Tag: chronic pain

sleepless night

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression

Listened to the Sox win the game. I can’t sleep. It is too hot in my room despite the A/C cranked. My ankle is killing me and I just took an Ativan to try and calm down as my thoughts are squirrelly. It’s going to be a long week as the Red Sox are on the west coast this week which means the games are going to be late ones. I have not missed a game all season, though I might have fallen asleep during one or two. Listening to monotone voices will do that.

I miscalculated my numbers for reaching 10,000 views for my blog. Unless I can get 40 views per day over the next two weeks, I am not going to reach it. My average is 20 views per day so I seriously doubt it is going to happen. But, stranger things have happened. I got 143 views in a single day. If that happens again, I will be in good shape. The nice things about knowing the stats is where the views come from. Today I had about 10 different countries looking at my blog. Usually I just have the US, Canada, the UK, and sometimes Australia. Today I had those four plus Bolivia, Belgium, and India. I forget the other countries.

I hate it when I can’t sleep. It makes me really restless and the more I try to sleep the more restless I get. Which is why I am writing. Sometimes writing will calm me down enough to sleep. I don’t feel racy. My thoughts are just going around in circles because my ankle pain is driving me nuts. I had a deep stabbing pain earlier this evening and now my ankle and foot are on fire. I can’t seem to find a comfy position to put my foot. I am a side sleeper and usually sleeping on my right side will ease the pain but not tonight. So I switch and that makes it worse. I can’t sleep on my back because I will have to raise my feet up so my back doesn’t hurt. And I am too lazy to grab my trapezoid foam cushion to put my legs up. I know I am making excuses. But it’s tough being in pain this late at night. If I am not asleep by two thirty in the morning, I will take another dose of my pain meds. I can’t take anymore right now because it will be too early.

Because of my suicidality, I have been thinking of going in the hospital but there is no way that I can. Not with the way my current pain med prescription is written. I will only have one pill every six hours. That is not going to do me any good, especially when I am in this amount of pain. And if I get a flare up in the hospital, which I most certainly will, I will be beyond screwed. I know I did too much today and now I am paying the price. I hope tomorrow will be better but it already is tomorrow.

My mood still sucks. I still feel like I am in a bottomless pit. I hate it. I have tried to get out of it a few times today but it seems every time I try, the deeper I am sucked in. I have listened to good music to try and keep my spirits up but it has done nothing for me. Just made me think more about why I am single and not in a relationship. Made me think of my ex-girlfriend who I know I hurt once again. I have been meaning to try and text her but I know it is probably for the best that I leave her be. I miss her though. I miss talking to her. But she is crazier than I am. Because of this, I broke up with her again. She just doesn’t realize that she is hurting herself in ways and I can’t be around that. I have tried to point it out to her several times and still she goes back to the same behavior so I put an end to our relationship. It was difficult to do but it had to be done.

Maybe that is why I am depressed. I have not told anyone about how I feel about losing her. Everyone has told me to dump her, that she isn’t good for me. But yet I have not told anyone how much it hurts being apart from her. I know she isn’t good for me and I am probably not good for her, but that doesn’t mean that my feelings got hurt in the process. We have known each other since high school. It really hurts to see this relationship end because of differences of opinion and her wanting to be the victim all the time. And she not taking care of herself. That is what killed me. We are 90 miles away from each other and I couldn’t be there for her even if I wanted to. And another reason why I ended it. No long distance relationship lasts.

I guess I will stop here as it is approaching 2 am.

Pain is NOT my Friend

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

Pain is not my friend

Most people have pain for a good reason. They break a bone, there is an infection, they stubbed a toe. But my pain is not because of that. It is because my nerves were damaged by a disc fragment that I am hurting and even though the disc is no longer pressing on my nerves, I still have the pain.

Tonight this pain is keeping me up. I think it has to do with the temperature change and thunderstorms that have moved into my area. I am like a human barometer. I am so tired that I am kind of falling asleep while typing this but the pain is preventing me from actually going to sleep. I have not had this type of pain in a few weeks. I almost forgot what pain was like. Now I remember and I don’t like it. I want it to go away again and let me live my life even if I was depressed and unhappy. Being in pain is horrible. It drains what ever energy you feel.

Even though I felt ok for a few weeks, I kind of missed the pain. Not in a masochistic sense. Just that after dealing with this for over two years, it felt weird NOT being in pain. Felt like something was missing and I just couldn’t figure out what that was. I had gotten so used to the pain being there all the time that without it, I was lost. Could I walk a little farther than I wanted to? Sure and I did. No pain afterwards. Today I walked a little farther and I think that is what caused the flare up. I don’t know if this pain is staying or going. I hope that it is going because I was really getting used to not being in pain again. Now I have to worry about things, like how long it will take for a shower. Just how many spoons it will take to do my daily routine. Even now I can’t find a comfortable spot to rest my foot without pain. And my foot/ankle is screaming at me. I am not doing anything to aggravate it. It is just resting on a pillow as I am typing this. I don’t have it elevated as I probably should because it will make typing a little difficult. But even then I don’t have relief. I wish the pain was telling me something but it is not. There is no bruising. No redness. Not even so much as a little swelling to indicate to me what I should do to relieve the pain other than to take pain medication as I have done. That is the MOST frustrating part of this whole complex regional pain syndrome. It is a difficult diagnosis to explain and I don’t even know the beginning to try to explain it. Other than my nerves have become so damaged it doesn’t know anything else except to hurt. And you can’t touch it with anything. Socks or even your hand will make the pain worse. I tried putting on a brace to steady it because it just felt like it needed it. It did help for a little while but then the pressure of the elastic was too much and I had to take it off. Soon as I did, the pain intensity increased. My ankle hates me and all I did that set it off was moving my big toe to stretch it out. Stupid I know. But really? Probably not. I am sure lots of people can move their big toe without pain or causing their entire foot to go haywire. But that is what I deal with. Every day. Every night. Pain is not my friend.

