Tag: CES

Overslept

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

Overslept

I had put on my “do not disturb” function on my phone and I thought my alarm would ring despite that. I was wrong. I slept through my grocery delivery. Now it will have to be delivered tomorrow. The guy was nice and waved the restock fee as it was my first time missing it. I know that I am not going to do that again!

After I made a few phone calls, I went back to sleep. I wanted to make coffee but my pillow was calling me. So I slept most of the afternoon. I guess all the meds that I took yesterday to sleep, caught up with me today. I am just so tired. My foot has been acting up but I had avoided taking pain meds because I didn’t want to sleep through dinner. I just took some now. I hope the pain doesn’t get worse. I really don’t want to take the strong pain pill this early in the evening.

Tomorrow I have therapy. I feel like it’s going to be awkward as we haven’t talked in three weeks. I am nervous about it. I feel more nervous that I am not going to talk to her next week either, that the time we had for a month from now will be the time we next talk. I don’t like this arrangement at all. And I am wicked pissed off that she just gave my times away and now she has to wait for a cancellation to fit me in. WTF. I still am so mad she decided to meet monthly and not discuss it with me first. I seriously, at the time, was like fuck you anyways, but I didn’t think getting in to see her would be so damned difficult.

I was talking with a psychologist friend of mine on Twitter. I sent him a DM about my situation and he said he is going to make some calls to some therapists he knows that takes my insurance. I guess when those names comes in, it will really be final that my therapist and I are through. After sixteen years, I still can’t believe it. My psychiatrist says that it’s not my fault. But that doesn’t make me feel any better.

I think I was talking to one of my friends last night before going into oblivion about how I will have to “train” a new therapist in my suicidal ways to help me. The idea of having to do this again just fills me with dread. I don’t know if a new therapist will be open to new ideas or just stuck in their way of treating suicidal patients. If that is the case, it’s not going to fucking work. I can’t work with someone with a “no suicide contract”. Those just don’t work as I can just find a loophole. The whole process is just leaving me feeling so damn nervous. It just makes me say fuck it and just go through with my plan anyways. I just feel so hopeless.

Last night I was having a hard time and I talked with my friend in Canada. We have been through a lot of shit together with CES. And we both get each other. She made me laugh and forget about my troubles for a bit. It was good talking to her. I got her payment for my book today. I will go to the bank on Friday as I am not sure I can use mobile deposit as it’s a money order.

a little of this, a little of that about chronic pain and suicide

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

A little of this, a little of that about chronic pain and suicide

I don’t know where my blog is heading anymore. I tend to write more about my chronic pain than of anything else. And why not, it is always there, aching, throbbing away like no tomorrow. I am sick of it. Both my ankle and foot were competing as to who was going to hurt more and my foot won the contest. The three metatarsals (bones in the foot) that always bother me, are feeling like they are being crushed though there is no external pressure being applied whatsoever. I want to cry. I want to cut my ankle off.

I am depressed. Have been all day. I had texted my therapist asking if there was a time next week that would be suitable for us to talk and she responded that it didn’t look good. I am astounded that her schedule is so full. Used to be that we met three times a week. Now I can’t even have one? I am hurt. I just want to tell her forget it. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. I am going to end up killing myself either way so what would a session do? It’s not going to prolong my life. She has no clue what I have been planning mostly because she hasn’t been around. She decided that we needed to meet monthly. Not me. I didn’t have any say in the matter. Now I can’t get a bloody appointment to convince her otherwise. Fuck her and her stupid schedule.

I meet with my psychiatrist tomorrow. We are supposedly going to come up with a “plan” on how to go on without a therapist. Can’t wait to see what she thinks. I am in a terrible mood right now so forgive me if I go off on a suicidal tangent. I am going to tell her that it’s useless. In fact, I don’t know why she is even treating me as I am a hopeless case. There is no point. I have made up my mind and within a few weeks, I will be gone. I hope to be gone anyway. If I had a more lethal means, such as a gun, then I know I would be gone but I don’t have a firearm. Though if I did, I don’t think I could wait a few weeks.

