Tag: chronic physical pain

chronic urge to kill myself

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide attempt

It has been less than 24 hours since my last post. I really don’t care. I am in a lot of pain right now and soon I will be down for the count. I hate being in pain all the time. It started when I got to the kitchen to make myself a bagel. My foot cramped on the cold tile floor. I know I should have been wearing slippers but I wasn’t thinking. I had to go to the bathroom fast or I would have lost control of my bladder. Soon after my foot settles down, my calf muscle in the same leg decides to spasm up a little bit so now it is tight and I can’t stretch it out. I was going to watch the Red Sox parade on TV but I just took my pain meds so I will be knocked out soon.

People think that I am normal and that is what kills me. Most of the time I feel like I am normal until the pain starts and tells me otherwise. I cannot win. I wish I were dead. I wish I had taken my life back in August when I was supposed to. Now I am living and in pain and I hate myself for it. Those blue buildings are crushing me and I can’t keep myself away from me any longer. Time for a new plan and one that I can go through with. I am just so tired of being in pain every single day.

In other painful news, The book Team of Rivals that took me literally most of the year to read, I finally finished it last night. I didn’t cry like I thought I would. The author wrote almost ten pages to get to his death. Talk about being wordy. There were some good parts of the book. I wrote a review of it and sent it off to my writing partner for comment. I was harsh but then I really did not like this book. I read it because ten pages of it were based on the movie Lincoln. 10 bloody pages of the 800 page book!! Yes, just shoot me and even those pages were like, huh? That didn’t happen in the movie!! The book rushed the 13th amendment, Robert going into the Army, and the delegate meeting for peace. Ten pages! Really makes you wondering what the 790 pages were about…but This blog is not for book reviews that do not deal with suicidality. I just wrote about it because it was a very painful read, and that I read this book for something other than it was worth. Soon as I post the review on Amazon, I will tell you, for those that are interested.

I am off to dreamland again. I had an interesting breakfast of Oreo Golden cookies and a bagel. I will watch clips of the rally on twitter or TV. I am sure people will be posting pics on Facebook as well. There are more than 10,000 people already in Boston. I would have gone if I was healthy but I am not. I just have the chronic urge to kill myself and chronic pain to fuel it. This is the type of life I lead.

traffic and therapy

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

Today I realized the reason why I like talking on the phone with my therapist than seeing her in person: TRAFFIC! I left my house at ten o’clock and literally got there around 12:30. Normally I get there around noon but the traffic when I got to route nine, well, was just horrible. I don’t know why they have traffic cops at a construction site when they DO NOT DIRECT TRAFFIC!! There was at least a three mile back up and they were just sitting in their cars watching! I couldn’t believe it. But then it is typical of these guys. I don’t know what they are supposed to do, really, other than get paid overtime with our tax dollars for doing nothing. I want that kind of job.

My foot is better today, though I didn’t think I would be able to walk down the street. Half way down the block I needed to walk to get to the bus stop, my ankle started hurting really bad. It is still throbbing and I can’t take anything for it because I still need to pick up my sister as I have her car.

I was proud of myself today as I know my trucks. There was an F350 behind me on the way home and I knew that it was just by looking at the grille of the car. I love the Ford trucks. I fell in love when my friend’s stepdad picked us up at the airport when I first visited his parents. We spent a good amount of time in the truck as we had a long drive from Omaha to his hometown of Sargeant. The ride was nice and roomy, my first time in a truck and I was in love! I always wanted to own one but I don’t think I can drive one. I have a hard time with perception and am afraid of side swiping another car. That is why I am afraid of driving my bro-in-law’s jeep cheroke. It is a wide vehicle and new so I don’t want to damage it. I am not saying I am a horrible driver, I am not, but if something scares me I tend to stay away from it.

