weeks because mentally I just could not handle doing nothing anymore. I became psychotic with the stress of not having a financial income and not being able to pay my bills. Stress always brings out the hallucinations and most of the time I can handle it but this time the voices wanted me to cut my leg so I had to go back on my meds and stay longer to have it work.

It is very depressing to be disabled. It cuts you deep inside and makes you feel so bad. Although I am collecting I’m still trying to find myself. I have days where I do absolutely nothing, least that is what I call it. I might go out to Starbucks for a coffee and write or read. I might just stay home and sleep. I might write a blog or try and read. Most of the time I play on my computer, playing online games.

When I have the energy and creativeness to write, I write about my mental state and being suicidal, what it’s like being in chronic pain, and how I am living this way. I have a lot of time on my hands and don’t spend most of it in front of the TV. There are not that many shows that I watch on a regular basis. I record my favorite shows (CSI NY, CSI, SVU, Hart of Dixie) and watch them at my leisure, which is sometimes a few days after they air. I am just too restless to sit for forty-five minutes in front of the tube.

It hurts not being able to do something during the day. I wish I loved cooking but I can’t stand too long to do something like that. I like making cookies but I don’t like the clean up. As November is slowly approaching, I am thinking of making my first pumpkin pie. That will be my goal for the holidays. I just hope that I can stand long enough to mix the batter.

Freedom from CES

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, depression

weather and nerve pain

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, mood disorders, suicide

4 feb 2011

 

This week in Boston we got hit with heavy snow. Actually, we have gotten more snow in January than I can remember in my lifetime. So Saturday night after my shift at work, my left leg was really aching and sore. I was the person that was moving samples to be spun, taken over to heme, aliquoting, and running the electronic version of myself, the MPA. I thought it was sore and achy because of all the running around during the 8 hours plus I did a few more hours before my shift as I had to pull some specimens for a study that was to be shipped out on Monday.  However the pain stayed with me the next few days and when the snow started which was Tuesday, I was in really bad pain as I could hardly bear weight on my left leg. Ten years ago this week I was first diagnosed with CES and had similar pain and problem so I was freaking out big time. Wednesday I paged my pdoc because I was in major PTSD mode and my therapist was unavailable due to being snowed in.  She said go to the ER but by the time she returned my call, my leg was feeling a little better and when the snow stopped Wednesday evening, so did my pain.  I was shocked because usually my back goes out. I have never had leg pain due to the weather. It was the weirdest thing.

I told my neurologist about this and we increased my neurontin to help with the nerve pain. I love this drug more than any other drug out there. It’s not a narcotic and doesn’t have any “high” properties but it kind of just zones you out at high doses and leaves you feeling great the next day because you sleep so soundly. Least it does for me. Now I am NOT recommending anyone should take a high dose of this drug for this purpose. But my nerve pain seems to diminish for at least 24-48 hrs at a time, usually with one or two doses in a 24 hr period.  And that in and of itself is blissful.  No burning of the soles of the feet, no feeling like snapping turtle are nipping at your toes. No zapping feeling.

The only down side of this drug is that it makes you hungover. It’s so hard to wake up the next day and get moving. But even though I know this, I still feel something is wrong with me.  My fatigue level has increased in the last few weeks. I can only be up a few hours before I need a nap. I lose motivation for working and then need to come home and rest. I am just so exhausted.  Take yesterday for example. I got up around 11:30 am because I had an appt with my psychiatrist. She had cancelled because the weather was bad but I didn’t know this as she emailed me at 6:30 in the morning.  My car was buried in the snow and there was no way I was shoveling out so I hung out with my niece for a couple of hours watching her and her mother play on the Wii (video game) and had lunch with them. By 2 pm, I could have gone back to sleep I was completely exhausted. But I had to go to work because I thought there was a sample waiting for me.  I struggled past this exhaustion, get to work and find that the pt that was supposed to get drawn got discharged. I came to work for nothing. I was not happy! I might go to the doc next week to find out why I am so damn tired all the time.