Tag: chronic pain

loss of self

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

Today I broached the subject of grief with my therapist. She hasn’t received her packet of letters that describes my grief and how I think I should address it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I think the reason for my craziness the last few months has to do with my grief and not dealing with it. Course, I didn’t think much of it until I asked if grief can cause psychosis. Then I just shut down. And thank god, it was the end of session. She wanted to see me tomorrow but I told her Tuesday was fine. It will give me more time to think about how to approach this.

She encouraged me to write about this stuff and how I am thinking about it but I don’t know how. Just thinking about my losses just makes me extremely sad. It’s like knocking the wind out of me. I mean, I used to be able to work two friggen jobs and now I can’t even work one. I was stable enough to work in one job for fourteen years and then I messed it up because my foot got messed up. I don’t know if I could work again at the same job. I would like to. But I can’t be all running around like I used to. Thing is, being a lab assistant, you sometimes have to do phlebotomy (draw blood) and I was never keen on drawing blood. Even the easiest of veins I blew and I don’t want to go back to it ever again. I was lucky my department didn’t have to do that. There was a separate department for blood draws.

It still hurts that after fourteen years of service I was just not accommodated by my job to do my job. It really hurts. I never told anyone how bad it is losing my job. Even though it has been almost a year and a half now. It also sucks I can’t do my other job of driving around Boston picking up samples because my driving record got messed up. I got a speeding ticket one morning because I was too sleepy to notice I was over the speed limit. But a State trooper noticed and I got fined. Then because I couldn’t pay the fine, my license got suspended. It took me almost a year to get it all cleared up. But it is going to take a while for me to have a “good” driving record again. And that kills me. I know it doesn’t matter now because by the time I have a car of my own again, I will be “good” again. But the fact that I can’t get a Zipcar to have some independence just kills me. I can borrow my sister’s car to go places but mostly her husband takes it and I hate driving the truck. I know I should conquer my fears and learn to get used to it but I have a peripheral defect and I am just afraid I am going to sideswipe someone or something. And I HATE backing up in the drive way because my sense is not great. Even with the car I hate it, especially when there is a car parked across my driveway.

I really have other deep losses such as the loss of myself and the loss of my abilities. Walking used to be my joy. I was able to walk long distances and think nothing of it. It never bothered me. Sometimes it did when I used to get Charlie horses if I walked too far and didn’t drink enough. But other than that, I really enjoyed walking to the train station which is about a mile away. I used to do the Walk for Hunger, which is a 20 mile walk around Boston. Haven’t done that in years but I am determined to do it one year, long as I go slow. I will have to do mega training to work up to it as right now my limit is four blocks .

Then I have the loss of my bodily functions. I never thought that at the age of 36/37 I would have to wear diapers to events that last longer than a few hours. This is because I no longer get the signals to my brain that my bladder is full. Once I am full, I start leaking excess until I do go. It isn’t until I feel wet do I ask myself the last time I went potty. The number 2’s are a different story. I can’t feel myself went I go unless my stools are hard. If you are the squeamish type, I would stop reading right now. This could be disgusting to you. If my stools are soft I don’t feel them as they move out. If I have the runs, I can quickly have an accident as I can’t hold them long, though I have been lucky the last few times in holding them in by not letting loose my farts. If I lose control of my farts, I lose control of my stool and well, you got it. A nice number 2 in the pants. It has only happened to me a few times, the worse was when I took too much fiber pills and thought I was farting but really I was shitting myself. That was a lesson learned. I usually take senna because I find that it is the only thing that makes me go without too much trouble. Too much however can cause very bad cramps and possible accidents. Every time I have an accident or have skid marks because I didn’t wipe myself well enough, I lose it. I really go into a darker place and usually want to kill myself. Same with when I have a urine accident but I am getting used to them. Having stool in my pants is a real downer. And I don’t think anyone can get used to that. It makes you feel so small. And people take it for granted that their bodies will tell them these things. My body, because of the nerve damage, no longer does. And it is a HUGE loss. Again, not something I have dealt with nor wanted to.

Then, of course, there is the loss of where I should be now had my mental illness not shut me down and forced me to stop school once again. I call this the “if onlys”, such as if only I didn’t have a psychotic breakdown in 2008, how different my life would have been. If only I went to a four year school instead of getting just my Associate’s degree I would be better off now than I was back then. If only I had decided to work part time and go to school full time would I have been better mentally than I am now. Or would the financial strain of not working been too much? Or would the strain of going to college full time really be my downfall? Either way, I can’t change any of it, but it is a HUGE loss to me not being able to go back because I fucked up. I should have just made a simple phone call to put my loans into deferment and I would have been able to go back now that I am just sitting on my ass doing nothing most days. I think me not going to back to college is the most hurtful to me because I loved my studies, didn’t matter what they were. I just loved being in academia. Psychology is really my thing. And I know I could have been a good therapist. But I don’t think those dreams are ever going to come true. Maybe if I win the lottery.