Pain has driven me to this. I couldn’t even bear weight on my foot as I went downstairs to the bathroom. I tried to stay off the bad metatarsals but going up the stairs, that was hard to do. I didn’t want to spend a half hour going up each step one at a time so I painfully went up the stairs like a “normal” person. I just hope this pain is gone by tomorrow because I need to go out. I don’t think cancelling on my psychiatrist is going to fly, even though I think the appointment is hopeless and pointless. She gave me plenty of refills on my meds so I am good for the next month or two. Not that it matters. I don’t even know why I bother to continue to take my meds. I guess if I don’t, I might become more impulsively suicidal. Right now I can wait. Throw in some agonizing despair and that might change. I guess my meds are keeping that from happening. And I know what happens when I don’t take the trileptal regularly. I am off my fucking rocker.

I do have some what adequate pain control, but that isn’t the point of me wanting to kill myself. The fact that I HAVE to take meds to control my pain is the issue. I shouldn’t be in pain. There is nothing physically wrong with my ankle or foot as determined by X-rays and MRIs. Hell, it even looks normal. I don’t get the discoloration you typically see with CRPS. Yet supposedly, this is what I have. It has to be some kind of pain syndrome. I know the pain isn’t in my head. Or maybe it is. I don’t know anymore. I just know that I am in pain and I need pills around the clock to control it. And soon as the dose wears off, I am in agony again until I pop one or two pills. Then the waiting game begins as to how long it will take for the pain to stop. Sometimes, a couple hours after I take my regular pain pills, the pain will intensify. This is all while I sit comfortably in my bed. No stress being made on it. No bear weight on it. No movement, though sometimes I flex my big toe and all hell breaks loose. So then I have to take the strong pain pill because I can’t take the regular pain pill as I just took it. It’s a fun game that I am so tired of playing. Then my bowels are all screwed up from this strong pain pill.

If I was a “normal” person, sure taking a laxative or some other method to go move my bowels would be fine. But not with someone with Cauda Equina Syndrome. Hard stools and a sensitive rectum/anus is bad news. Nerve pain happens when you finally are able to move your hard bowels. It’s so painful, you just wish you would die on the spot. Then sitting is intolerable. Nerve pain goes on any where from one hour to many. And this is not mentioning the trouble of pushing the stools out because your system just doesn’t have the mobility to do so on its own. You feel like you are in labor trying to push a rabbit pellet out. And that is all you push out. Sometimes it is more than that, but I won’t go into details about it. It just hurts, more than your damn foot. It leaves you exhausted like you have done manual labor. You need to rest from all the pushing and the pain. Fun times. NOT.

Pain from the Midnight Demon

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

Pain from the Midnight Demon

The last few hours have been excruciating. I have been troubled with the stubborn nerve pain that you can’t do anything about but pray the Neurontin kicks in before you take the entire bottle. I was contemplating that tonight. Just as I was about to take slumber, the nerve pain came out of no where and I was in agony. I played with the blankets. On and off. It made no difference. I hung the foot off the bed. No relief. Then I got nauseous. I had to take a Zofran. The other meds were making me sick because my body wanted to sleep but my damn foot was keeping me up.

Now it’s almost 3 in the morning and I show no signs of sleeping. I just took some pain meds to see if that quiets down the pain some. Maybe some physical pain is masking as nerve pain and that is keeping me up. I never know. My foot can’t talk but it can scream, like a baby in pain. It screams, I cry. There is no relieving this pain insight. Though the first dose of Neurontin seems to have kicked in. I had taken it hours ago. I swear it takes about four hours to relieve nerve pain. It never relieves it right away than say an aspirin relieves a headache.

I have taken all that I can take tonight, both medication wise and patience. Man how my patience runs low when I am in severe pain. I just know that later today I want a damn pizza and my cake. That is all that I want to eat. I am sure that if I fall asleep by 0400, I will wake up around 0900 or so. That always seems to be the case. Then I will have my cake for breakfast and then wait till noon for my pizza. Maybe I will order fries too. I don’t know. I got a good 12 hours before I order.

My computer was making some clicking sounds so I thought it was downloading some updates or running a virus scan. Turns out that for whatever reason, my virus protection software was uninstalled! I have no idea how this happened. Unless I uninstalled it with the intent or reinstalling but never did. But I am reloading it now as we speak. It should take a good half hour or so to download. It takes for ever. That is one thing I hate about McAfee. It a good program but it takes forever to scan and load.

