Tag: chronic physical pain

very bad in my head

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

Having a really hard time. Going through financial issues with my therapist because she got a new billing service and they have been harping on her for payment. I haven’t paid her in a long time since being disabled and the whole thing is stressing me out. So now I have to pay what I can pay her so her billing people aren’t harassing her. The whole stress of the matter, which I knew would happen one day, has caused the bad voices to come out and command me to do things, mostly to cut because I am a bad person. My therapist was telling me that this voice is wrong and full of shit. I wish she could hear them sometimes and maybe she would understand what I go through. It’s not easy telling them they are full of shit when they are screaming that you are nothing but a moron and an idiot all the time. Then I have another voice that is trying to get me to do the right thing and take care of myself and these other voices start harping on her. It’s very bad in my head right now and I feel so stressed about it. Every time I get a little stressed the voices come out. My therapist wants me to take some extra meds which I guess I will do tonight. And also to take my pain meds when I am feeling pain not hours later when it’s beyond control. I just don’t feel like I deserve it. Like I am being punished by this pain so just let it be but she said that is not how it is. I don’t know if I am making sense. I have been up since five and have not taken a nap. I am really tired and I am sick. I took a fall today and my knee is hurting. Everything is hurting. I wish the pain meds helped with the internal hurt but it doesn’t.

I have been having urges to cut since I cut last week I think it was. I don’t even remember. My therapist doesn’t want me to cut over the financial situation but I know that I will feel better if I cut. She said that she won’t. I gave her my word that I wouldn’t cut. I am also to keep texting her over the weekend to let her know how I am doing. She is worried right now because I am psychotic. And of course she brings up the hospital whenever I tell her about the voices. I sometimes hate bringing it up but I just let it happen and then I hate myself for bringing it up. She doesn’t understand what it is like living with them. These voices are mean and nasty. They watch everything that I do and criticize everything that I do. It could be the way I cut my chicken up or the way I go down the stairs. Sometimes they want me to take extra medication but I don’t do that. The only medication I will take extra of is Neurontin because I know the effect of this med. I did take extra Ativan the other night. I had to because all I wanted to do was sleep. I think I am going to take Neurontin with some trilafon tonight to ward off the voices. They don’t like the trilafon. That is the one med they don’t want me to take. But I need to because I don’t want to end up back in the hospital.

I emailed my PCP tonight. I told him that I don’t want to see anymore specialists. I just want adequate pain control and that is that. The nerve block didn’t work out and for three days I was in excruciating pain. It took two kinds of pain meds to bring my pain under control. I don’t want to go through that again. The pain was horrible. It brought me to a dark place, granted it didn’t take much to bring me there but still. I hated being there. And now I am thinking of ways of killing myself because I don’t know what else to do. I am tired of living a life in pain and if my PCP won’t acknowledge the fact that what we are doing is fine then I might as well kill myself now than go through hoops to get pain meds.

So I am psychotic, in a lot of physical pain, and am deeply depressed. Yup…I am FUBAR…fucked up beyond all rehabilitation.

Is suicide ever justifiable?

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

Is suicide ever justifiable?

I read an article about this today and it has me thinking. Would my suicide be justifiable? I am living in chronic physical pain every day that is sometimes helped by opioid medication but yet is not at times. I suffer from depression but no anti-depressant seems to help me. I am on a mood stabilizer that helps with the ups and downs but doesn’t help with the lows that I get. So would my death be justifiable because I have exhausted every available method of treatment for both conditions? I think I have. I think it is time that suicide should be given more thought. It isn’t wrong. It isn’t selfish. Sure there would be people that would miss me but if they know that I have tried everything and it all failed, I think they would rather have me dead than suffer. I cannot not go on suffering like this anymore. Everyday it is a battle. Which pain will cause me more suffering, mental or physical and lately physical has been winning. I am losing the battle and there is no one I can talk to about this. Even if there was someone to talk to about this, they wouldn’t understand. They would want me to try harder but I am tired. I am so very tired of fighting this losing battle I cannot win. So I have been making up my own rules. I have been dosing myself without regard to time tables. If I hurt I take something no matter the hour. But my mental pain is a whole another story.