Then you take into account all the times I have been suicidal. It is a loss because I am still having to piece back my life and I don’t like it. I rather be pushing up daisies for eternity. But as past blogs have talked about, I can’t kill myself anymore than I can make a gourmet dinner. AND it hurts to go on living like this.

I am a survivor of suicide attempts

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, CES, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression

I wrote a quick blog yesterday about the stigma of suicide. I asked wouldn’t it be nice to say to people you survived suicide like you survived cancer? I listened to the WEEI radio to hear my Sox game and it amazes me how quick people are to say they survived cancer but hide in the dark when talking about taking their own life. Both people are fighting for their lives. Granted one is bodily and the other is mostly mental but it still begs to question why there is a different in the illness. Suicide is the result usually of untreated depression or other mental illness. Most people think that it is depression that causes people to think about suicide but it is not. You can be psychotic and think about killing yourself. I know. I have been through it with my psychosis. I have had voices tell me to kill myself, in fact in one of the delusion it was considered a command order. Psychotic disorders often get tossed by the way side when considering suicide but a recent article in JAMA showed that it can pave the way to catching suicide attempts if asked about. The study showed that teens with psychotic symptoms are more apt to attempt suicide than non-psychotic teens.

But you don’t need to be in a mental state to be in the suicidal mind. That is what is so devastating about suicide is that people before they commit suicide look and act “normal”. I know that people who are suffering from cancer can look anything but normal. They can be bald or look skeletons. They are really fighting to be alive while those that are thinking about suicide just want to die. People with cancer are the lucky ones. Their suffering will end. People know this. But those of us with mental illness we continue to suffer and when we decide to give up and end the fight, we are looked down upon and treated often inhumanely. We then feel ashamed of ourselves for trying to end the pain and failing at it. We end up in the hospital to “save ourselves from more destruction”. All we want is peace, same as the cancer patient that is terminally ill. We want the suffering to end.

To some people, they believe that suicide is preventable. To some people it is but you are not going to catch the majority of people most at risk. You cannot stop every suicide. People have the right to kill themselves if they so choose to do so. It is the ones that survive that have the right to speak about it. Because those that survive depending on their reaction to their own attempt might be clues to whether they survive or not. I have survived the past several years despite making elaborate plans on killing myself. I really want to die but my reasons for living keep me going. I don’t like it but I can’t picture my sister telling my eight year old niece that I have passed on. She is my baby and I don’t want to hurt her or my other nieces or my nephew. My nephew is what kept me going during a very difficult time in my life. I wish that I had succeeded but because I didn’t, I got to see him grow into a man and graduate from high school. I didn’t think that he would or that I would live to see the day he did.

It saddens me that I am still alive when all I want to be is dead. I don’t know why I preserve. Right now I am in a lot of pain and I don’t like it. I don’t know if I am going to get any sleep tonight because of it. Where is the training of medical doctors to handle chronic pain? There isn’t any. I don’t get asked what my mental status is during medical visits anymore. It is just assumed that I am ok because I have a smile on my face. Didn’t matter that the day before I was in so much pain that I was in bed all day, taking pain pills every four-six hours. Maybe I was happy because I could finally get out of the house and go to my doctor’s appointment and I wasn’t in pain. The siege was over with. But now it has returned and the meds have not kicked in yet to knock my big ass out. I am tired of living with chronic physical pain all the time. It sucks the life out of you, what ever life is. And if it doesn’t, your mental illness will surely do it for you. There is no reprieve. No relief in sight. And that is why suicide is what it is. For people that survive it, they should be able to say that they have. But no one does. There are a few people that have been coming out slowly through the AAS blog but I fear that the ones that don’t come out, are the ones that will try again and maybe succeed.

I am a failure of suicide attempts. And because it has been so long since my last one I am not going to try again any time soon. Least for now. So I am in pain and I have one option left to me…to suffer.

pain and baseball

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, depression

Game time is in a half hour from now. I don’t know if I am going to watch it. I have been in a blah-exhausted mood all day. I didn’t sleep too well last night as I woke up at three in the morning. Researchers are now saying that this is how people in the 1800s slept. They would sleep and then be up for a few hours in the wee hours of the morning and then go back to sleep. I don’t see how this was as most people got up at the crack of dawn to do farm work. I am usually going to bed at the crack of dawn. That seems to be my norm lately.

