Tag: chronic illness

Pain and suicide

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

I started off my day in pain, around 0400. I hate waking up in pain. I stayed up for a little while and finally gave in to taking pain meds around 0800 when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I texted my therapist and she gave me a time for today. I really need someone to talk to. I feel like I am losing my mind with this loss of sleep. I went back to sleep after I had breakfast and the pain meds kicked in. I had weird dreams about my psychiatrist. We were on a boat and she wanted to give me a cortisone injection in my hip. That was the first dream. The second dream was also on a boat but other than that, I don’t remember much. What was weird, is that when I woke up, my hip was hurting me. I think I need to go back to physical therapy to get it looked at. It has been bothering me for some time now, since November of last year. I sneezed and pulled my back out. It took me a month to recover and then I sneezed again right before Christmas and took it out again. I have been limited in what I can do. Today I walked to Walgreens which is only a block and half from my house. By the end of the block, my hip was in agony and I didn’t think I was going to make it but I pushed through. It got a little better by the time I reached the store. I only went in for a couple of items and by the time I reached home, I was still sore. I haven’t done any lifting or sneezing the past few days so I am not sure why my hip is bothering me so much. I know it’s muscular because if I rub where it hurts, there are knots there. I just hope that it’s not the beginning of getting my nerve condition again. I have no other symptoms, like radiating pain down my leg or increase in loss of my bowels or bladder to make me think I am in trouble. But the thing with CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, things can escalate quickly and without warning. The main reason I don’t want to make a fuss about it, is that I know most physical therapists don’t understand nerve injuries. Yes, muscle pain is common in back injuries but my back muscles have been injured because of nerve damage. That is why my hip goes out when I have a horrific sneeze attack.

My foot still hurts. It has been hurting more since I came back from the store. I can’t stand that I am still having trouble walking after all this time. Last night, I had swelling, severe pain, and the veins popped out in my foot. I don’t get how this is not CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I know the skin changes are not that drastic. But then when I see a doc, I don’t have the worse pain of my life. I might be a 3-5 on a scale of 1-10 when I see a doc. What annoys me is that my PCP doesn’t believe that I have this condition, even after three doctors have told me I have it. It just makes me want to kill myself in frustration. Severe pain always brings out the suicide part of me, not like it isn’t already there to begin with. The pain just gives me the little push I need to think about it more. I just feel trapped. I know that if I kill myself, more than 115 people will be crushed. The people most devastated will be my family and psychiatric team (therapist and psychiatrist). It is this reason why I haven’t attempted. I think that if I had a place to go to, I might be more willing to try. I don’t want to kill myself at home because I don’t want my family to find me like that. But I can’t afford a hotel room and I can’t risk someone finding me in a public place, like a park or something. I can picture myself going through with any of my methods that are running in my head, but I just don’t have the guts to actually go through with it. I am pathetic.

Tired of Being Tired

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

Tired of Being Tired

I had no energy today. I thought I would take my sister’s car to Starbucks and have a mocha or some other caffeinated drink, and just journal for a few hours. But I didn’t sleep well. I fell asleep during the 10th inning of the baseball game (around 0200) and woke up around three to turn the radio off. They won in the 11th inning. I fell back to sleep for a couple of hours before my bladder said “it’s time to go”. I have been up since about six. I tried to go back to sleep but it was impossible. My bowels decided it was its turn to go and again and again and again. I had to take some Imodium to shut things down. I really didn’t want to as that sometimes bangs me up worse over the next day or two. I was exhausted from crapping all morning, literally. By the time my therapy appointment came around, I didn’t think I would stay awake during it. She was running late and I almost nodded off, missing the phone call.

She read my letter that I wrote the other night. She said that it was devastating to her. I guess it could be taken that way. I am glad I was not in the same room when she read it. I guess it upset her pretty good. That was not my intention. I wasn’t malicious in the letter. I just became really suicidal and expressed myself that way. I told her she was pretty much better off without me. Course she didn’t hear it. She still called me and then said that I have to keep all my appointments after that letter. I am stuck. She is holding the cards now. I deleted the blog that had the letter. No point in anyone reading that except her. I don’t think I should have sent it to her. I had a feeling it would worry her. Hyde writes well. I am just glad I didn’t write the same kind of letter to my psychiatrist. I think I would be in the hospital if I did.

I asked my psychiatrist to refill one of my medications to a specific pharmacy and she sent it to the wrong one. Now this pharmacy is having trouble stocking the medication. Unbelievable. I told her and she said she would send it to the right pharmacy tonight. I hope so because I am going to run out by the end of the week. And I can’t miss a dose of this medication because the delusions and psychosis will come back. She told me not to worry. I think that is easier said than done.

My sister is back home after a few days in Utah. I am glad she is back. I missed her. She sent me beautiful photos of where she was. They were absolutely gorgeous. I always wanted to go to Utah for grad school. I might have to look into it now.