End of Story

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression

I had a difficult day, though I slept through most of the day. I still have bad cramps and after taking a shower tonight, my leg is not acting up. I thought I was done with the pain and dreams of going back to work were filling in my head. But I guess I stood too long in the three song shower. Literally it takes me three songs to take and be done with a shower, four if one of the songs are short. I brushed my teeth.

It has been a hot week so I have taken a shower nearly every day. But today I guess my foot had enough. I just took pain meds. There isn’t a baseball game on tonight so I won’t be up late.

I am thinking about calling my cousin Paul but I don’t know if I want to talk. I kind of am discouraged and feeling really bad with the menses and the cramps are really getting to me. I still can’t believe that I got my menses. I really thought the patch was going to work. I will try again after. I only have about a month and half to live so I don’t see the point in making an appointment with my endo doc.

Been feeling down since last night. I think the good mood that I was in evaporated with the heat. I have been trying to feel good today but it has been such an effort. I got my hair cut from my cousin but he didn’t cut it short enough for me. I might go to the barbers on Wednesday like I was planning. I don’t know. I know a good hair SHORT haircut always makes me feel good.

I had therapy this morning. I don’t remember much except that I fibbed. I told my therapist that my plan was off but she didn’t believe me. I just couldn’t take talking about it with her anymore. She kept on asking stupid questions. She wants me to see a consultant. What am I going to say to him, really? I am going to kill myself and there is nothing you can do, have a nice day? Why bother involving him? Doesn’t make sense to me. Not like he is going to help me. He doesn’t have anything useful that I could use. I would have found it by now. I am tired of being in pain. END OF STORY. And by the end means taking my life, so be it. I am kind of scared though. I never have meant it like I mean it now. I just want relief. I want to be pain free. I don’t want to be stuck taking pain pills for the rest of my life. Funny how I am comfortable taking my psych meds though. I know I need those for my well being, not that they work the greatest. It is just enough to keep me out of the hospital. But I still get psychache at points in my life and it brings me down. I want reprieve. I don’t think I am asking too much. I know a lot of people suffer every day, but I am now one of those people and I can’t bear it anymore.

Enduring the unendurable

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt

I thought I would try and write a little bit about my thinking about suicide and what it means. I have spent the last hour reading up on Shneidman’s psychache, the psychological pain that encompasses you to think only about ending the pain, even if it means ending your life. Then I read some more about the factors that go into psychache and suicidal thinking. It was a refresher course in knowing about suicide as psychache.

In getting to what my therapist wanted to me to write about constriction, there really is nothing to write. It is a term concocted by Shneidman that basically means you are fixated on one thing to ease your pain. But what I did come across, that is interesting, is what the Emperor of Japan said to his people after the end of WWII. He basically told them to “endure the unendurable and suffer what is unsufferable” so as to contain any suicides as the Japanese are an honorable country. That thinking is the formula for outliving a suicidal crisis.

I have been feeling good the past few days and don’t know why. I don’t know if it is hypomania or what but my mood has totally did an about face. It is eerily weird to feel so carefree. Yet in the back of my mind I am scheming and plotting to end my life in two months. Least that is what I think I am thinking. But then my friend from Nebraska reconnected with me. I am thinking that maybe I can take the Emperor’s advice and try to keep enduring the unendurable. I know I say this now that I am not experiencing any dysphoria or physical pain. I just can’t think that I can stop thinking about killing myself is somehow contributing to my euphoric feelings because I know I have a way out of my suffering. It is a funny place to be, and I don’t mean the ha ha kind of funny. I never have felt good for more than a few days at a time and this go round will be almost a week that I have felt up.

Since reconnecting with my college friend, I feel that I must tell him that I might not be around that much longer. I think he has the right to know as we have been friends for almost fifteen years now. But will I cause worry? Will he believe me when I tell him this? Or will he just chalk it up with the myth that talking about it means you won’t do it? I won’t know until I tell him. I rather he find it out from me than from someone else, though seeing as we have few friends in common, the likelihood of him finding out will be slim/next to none. But then I wonder how many of my friends will find out that I have died. I thought of writing a note to someone to tell them what to do as I don’t think my family would be able to do it but I don’t think that I can do that. Most likely that friend would ignore me or think that I am just talking.