My writing buddy has completed her 100 pages for her new manuscript for the month. I have been her coach. Made me think that I should have some writing goals to do in order to get my book done. I just don’t know if I can be held accountable for it though. So I am going to try and write at least two pages in my book a day and see where that gets me at the end of September. Thing is this is hard. Writing about my past is harder than I thought it would be.

Tonight my brother in law’s brother came over for dinner. We get along pretty well and he asked me what I was doing. I told him that I was writing a book and he asked what was the subject matter. I wanted to tell him about suicide attempts but my family was there and I didn’t want to divulge this information. I have told people I am writing a book but no one has really asked what it was about. So I told him it was about my depressions and hospitalizations, which is essentially true. I just didn’t feel comfortable telling anyone that it is about my suicide attempts. I am publishing the book under my pen name.

I guess I could listen to the game, even though it might put me to sleep. I am so damn tired. I had to take a couple of pain pills because I took a shower and my ankle got angry at me. I couldn’t take the pain anymore. I have decided that any pain above a 6 on a scale of 1-10 is going to be medicated. I usually just take a pill if my pain is above a 8 but by then it becomes impossible to control, sometimes. I never know when the pain is going to increase or decrease. Tonight, I just decided I wasn’t going to wait around. I have been going up and down the stairs today so I know my pain is going to increase sometime tonight. I don’t know why I feel I have to justify taking my meds. It should be easy right? You are in pain so you take something for it. But I have voices in my head that doesn’t want me to take any pills so I have them bantering me all the time. Even when I take my regular psych meds they are always interested. Why am I taking it, am I taking the right dose, etc. I can’t stand it when I am hounded all the time every time I crack open a pill bottle.

I am listening to the game. I always know when Adrian Gonzalez is up. He fricken has the cuckaracha music. Drives me insane, most of the intro music for the Dodgers has been awful. All Latin music, which I do not like. And this jackass just hit a home run. On another baseball note, I got followed today by a Toronto Blue Jay. That has to be weird as I am a Red Sox fan. I don’t know why these people will follow me, but oh well. Long as they don’t cause trouble I let them be.

adequate pain relief and suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, suicide

Was going through some old journals and came across an article on pain and suicide. This was the “first” study to find that moderate to severe pain caused suicide to happen. **clap, clap, clap** Tell me something I DON’T KNOW. I don’t get how they have to do a study in order for doctors and other mental health professionals to realize that any type of prolonged pain (physical or mental) is going to result in suicide. It astounds me, it really does. And the worse part is that these people are not being treated. That’s the other thing that drives suicide, untreated pain. Granted you can’t treat psychological pain like you can physical pain. There just isn’t a pill you can take to relieve psychological suffering. That is the sad part. But you can assess it. You can hear the person talk about their pain. That is all the person wants really, is to be heard.

Physical pain is ambiguous. And the study didn’t focus on any particular pain in the body. The researchers just asked have you had pain in the last four weeks and then they rated it. So there is no telling that this pain was coming from the head, back, legs, stomach, etc. Does it matter? I don’t think so. I just think that more doctors should ASK their patients if they are experiencing pain and how severe it is to them. And also ask if they are thinking about suicide because of this pain. But most doctors don’t have the TIME to ask these questions.

In the months after my psychiatric hospitalization, my doctor asked for three months if I was suicidal because of my pain or for another reason. Then, the questions stopped. He began to ask more about what was causing my pain and try and help me there. A few months ago he asked me again if I had suicidal thoughts. He then told me that he cares a lot about me and that he would miss me should I kill myself. That took me off guard. I know I have a good relationship with my doctor but do other patients have good relationships with theirs? And are the people that are prescribing narcotics regularly checking to see if their patient is at risk for suicide? My doctor has stopped asking me if the pain medication is adequate for me. Sometimes it is, other times it is not. And I think that finding an adequate pain relief regimen is key to saving a life.

I know that I am constantly complaining on my blog about my pain. But I have pain meds to control it. Even if at times it is inadequate. Do I think about suicide? Yes, I do. But I have protective factors that are preventing me from going through with my plan. And I hate these factors because I wish I could kill myself. I know that I will be missed by my blog readers, my family, my therapist and my psychiatrist. I have a sense of belongingness to these people and as much as they drive me crazy, they keep me here. So all I can do is write about my pain and hope that it helps someone to know they are not alone in their pain too.