My therapist would call that trauma. We talked about that today with that weird dream that I had about my back surgery. I dreamt about it a few days after I got discharged from the hospital. I still have flashbacks of everything, from the time I was told I had CES again to getting admitted the next night and then surgery the next morning. I remember waking up with my left leg feeling weird. I thought it was just post-op stuff but it turned out to be a missing disc fragment was imbedded on my nerve root. I lost total feeling of it. I had no strength in it. I couldn’t lift it up if you paid me a million dollars, it was that weak. It took me a month to regain strength and another four months of physical therapy to get back to my baseline. I shopped around for a physical therapist that had experience in nerve injury and cauda equina syndrome. I didn’t go to the Spaulding rehab because 1) they were expensive and 2) they were not willing to work with me. I knew that if I did go with them, they would want to do things their way instead of what was right for me. I found someone at a local hospital rehab center that helped me get back to where I was before surgery and then a little more. I had to fight for the extra sessions and have my surgeon, then my primary care doc order physical therapy because I did not want to go through what I went through the first time I got this bloody condition, which was just surgery over, care ends too. I still had foot drop in my left foot that took months to regain strength the first go round. I wasn’t going to let that happen with my entire left leg.

Turns out that no matter what I did, this stupid, fucking condition ended up disabling me anyways. I still ended up with an AFO (ankle foot orthotic) for my left foot. I still end up with panic when my foot flares up in pain and I think that CES is going to happen again. No matter how much time has passed, and it has been years, I am always going to have that trigger soon as I can no longer move my toes because of inflammation/pain. And because I still have a fucked up spine nice and full of herniated discs, there is a chance I will end up with another diagnosis of CES. I fear that if I have to have another back surgery, I will need a fusion. If that happens, I will never be able to work again. As it is, I can’t walk more than a few blocks and stand for more than twenty minutes. The thing that I have to be aware of is trying to lose weight, which is tricky and wicked hard. But one doc told me that even if I weighed eighty pounds, I still would have a messed up spine. I just have to watch what I lift, making sure to do it properly, with the legs and not the back. But I don’t do much lifting of anything other than my Gatorade bottles. My biggest fear is getting rear ended by another car. That will hurt!

my heating system sucks

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

Today started off ok. I got my niece ready for school and walked her to school. We took the way I normally take because there are no inclines or hills, which is normally good for my foot. But I guess all the up and down stairs yesterday and the few that I did today to get my clothes finally took its toll. My ankle and three toes are aching like no tomorrow and feel like I have my foot submerged in a bucket of ice water. I have it wearing a sock and under 3 blankets. There is no warming this foot up and frankly, I don’t want it warm because I will be in more pain. It will get warm then VERY HOT, like it is on fire. Happens all the time. The weather is very cold today even though the weatherman says it is 56 degrees. They are lying as Google just told me that it is 42 degrees. It is so cold in my room, despite the heat being on, that I think my radiator finally shit the bed. It was hot last week. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I didn’t turn the heat up high enough. My heating system sucks. It has to be the worse heating system on the planet. The only way to get it to turn on is putting it higher than 70 degrees. Then the house melts, you lower it and it stays warm for a little while. I am not as cold as I was earlier but it doesn’t matter. My foot has its own heating/cooling system since it has nerve damage. That is why I try to keep it as warm as possible during the colder months of the year. It is not easy as even in the summer it will be cold. I have to wear socks 90% of the time. I miss being barefoot but I just can’t risk getting my foot cold, especially as we have ceramic tile floors. They get REALLY cold, and fast.

I did nothing this weekend but vegetate. I needed some time away from the blog and my book. I got wicked stressed out Friday and didn’t want to risk another psychotic break so I stepped back. I had to for my own sanity. I thought I would be able to get back to editing today but I didn’t sleep very good last night and then had to wake up early for the kiddos.

Today’s WordPress challenge is about Dear Abbey. I thought about posting a good piece of advice but that is not what my blog is about. Most I have is to have a good therapist that is willing to work with you, and that goes for all professionals, from doctors to physical therapists. If the doctor already has it in his mind about you before you walk in the door, see someone who has a brighter bulb in their head. It is hard for chronic pain patients to get treatment because these doctors have been sidelined by the fake patients who say their back hurts and get pain medication just to use it illegally or to sell it. But the sad part is that these pain patients are undermedicated sometimes which leads to possible overdoses because they cannot get a flare up under control. I know, I have been there. I might not overdose myself all the time, but when I do, it is for a good reason. And that reason is PAIN. I don’t mean overdose in the sense I take the bottle. NO I DO NOT DO THAT, though I may be thinking that. I mean that instead of my allotment of 4 pills a day, I might take 6 or 8 a day. Fortunately for me, those 6 or 8 pills a day are far and wide in between. My doctor trusts my judgment. I am fortunate that he does otherwise I would be six feet under, NO JOKE. And it all stems from that day that I saw a chiropractor to adjust my spine and she ruptured my disc, permanently disrupting my life forever. I always will have nerve damage. I always will have weakness in my foot. It might not be visible to the world but I can assure you it is felt every single day. My minimum pain level is always a 3 on a scale of 1-10. That is what I live with on a daily basis and my surgery is coming up on 13 years. So that is why my heating system in my foot is all messed up.

