Tag: chronic pain

a crazy day

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

I know I have not written in a few days. I have been feeling exhausted. Yesterday I planned on writing but somehow the day got away from me and after the Sox game, I just was not in a writing mood.

I woke up this morning in pain, which is unusual as most of my pain is at night. But my foot was cold as it was a bit chilly in my room despite my foot being under the sheets and blanket. Pain woke me up and I took my pain medication. I was going to see my therapist today but my sister had the truck so I nixed it. It was a good thing I did because my mother came home from seeing her sister and collapsed on the floor due to low blood sugar. If I had gone to Framingham and then came home, I hate to think what would have happened. There was no way for her to get up. I couldn’t pull her up so had to call an ambulance. I didn’t realize she was having a hypoglycemic attack until her words were getting slurred. Her sugar was 38 (normal is between 70-100). And this happened just a few minutes before my session with my therapist so I had to cancel on her. I felt bad but I had no choice.

So I was kind of out of my tree from adrenaline and when that wore off the pain meds kicked in making me feel very sleepy. I still am fighting taking a nap but my foot is really hurting so I think I will after I write this. I then get an email saying that my appt with my PCP is in five minutes. I mixed up my dates. I thought it was Thursday and instead it was today. Fuck! Now I won’t get a refill of my pain meds. I still have some because I have been using less of them but I don’t have enough to last me till I see him on June 20th! He has no opening until then. I hope they can process my prescription. If not I am going to really be rationing my last of my pain meds. Which isn’t going to be good as I am in the middle of a pain flare up right now. I know part of it is that the temp keeps fluctuating between 50 to 70 degrees. And my body is sensitive to those dips and highs. Starting Thursday it is going to be in the 90s for a few days. Just lovely.

I had a friend from Australia email me yesterday. He wanted my advice about euthanasia and suicide. He has a cousin that wants to die because like me, he can no longer deal with his chronic illness. He doesn’t want to do the deed himself so has hired a doctor to legally kill him. I don’t know how I feel about this. I know that I wish I had a doc that would take me out of my misery but then my thoughts are because I am “depressed”. But you can be suicidal without feeling depressed so how does that play out? I truly understand what this kid is going through and can empathize with how he feels he has no other choice but to take his life but at the same time I wonder if depression is playing into a part of his decision to die and maybe if that were treated he wouldn’t feel that way. But then I look at my situation and think how can I justify that thinking if I am going to kill myself for that very reason.

I will write more on this later. I just can’t seem to get my thoughts coherent enough to think about this.

Chronic Pain and suicide

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

researchers have found a link between chronic pain and suicide.

that is something that I have known for sometime now as I am a chronic pain sufferer and have thought of killing myself numerous times to get rid of the pain. it is why sometime this year I plan on killing myself. it is not going to get better. I have a chronic pain condition and I really don’t care anymore. I will go through the motions of getting treatment knowing it is not a cure. just a bandaid and it hurts. But clinicians need to ask the question if they ever want to prevent suicide. I am a hopeless case. I have mental illness on top of chronic pain. it is worse with my condition. I feel like I can’t talk openly with my provider because then he tampers with my pain meds. I will not kill myself with my meds. I have other methods running through my head. but this article is interesting. I hope that people who read my blog that suffer from chronic pain do call the 800 number to talk to someone. I hope that it can work that way but I know that most people will not pick up the phone and call. I don’t know why that is. I know I have called but I am still where I am. I have found it helpful at times but sometimes I feel like they are just pretending to care when they really don’t. Just my experience. but that shouldn’t stop you from calling.

A Blog About a Paper and Pain

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, CES, depression

Wrote a paper about suicide attempt survivor’s reaction after reading a research article about it. A friend wanted me to write about it but I am having a hard time because this research just justifies the fact that I should be dead by suicide yet I am not. This paper feeds into the feelings I have that I should not be living. My therapist also wants me to write this paper but from the perspective of what it means to be the exception and not the rule. Yet you cannot defy statistics. Statistically, I should be dead and that feeds my self destructiveness all the more.