This pain creeps on your and stays with you like a parasite. It grows on your fears and your doubts and your sorrow like no tomorrow. And nothing eases this hurt. I am frustrated by the psychiatric community that has not found a cure for this kind of ache. This all encompassing ache that is deep down in the soul and blacks out all the good in the world and in your heart. I was free from it at one point but it has recaptured me. Whether it is because the physical pain has gotten to be too much I do not know. I just know it hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. It hurts to be. And I don’t want to be anymore.

They say that if you are suicidal you are not in your right mind. That if you give yourself time, you will not think about it in a week or two. I have thought of killing myself for too long. I want this suffering to end. I am a lowly human being that deserves to die. I have done many things wrongs in my life. But I still feel that I am in my rational mind. In ancient times, if the citizen asked the government three times to die the wish was granted on the third attempt. Why can we have the same kind of rules now? I have asked my treaters if I should die and yet they want me to continue to live in this painful existence. If I was suffering from cancer, would that change their mind? No one is guaranteed a tomorrow. I am just asking that I be put to death to end my suffering because there is no cure for my ailments.

Cauda Equina Syndrome Thirteen years later

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome

On this day in 2001, I was showing symptoms of Cauda Equina Syndrome and didn’t know it. I just knew I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t walk or feel my toes. As time progressed this would happen to my right foot and then I knew I was in trouble. I called my psychiatrist a couple days later because I had an appointment to see her. I told her what was going on and she said to call an ambulance right now. I never heard her be so stern before. And couldn’t figure out why she was freaking out. I was in another world of pain and misery that I really didn’t care. But I know that I needed help and I got it later that night. I was in the ER for hours before they finally figured out I have this “Cauda Equina’ syndrome, what ever that was. No one bothered to explain it to me. I was left on my own in figuring it out but I know that I couldn’t walk. I was twenty-five years old and I was in a wheelchair. The residents were telling me I had to have emergency surgery. I felt like I was in a daze, that this wasn’t happening to me. So I asked if this surgeon was a board certified surgeon. She wasn’t but she was “eligible” whatever that meant. I said no, I wanted a board certified surgeon or there was not going to be any surgery. So at five in the morning I got my surgeon and he said I was going to the OR in an hour or so. I bawled. I didn’t know what to do after this. I still kept thinking all I needed was physical therapy and pain meds and maybe a walking device and I would be ok. No, I had to have surgery to preserve what I was losing. Luckily my bladder wasn’t too much effected by all this and I had a good surgeon whose only mistake was putting me on the wrong antibiotic, which later caused a staph infection two weeks later. I still feel like if I was place on the right antibiotic, I wouldn’t have needed a second surgery to clean out the gunk in my surgical bed. I am just grateful they got it in time or I would have been in worse shape.

This happened over thirteen years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I guess you never really forget something like this happening to you. The most humiliating thing was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom on my own. It took several nurses to hold me up and another to wipe me off. You don’t forget something like that easily. You also don’t forget relearning how to walk again, this time with something called AFOs because your feet are still doing flip flops by themselves. You have no control over your feet. You have no idea where they are. Your balance if off and this is a terrifying time. Because it’s been more than three days and you still can’t feel your toes. Doctor said it would be three days and I would be up and walking. What a lie. He didn’t know the damage I suffered. He didn’t care that I was going to be in rehab for quite a while. His job was done. He did the surgery and that was what he was supposed to do. The rest was my job, though no one told me what it was. I had to figure it out all on my own. And I did figure it out months later when I was walking with a cane and visiting a support group for those suffering my condition. Some had it worse than I did. Some had it the same but had bowel and bladder problems. I guess I was one of the lucky ones that just had the foot drop and weird walking moves. I learned everything I could about the nerves and dermatomes. That helped me to understand where my pain was coming from.

