Tag: chronic illness

my crazy therapist

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

My crazy therapist

I had therapy today reluctantly. She gave a bunch of reasons why she felt the need to meet today, but I could tell she was just justifying her need to talk to me this week. As I thought, we didn’t really talk much about anything other than her need to constantly know what I am up to. I did tell her I was done. I didn’t go into more than that and she didn’t ask. I honestly felt like we were talking in circles. I was still groggy as I didn’t sleep well. Pain kept me up most of the night and then I woke up after a 3 hour nap to take some more pain meds around 0530 this morning.

I told her I had planned on cancelling next week but she begged me not to. So we are meeting. It’s just a waste of time for me. I don’t understand why she is bothering to try and save my life when I am clearly very intent on ending my life. It’s so stupid. She reiterated today that she cares about me and that she doesn’t care that her caring is a little unconventional. She is going through some great lengths to talk to me. However, her anxiety around my suicidality is apparent. She tends to talk about nothing most of the session, which leaves me feeling like she doesn’t want to hear what I have to say. Granted today, I didn’t want to talk at all. I was too tired to put two sentences together much less a conversation.

My foot and ankle are still throbbing. I really want to make something to eat but going down the stairs might hurt me more than I already hurt. I took some pain pills so I am hoping it calms down the pain enough that I might be able to get to the kitchen to make myself something to eat. I told my therapist that the Neurontin has caused me to gain at least eight pounds in the last few weeks. My eating habits haven’t changed that much but I just put on the weight. My doc tomorrow is not going to be happy about this but I really don’t care. There is nothing I can do to prevent weight gain other than restricting calories and I am not good at that. My therapist told me I had other fish to fry, which made me feel better, a little bit.

Pain meds have started to kick in. I don’t understand why they work “faster” in the day time and take forever to work during the night time. I am very drowsy. I need to take a shower some time today as I need to get up really early tomorrow morning. Just thinking about it, is exhausting me. I am going to take a little nap. Maybe when I wake up, I will have enough energy to make something to eat and shower.

Editing nightmare, writing, and other things

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

Editing nightmare, writing, and other things

Earlier this week when I was editing, I noticed that one story had given each paragraph its own page. I fixed it and thought that would be it. Tonight, I went to the next story and there was a similar error. I went to the next and found the same error. I panicked. I knew what I had to do to fix it but it was a lengthy process and would take some time and effort to sort through. It was more than 50 pages of work to sort. I had nothing better to do so cut and pasted I did. I fixed the book and in doing so, “lost” 20 pages. I am up to 125, without edits as I still haven’t inputted them but at least there are no formatting errors, least none that I can see right now.

Because I thought I was up to at least 150 pages of work after putting in some dedication and acknowledgement pages, I figured I could publish the book. Now I can’t because it’s too short for my taste. I really would like to get it up to 200 pages, minimum. It’s probably going to take me another six months or so to get another 75 pages written. I am so disappointed. So close yet no cigar.

My mother annoyed me tonight. I told her I was in pain and she said “well you are going up and down the stairs alright”. WTF She doesn’t fucking get it. The other day when my sister was here she was telling her that I go down the stairs “carefully”. But she said it in a mocking voice. I just can’t win with her. Tomorrow she wants me to clean the stairs, both flights. I will clean the bottom stairs first as those haven’t been done in quite a while. Then we’ll see about the other flight.

I just took a strong pain pill because I couldn’t stand the throbbing in my ankle anymore and the regular pain pills aren’t working. I hope I am not up every fricken two hours. I am really tired. It’s funny, when I want to sleep I can’t and when I need sleep, I do. There is no medium. I know part of it is my fault because I am on my bed most of the time so when I feel the need to lie down, I do and usually sleep, no matter what time of day it is. A sleep doc would have a complete fit if he knew my sleeping habits or lack there of.

It’s extremely windy and it is shaking the house. It kind of scares me because I fear the house will fall in. I know it won’t, sort of, but it still scares me when the house shakes. I hope the wind dies down by the end of the night. I don’t need anxiety on top of pain to keep me up. That just isn’t a good combination.