Lately I have been thinking about my suicidal plan. It has been on my mind all week. The constriction – blinders – have begun to settle in on me. What does this mean? It means all that I am thinking about is ending my life. It is becoming my obsession. I am writing this on a notepad that I have had for a while now. In it there are two entries about how bad my life is with pain from LAST YEAR. There have been too many nights of pain. So despite the day being pain free, sort of, and my mood being slightly content, the night produces the midnight demons that are bringing me thoughts of self-destruction, of suicide.

Yet I feel that I am a hypocrite for belonging to an organization that is for understanding and preventing suicide. The premise is that if I learn about suicide and the more I learn, maybe it will decrease my urges. But everything that I learn goes out the window when the constriction is in high gear.

Like Mary Chapin Carpenter says, it don’t take much to be happy. But for me it’s like a hurdle. What makes me happy is having my Starbucks coffee at Starbucks, writing in my journal while there, and blog. The only problem is that this happiness doesn’t last. It doesn’t sustain me. Sometimes the feeling my therapist has for me makes me want to live because I know my death will bring her pain and sadness. That is not what I want to do. But I also don’t want to be trapped into living by bringing others joy just by me being alive. I can’t live just for others when I am suffering so much.

My therapist and I have been trying to get to the roots of my suicidality. Mostly what we came up with is that I felt like a burden to my family since I was eight. I started hearing voices when I was five. They have been my constant companion throughout my life. In addition, I was made a girl when I am a boy. That brought me great pain when I realized this. At age ten, I had my 1st suicide attempt – I tried to suffocate myself with a pillowcase. I just see life as pain and I so want to escape from that pain. No medication numbs it or relieves it and now that I am in physical pain, I feel like I am being punished for all the sins I ever committed. Despite asking for forgiveness, I am met with more pain.

Went to the Mary Chapin Carpenter concert last night. She was playing with Shawn Colvin. I didn’t like Shawn too much. All I heard from her was “blah, blah, blah”. I am still hyped from the concert, I’m blaring (softly as it is late) all of Mary Chapin’s albums.

When Mary Chapin played “the hard way” it was like she was telling me that I was on the right path but nothing comes easy. I listened to the concert with hope, sadness, and hopelessness. I was hoping MCC might change my mind but I realized I will let myself down if I don’t kill myself this year. It’s like what went on in 2005 when I planned everything but botched it up when I told my therapist (same one I have today). Now my therapist knows I have a date and that means it is going to be harder for me to go ahead with my plans. I don’t know why I feel I have to do this. I don’t. I can walk away from this and never go back but I will feel a form of defeat one feels when they break an internal promise to themselves.

I realized last night that part of the reason is because I don’t have confidence I’m always going to get my pain medication and that scares me. Because if I can’t get my pain pills, then I rather be dead. It’s not that I am saying I NEED the pills, I am saying that if my pain is not going to be taken seriously and treated with serious meds, I am going to kill myself. Because I cannot bear the thought of suffering and having pain flare up and not have anything to take. If Tylenol worked I would take it. If Ibuprofen worked, I wouldn’t need it. If ketoprofen helped, I wouldn’t need it. The only thing that helps is opioids.

So without my pain meds which have the affect of actually taking away some of my physical pain, I want to die. Yet I also want to die because I have chronic physical pain that makes me have to take pain medication. I guess I just feel that it’s not ok for me to get pain relief. I feel it is a hassle because I have to see my doctor every month and when the pain levels vary due to increase or decrease in activity for the month, I feel like I don’t deserve the meds. My doc gives them to me. He has never denied me my meds. Yet I fear that one day he will not for whatever reason. And that is the reason, well one of them anyways, why I feel I should be dead. I should just be dead. My pain cannot be cured. It cannot completely go away. I am sick of being in pain all the time. Sure the physical pain goes away with meds but the nerve pain does not. And that is what truly makes my life intolerable.

second blog of the day 15-May-13

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

Second blog of the day:

Normally I would be sleeping by now as it is after midnight but no such luck. This is the second night in a row that I have been up because of pain. I just took a ton of meds and hope that it knocks me out soon. I am tired of being in pain for the past 72 hours. My ankle has flared up on me tonight and I don’t know why. That pain calmed down and now I am dealing with nerve pain. I feel like my foot is in a vise and my toes are killing me.

And I don’t know if because I have been hunched over on the computer for so long, my stomach hurts. I can’t seem to “straighten” out to make it stop hurting. Lying down only makes it worse.