Paranoid troubles continue

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mood disorders, suicide

I have been having a facial migraine all day. One side of my face is numb and tingling. I have had them before. They usually are caused by bright sunny days and being overtired. I have been up since very early this morning. I wanted to get my editing done on my book and get to Starbucks early to get a seat. I got there around eight-thirty this morning as I was up at seven. I got the migraine when I came home. I guess I am stressing about this book a little bit.

I’m getting tied up in the details and when I asked a friend about quoting she said it’s different than quoting for a paper or article. CRAP. I have to find out if I can use this information with consent or half my book goes bye-bye. Not helping my migraine today.

Then today as I was looking for my migraine medicine, I realized I have two packages of old birth control patches that I am never going to use. I called the pharmacy to find out what to do with them and they tell me to call my city for medication dump. Well, it’s too late now to call. I was annoyed because I was on hold for like five minutes but it felt longer than that because of this damn migraine. I just feel pressure all around me and I just can’t get a hold of myself. I hate feeling out of control. I don’t know what effect the migraine med and my anti-psychotic pill will have so I don’t want to mix the two right now. I just have to ride it out and I can’t tolerate it. I feel like I am being pulled into different directions. It’s not even eight o’clock yet and I am ready for bed, which I might do but am afraid I will wake up early in the morning again, but this time at two or three o’clock. I can’t win no matter how hard I try with sleep. My days of sleeping for more than 7 hrs straight are over.

It’s a terrible feeling being watched by an unknown entity. Thankfully the voices aren’t chiming in with banter or I would really be losing it. Not that I would harm myself, just feel like I need to be back in the hospital again or something for fear of losing control. Maybe this book is just too much for me. I am starting to have second thoughts about it. I already feel like it will suck anyways. My therapist keeps trying to tell me that my book will be good like my blog is but my blog is different. I can write what I want to without being censored, per se. And I can quote pretty well to promote that things are not my ideas, least I hope that comes across. Maybe I am just worrying about nothing. My friend wants me to contact my idol about his stuff and the Aeschi model that I wrote. I just have to find it and make it in a document that is readable to him and pray he has time to read it and consent and then me not have a heart attack if he says yea or nay. This is the big leagues and I don’t want to fuck up on my first book. I would be utterly devastated if I got sued or something for what I wrote. I am like totally paranoid, and possibly with good reason. I wish I had my therapy appointment tomorrow but I don’t. I had to cancel because I am seeing my PCP. My monthly pain management appointment. I know he just is going to comment about my weight again. I put on a few pounds while I was in the hospital, I know I did. I haven’t weighed myself because I am too scared. I hate myself for it but sometimes I have no control over my eating. I sometimes eat when I feel it and other times I don’t eat at all because I have no appetite. Such is the struggle with depression. You would think a medical professional would know this but they don’t. They just want you in their set guidelines of a healthy weight, which is ridiculous. Technically I should be 125, at the most, and I haven’t weighed that much since high school. Medication is to blame and my back and ankle issues. It’s hard to exercise when it hurts. I try to push through it but it always backfires on me. Like today after I came home, my sister asked me to pick up my niece. It was a good walk from my house and now I am hurting because of the hills in my area. I don’t do inclinations too well with my bad ankle and there was no other way to get to my house without going downhill, unless I wanted to walk another three blocks or so. I know I shouldn’t be complaining because other people have it worse than I do with CES. But being in chronic pain every day changes you. For two and half years I have had pain nearly every single day, all day on some level. It gets worse at night, part of the reason I wake up in the middle of the night. My doctor calls this “inactivity” while I call it trying to sleep!! Sometimes I really think he doesn’t get it when he says he does. Did I also mention that he stresses me out going to see him? I never know what new thing he will come up with about my ankle pain or what kind of doctor he will refer me to next. I won’t go. I am tired of seeing new doctors and they always tell me the same thing, nothing is wrong with my foot or they don’t know why I am having pain as there is nothing wrong with my foot/ankle. I have seen them all and I am DONE. I just want my pain medication and just send me on my merry way. The end.