I talked with my aunt tonight. It didn’t go well. She didn’t know who I was and then started crying. It broke my heart. She wanted me to visit her. I wish I had a car to see her but I don’t. I would have to go by public transportation and it’s a pain because I would have to take two trains and a bus to get to her house. It would be worth it to see her though. I miss her terribly. She is the last surviving sibling in the US on my father’s side. I have one uncle in France but he has dementia and is not doing too well. I don’t talk to him because of the language barrier. He doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak French or Italian.

evening report

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

Evening Report

After my post this morning, I slept until my damn mother wanted to know my where abouts, like I am a child, not a full grown adult. I asked her what she wanted and she plainly stated she just “wanted to know where I was”. She was going to ask why I was still in bed but I cut her off. I am in still in pain, and have taken another pain med. I only took 1 pill because I am waiting for my psychiatrist to call me back and I don’t want to be drugged up, so to speak. I wish she would get back to me as I really want to lie down and sleep.

There was a huge backlash to writing to my friend this morning. Nearly every close childhood friend came at me. I couldn’t believe it. I just ignored them, for now. Then I found out eight trans kids killed themselves across the country. A friend I follow on Facebook wrote this as she has a transgender son. They supposedly killed themselves because they were afraid of what is to come. Even the transline, a hotline for trans people were overloaded today with questions and concerns. I started crying when I found out about this because it affects me so personally. The whole LGBT community is nervous about what is to come. I am too. I texted my therapist that I was going back to the closet if she needs me.

Last night as election results were gaining support for Trump, the Canadian website for immigration went down. It crashed because so many people were hitting it. My friend in Canada who works with immigration said she had over 300 emails and 59 voicemails to sort through this morning. I am sure it is going to get worse as time goes on.

For the first time, I am depressed over outside influences, aka the election. I try not to internalize these things because they change all the fricken time but this time, I am fearful and really down. I should have tried to end my life last week. That has been all I have been thinking about the past few days. I should be dead or on life support or something. I shouldn’t be here.

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

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

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

http://www.mdedge.com/clinicalpsychiatrynews/article/100017/depression/aas-acute-suicidal-affective-disturbance-proposed

I read the above article with interest. One of my Twitter buddies shared it with me and wanted my opinion on it. I think that it is right on queue and I hope that Dr. Joiner eventually sees this as a diagnosis. But I worry that if the stigma of suicide is not dealt with, it might just be an admitting diagnosis and thus cause more harm than good.

According to the criteria lined out, I meet this diagnosis, though at this time, I am unable to rule out whether a medical condition or conditions exclude the diagnosis. There have been many a times that while I am in excruciating pain, this condition is activated and I am acutely suicidal. The only thing that has saved me from actually making an attempt on my life is that I physically cannot walk and have refused to kill myself in my own home. Then in the morning (most of these attacks have occurred in the midnight hours), I no longer feel so suicidal.

It used to be that what I would call a “switch” would be activated and I would be suicidal until I fell asleep. Now I know that it’s this disturbance that occurs and it makes sense to me. But in every suicidal occurrence that has happened over the past two years, it has been because of physical pain or some kind of dissociative state brought on by physical pain. Very rarely has it occurred solely with psychache or psychological pain. Granted not every episode is psychache free and physical pain free. I will have what Shneidman calls the three Ps, Psychache, Perturbation, and Press as well as physical pain that causes me to be severely suicidal. These nights, I swear to myself I will end my life the next day when I can walk again. Fortunately, I don’t feel as suicidal the next day because I had a few hours or more of respite from these kinds of pain and perturbation. That isn’t to say that I won’t be activated the next night or come up with a suicidal plan to end my life the following day. These plans are usually a few weeks away to give me time to think things over and essentially put off today what can be done tomorrow. These plans have also given me time to work through my feelings and usually by the time that date comes, I no longer feel suicidal enough to go ahead with the plan.

Suicidality is a tricky business and not everyone’s suicidality is the same. What triggers my suicidality might not trigger someone else’s. There are mitigating factors that might be similar in nature like the criteria states but I would love to see the data in the context of ruling this a diagnosis. Just because I find this disturbance fits my suicidality, doesn’t mean that it will someone else’s and that is the difficulty with the nomenclature I think Joiner talks about in his article.