I just wrote a journal entry about my plan. I am no longer depressed, just suicidal. There is a difference and me being this way is a little more dangerous. Because I just don’t fucking care anymore. They say pain changes you, well mine has. I have been in constant pain and there is nothing to do but stop it. Yet the meds I take have to go through the voices in my head to justify taking the meds. I know it sounds silly as I am just fight with myself about it. The voices know that I am in pain but yet they hope that I overdose on my meds. That is why I have to be careful. If pushed by them too much I might give in and take a handful of meds that I really didn’t mean to. I just hope I fall asleep soon. I hate being like this. I can’t say that I am a happy person because I am not. I might appear to be to other people but it is just a façade. I have to make the appearance that I am ok even though I am not.

My therapist wants me to make the trip out to Framingham to see her. She says we need the connection. I just think that she wants to keep me in her office so she can keep an eye on me. But I don’t want to drive out there. I know it has been a while and I really should go but I just don’t feel like it because it just takes sooo many spoons to go. I have to shower, get dressed then take a bus to my sister’s work, walk three blocks to my sister’s work all for a fifty minute appointment? It takes more than that just to get my sister’s car!! And the drive can be anywhere from 45 mins to an hour and a half, both ways. Just doesn’t seem like a good idea given my pain cycle at the moment. I do miss seeing her and my teddy bear Johnny. He is a HUGE bear that I got when I was in the hospital when I was first diagnosed with CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome. That was 12 years ago. And then I got two little bearista bears that I got from Starbucks, Bucky and Amelia. I didn’t want Bucky to be alone so I got Amelia for him. They stay with my therapist, mostly to comfort her while I am gone. Hehehehe. Ok pain meds slightly kicking in now.

I was twittering with the Prez of the AAS (American Association of Suicidology) tonight about how the words suicidology and suicidality are not words Microsoft word recognizes. So he sent a twitter message to Bill Gates. I hope that he makes some noise because suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US. I will be part of these statistics soon. That is all that I am, a statistic. I am nothing more than that to the world. I cannot believe that I am going to kill myself soon. And I am happy about it. I know that my pain will end. Thing is, though I have a date and all, I don’t have a plan. And that is troubling me because how can I kill myself if I don’t have a plan. I have a few ways I can do it, nothing that I will blog about because I don’t want to trigger any one or give someone the idea of how to do it.

I could experiment with some things but I just don’t have the energy for it. Besides, if I experiment and succeed too early then people are not going to be ready for my death. I just realized that I have to write letters to people to explain why I am doing what I am doing. I don’t want there to be a “why”. I know that there will be but I want to lessen it. I also know that there will be some questions about why didn’t my treaters to enough for me, but that simply is not true. They have tried to help me but I am just too hopeless for them. There is no medicine that can help me. And talk therapy has helped me stay alive for this amount of time but I am tired of talking. I am also tired of being in pain all the time. And the talking only helps when I see my therapist or blog/write about it. And I know to some I must sound like a whine bag or something because all I talk about is my physical pain of my ankle that no one can help take away.

Unless I hit the lottery or they find a cure for nerve damage I am stuck in pain and debt. Both of which hurt me very deeply. I just can’t ever get ahead with my debt because of I am no longer working anymore. I can’t even order out for food anymore. I know that sounds like a whine but I like ordering Chinese once in a while. And now I can no longer do that. I like ordering pizza and subs. Can’t do that anymore. I am not a good cook so I just have what my mother makes which isn’t the healthiest of choices because she likes to fry everything. Even vegetables. She will make say asparagus and then she will fry them the next day. Don’t get me wrong, they are good, but they aren’t healthy.

I have been trying to stick with the Special K diet in which you eat two bowls of cereal for breakfast and lunch and then have a sensible dinner. That is a fail. My stomach has been messed up since my bowels have been backed up for a week that I can’t think about eating and when I do, it is not for a bowl of cereal. And that is another reason why I hate myself, because it hurts so much to go to the bathroom. For the past few months I have been having nerve pain in my anus and rectal areas. Sometimes sitting is so painful I just want to scream. And there is nothing really I can take that makes it better. Vicoden barely touches the pain, if at all. I can’t go through life like this. No more, I have had enough.