Today my mother called me to find out if I was home. I haven’t left the house all day but she thought because I had an appointment, I would leave. It was a phone therapy appointment so I wasn’t going to leave. She drives me crazy because she knows I have this appointment every week and I keep having to remind her that. Anyways she called and asked what was wrong. I told her I was tired as I didn’t sleep good last night because of pain. She then wants me to go to a small hospital in Boston that specializes in bone. I am tired of seeing doctors and even if I decided to go, who would I see? What kind of doctor? Surgeon? Physiatrist? Ortho? Neuro? I can’t just walk in the place and say, “See me”! She doesn’t get it and it pisses me off to no end. I have been to this hospital before when I first had my back surgery and the doctor just wanted to do injections. I said see ya later. Never went back to him. But he did give me a good recommendation on a book called “Back Pain for Dummies”. Surprisingly, the book actually has the red flags of Cauda Equina Syndrome in it. Great book! It lists all the PT exercises that I have been doing up until that point and more. I shared it will my support group and number of people have bought it. I even bought several copies of it to give to friends and family. I don’t know where the extra copies are now but I know I still have a few.

I really want to make oatmeal pancakes. I have been craving them for a while. Maybe I will make them later today instead of eating cake for breakfast. I would make them now but I hate clean up. I am hungry though as it has been more than eight hours since I last ate. I can have cake now and then the pancakes later. Yes that is what I am going to do.

Tommy Copper Time

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

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Tommy Copper Time

My ankle was swollen and I couldn’t find my ace bandage slip-on so I put on the Tommie Copper compression thing. I hope it helps because the pain is still there despite taking all the meds I took. I spent $40 on the thing so I hope it does help the pain and swelling. This is how desperate I have become.

I was going to sleep but I am in pain and I got the damn writing itch so I apologize for all these blogs. I like to write when I am able to because I really can’t sleep unless I get the words out. It’s not that I have a lot to say it’s just that I feel the need to write.

While I was talking with my therapist today, we discussed the picture I am going to place on my new book. It’s one that I chose that is close to 20 years ago. It was take around 24 hours after my niece was born. I helped deliver her and basically cut her out of the pic and just had my mug shot. I really like the pic but having it as my profile pic on Twitter is annoying me so I need to change it to something else. I can’t stand looking at myself for too long. I just start noticing imperfections and then it just spoils the picture for me. My therapist likes the pic as she thinks I look cute. I told her it was an older pic and she said that I don’t age. I said I was about 80 pounds lighter in that photo. I also didn’t have facial hair because I was so “young”. I am not saying that I am old. I believe you are as young as you feel, regardless of your age. If you blog readers want to see my pic, just drop me a comment and I will post it in my next blog. But I must have at least 5 people minimum that want to see it.

I have been resting my foot since I came up from the stairs in agony. Only time I have been on my feet was to check out a growth in the corner of my eye and to take my night meds. I need to see my eye doctor about the growth, though I am not sure what he can do about it. I am only concerned with it because it has grown over the last few weeks. I thought it was eye crud but it hasn’t gone away. Then it looked like a zit so I tried popping it but I can’t because it’s in a weird spot. I don’t think it is a zit, but it is something. UGH.

I am feeling a little better since my last post. I talked to a friend about how I am feeling and found out she has been feeling the same. We both suffer from Cauda Equina Syndrome (CES) though she is affected on her right side while I am affected on my left. Hers was lower than mine and she only had it once. I have had it twice. I hope her pain is nothing but muscle related pain. I know mine is because I can feel the tightness. If I could just stretch the damn hip I would be so much better but I just don’t have the flexibility I once had. It sucks. I would go to physical therapy but it’s a waste of time because they always give me the same exercises that I have been doing for years. I have been doing them but it doesn’t help so why go? I just need someone to massage the area that hurts and see if that helps it. Unfortunately, I can’t reach where it hurts so me rubbing it is not ideal. Sucks.

I plan on seeing my therapist next week and I think I will stop at McDonalds to have their Big Mac. I have been craving it for a while. I haven’t had McD’s in a long time because the one in the Square closed. I thought it was odd because they just renovated the place and the next week it was done. There is only one left in my town but it’s a hike to get to, least by public transportation anyway. I miss the grease, LOL.

I gave my therapist “homework” to do. It’s not really, but it is important. It’s my LTD paperwork that needs to be filled out by my provider. She will be giving it to me next week when I see her. She is going to have a rough draft filled out so I know what she is telling them. I am glad we can collaborate on this because it’s so important to me. I need the LTD payments to supplement my SSD otherwise I am screwed financially.