And after all that I done today, which was nothing, I am tired. So very dog tired. I think that if I didn’t have my bowel issues this morning, I might have made it out today. I just couldn’t trust that it would stop. I just am sick of being tired all the time. I am sick of having my bowels dictate when I go out. I am sick of being depressed. I had no appetite today. I had a bowl of cereal, an ice cream sandwich, 2 breakfast sausages, and a cookie. That is all I could stomach. And I forced the sausages down because I didn’t feel like eating. This is the second day in a row that my stomach has been feeling full with barely any food in it. I have been drinking Gatorade and water so I don’t get dehydrated. But even that, I have to carefully sip. I am not thirsty either. I just want to sleep. I was going to ask my sister for the car tomorrow so I could see my therapist but I am just too tired. I hate feeling this fatigue all the time. I am not eating so I know that is part of the problem. And the humidity and heat are only going to get worse as the summer months come. I know we are going to have a scorching summer because we had a really cold winter. I really need to get out of the house and get my routine back. But I am so tired I can’t do that. I hope that tomorrow I feel better. Because at the rate that this is going, it isn’t going to be good. I know my mood is going to plummet more during the summer months than any other time of year. I can’t tolerate the heat. It just makes me more miserable. But this fatigue and no appetite are really bringing me down. I wish I could say that sleeping helps me, but I haven’t been able to nap or fall asleep while napping. I just lay there and my thoughts go wild. I think my not sleeping for more than a few hours at a time is really messing with me. I wake up and I don’t feel restful at all. I just am more tired as if I didn’t sleep at all.

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.

Difficult Day

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

Difficult day

I had a hard time sleeping last night. Pain kept me up till almost 0300. I then slept for a few hours and then it was every hour I was up. I really wanted to sleep after my therapy session today but I had to babysit my niece. The pain last night was horrible. I couldn’t move my leg or ankle without severe pain. Every time I got comfortable, the pain spiked, forcing me to move to an uncomfortable position. Then spike again after I had settled down a little bit. I never had such attacks before. It was very weird. But because I had taken my pain pills around midnight, I couldn’t take anymore at least until after 0400. I was exhausted so I just took an Ativan to help me sleep and calm me down as the pain was so anxiety provoking.

I really don’t remember much about what we talked about in therapy. I think we talked in circles without really going any place. I told her about Marsha Linehan’s story, or the pieces I was getting from the Twitter feed that day. I guess she didn’t read my blog about it, just the blog I wrote detailing my reasons for suicide. We didn’t talk about that blog at all. I was shocked that she found the time to watch Jobes’s video that I sent her. I didn’t think her phone was going to be able to play it because it is older than my phone. She has had the same phone for more than six years now. I don’t know how it still is able to play YouTube videos. The important thing is that she was able to see how CAMS works for Jobes and in clinicians working with suicidal patients. He addressed the important key factors of his engagement. He, so far, has been lucky that none of his patients have killed themselves. I think that is incredibly lucky to work with an at risk population and not have someone die in the thirty years he has been practicing. My therapist liked what he was talking about “drivers” (aka reasons for suicide). I am glad I watched the video too, or I would be clueless as to what she was talking about. Course, Jobes is my idol so why wouldn’t I watch a video with him in it? I am sort of his professional stalker. I look out for anything he has written and take it as the word. I hope one day I can be a successful therapist like him.

My therapist also talked a lot about how I am the exception and not the rule today. It was making me roll my eyes. She has told me this about a million times. And every time she tells me this, I take it as a challenge to prove her wrong. I don’t know if that is one of the reasons that “drive” me to suicide. I figure I am supposed to be dead anyway with all the stats against me. Yet, I am still here. And it pisses me off because I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to lose anymore sleep and have ongoing nights of pain and misery. I know tonight I run the risk of having yet another night of pain because I was going up and down the stairs today most of the day. My sister made some food that I liked and I had to babysit, twice. Already my ankle is throbbing. I would take some pain meds but I know in an hour or two I will be saying goodnight. Least I hope I will. Last night, the pain meds didn’t tell me good night until almost 0300. I really thought I was going to have an all nighter. I just could not sleep.

Tomorrow I have my appointment with my PCP. I hope it goes well or I will be in bad shape mentally. I know he is going to give me a lecture about my weight. I wish he wouldn’t because I already feel bad about it. I didn’t even have a chance to talk to my therapist about it today. We were all talking around the elephant in the room (suicide). We also talked about my Twitter buddy Jay and how I think she knows him. I sent her a pic of him and his name. It will be really funny if they had worked together at the same place.

Other than feeling really tired, I am fed up that I have been in pain for almost a week now. I haven’t left my house since Thursday when I saw my father. Tomorrow, I will have to go out to see my doc. I canceled my therapy appointment so I wouldn’t have to finagle the bagel trying to find a spot for me to talk with her for an hour. I like talking with her in the comfort of my room. So she conned me into talking on Thursday.