Today I still have the AFO. It might not be the same one I had thirteen years ago but it works. It helps me walk without pain. And that is all that I care about at this point in the game.

a night of pain and the aftermath of self-harm

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression

I had an awful night of sleep last night. I was awaken by pain in my elbow. I couldn’t straighten my arm out at all without severe pain. It was very swollen and I must have slept on it wrong. Whatever it was, it had gotten slightly better by the time I woke up a few hours later with another pain in my good foot. I forgot to tell the podiatrist about this mysterious pain that happens in my arch and goes away when I get moving. It was five AM when it woke me up so I wasn’t moving anywhere. I just took some more pain meds and tried to sleep some more.

Even now, my elbow is tender. I was going to call the doctor to make an appointment but I really don’t want to see another doctor for sometime because of my cuts. I am afraid they might not understand and send me to psych services or something. Once they heal a little more, I will decide if I should go. I think naproxen is taking care of the pain for now in my elbow anyways and my foot so I am good.

I wrote a good summary about my cutting episode in my journal the night it happened. I plan on typing it up and posting it when I feel up to it. I still feel numb and lost. I can believe that I did this. It was bound to happen one of these days when something set me off. I have to say it is better than me attempting suicide. Three one inch cuts hardly can count as an attempt as that was not the intention. I just needed a release. I still have not told my psychiatrist. She kindly called in my antipsychotic prescription. It went through this time around. Thirty bucks gone. Now I just have to fill my pain meds and I am set for the month. I will drop off the script tomorrow as I forgot to do it today when I went to the pharmacy. I just wasn’t thinking about it until I went to pick up my other prescription.

I haven’t written anything about my darkness story in a few days. I should write about the cutting but I am afraid it might trigger me into cutting again like it did the other day. It got real intense and I totally wasn’t expecting that. Usually I can write and it is all good, no matter how dark and carried away I get but this time, it just proved to be too much. If I was an alcoholic, I would feel like I lost my sobriety. It had been more than ten years since I last cut. I am kind of uncertain what lies ahead now. I am trying not to think about it but it sometimes gets the better of me and I do think about doing it again. It is an addiction to the pain that I feel. Yet it also is a release. Only a cutter would understand what I am talking about.

Other than my therapist and the blog world, I have not told anyone about the cuts and I have been careful to keep them concealed around my house. I am supposed to go to my niece’s birthday party tonight. I might make an appearance and then leave. I still am not feeling too well since I had a bad night sleeping. My ankle still feels numb from the nerve block. So I guess it was the nerve all this time as my tendon has not flared up. Yet I haven’t done anything the last day or so to warrant it to flare up. I just have stayed home and rested. Today was the first day that I went to Starbucks. I figured I would work on my book and I did. I read the first two chapters then had to stop. I wore my AFO brace today so my ankle would have more support. It’s no longer icy out so I can wear it more. It is still cold out, however. But what do you expect in wintery New England??

I am glad it is cold out as it gives me reason to wear my t-shirt long sleeved shirts. I love them because they are not heavy like sweatshirts. My favorite one is the Red Sox Championship shirt I bought myself. It is in the wash right now because I got something on the sleeve and it was annoying me having to see it. I might wear the same things every day but soon as I notice they smell or have a dirt spot on them, it’s wash time! Speaking of wash, I should take a shower before my niece’s party as I do stink a little. I haven’t showered since Monday night. I can’t believe how long this week has been. I had so many appointments. And I know my therapist is going to want to keep an eye on me so she is going to try to get me to have extra sessions. She is worried since I cut and even though I wrote a blog for the reasons for it, she still wants me to talk about it. Typical therapist stuff. I am just glad she isn’t DBT oriented or my life would be hell right now. She does want me to implement the crisis response plan in the event I again feel like cutting again. She feels to blame, least in my opinion, for my cutting. But it’s not her fault. It’s no one’s fault really. I just had a bad day, a really bad day and something snapped. I can’t really remember what it was but I think me writing about it in that blog really triggered me and I couldn’t get it out of my head despite talking to someone, listening to music, and trying to de-stress. And I didn’t dissociate so that was good. I think I probably would have done more damage if I had.