Tag: complex regional pain syndrome

Pain Rant 2

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression

Pain Rant 2

Last night around this time, I got a searing pain in my ankle. Tonight I am having the same pain. Yesterday I didn’t do anything. I didn’t leave the house or go up and down the stairs a million times. Nada. So this pain is weird. I don’t know if it is nerve pain or not. It’s so hard to tell because I am in pain all the time and this is the second night feeling the same pain at around the same time. I can’t stand when pain occurs, without warning. But today I walked a bit so I am expecting pain but not like this. It feels like I have been standing on my ankle too long.

The pain is sharp, like that of a knife cutting into me. It is most unsettling. I can’t move my ankle without severe pain and I already took my pain meds a couple of hours ago. I should not be having any pain at all, which is why I am thinking this is nerve pain. I suppose I should probably take my nerve pain meds to see if that calms this down. I hate taking them because I get the hungry horrors afterwards.

I also have been a bawling mess since I heard about the Sox manager having lymphoma and will not be managing the team for the rest of the year. It broke my heart to hear this news. I feel bad for him but I know he is in good hands. It was fortunate that his hernia surgery happened when it did because they discovered the mass during it. If he didn’t have the surgery, his chances for surviving would not be so great as it would still be undetected.

Sure the Sox have sucked all season and have been plagued with injuries and so forth but hearing this news just made me sadder than anything. And now I got to deal with this pain in my ankle and I don’t know what it is from. It’s swollen, but that is always the case. It’s in the same spot as it was last night and the same intensity of pain. I just want to cut off my ankle or just make some cuts into the ankle to relieve the pressure or at least give it a reason to fucking hurt. But I am too scared of causing more damage. I am afraid that if I do cut deep enough, I might nick a tendon and that would not be good. I hate being in so much pain. This pain is different than the pain I normally deal with. And it’s not like I can consult a doctor right now to deal with the pain. It’s way after business hours. I doubt they would be able to help me anyways other than saying to go to the ER or something. I doubt the pain will last that long. It’s already starting to fade, just as it did last night. I hate it when pain comes in spurts like this. It’s like when I get zaps on my feet, there’s nothing I can do but wait it out. Now my foot is starting to throb just like last night. I fucking hate this shit. I am so tired of being in pain every night. And now I got this new pain to deal with? Why the hell am I living? I was supposed to kill myself a month ago. I never got the chance because my fricken therapist and psychiatrist didn’t want me to go through with it. Fuckers. I really dislike them right now. I am glad my therapist is on vacation so I don’t have to deal with her. But I see my shrink on Monday. I don’t know why I bother seeing her. Meds aren’t helping my mood that much anymore. Sure, it is keeping the mood swings in check but that is all its doing. I wish the meds would help this pain that I am in. But the pain doesn’t last long and just causes bad throbbing in my foot when it leaves. How do you explain that to a doctor? Sometimes I think I am losing it, like it’s all in my head or something. Seriously question my sanity because the pain is so painful that it takes my breath away for fifteen minutes and then it dissipates and I am just left with throbbing. What the hell. I can’t deal with pain like this. I can take another pain pill in about an hour from now. What am I going to do until then? I am can’t stand the throbbing/vibrating that my foot is doing right now. I wish ibuprofen could help me. I would be taking handfuls of the stuff. But it doesn’t do shit.

The thing that is aggravating the most is that I haven’t moved in the last two hours. I have been in my bed, reading Harry Potter when the pain started. I could see if I was doing something like standing or walking or going down stairs, but I wasn’t. I was an inactive peapod. And all I did was flex my ankle and BOOM, pain! I fucking hate this shit. It’s a good thing I don’t know how to use a chainsaw or other power tools. My ankle would be seriously in trouble of being amputated.

I’m going to take some Ativan and hope that brings me some sleep without the bad dreams I had last night.

An Oxymoron

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

I had an interesting conversation with my psychiatrist tonight. She confirmed I am on the right meds and that comforted me. I told her I was a little hypo and she said to let her know how things go. She wasn’t going to make any changes and I wasn’t asking for one. These things need to ride themselves out, as I have learned over the years. Medication isn’t always the answer to every problem that you face.

My mood was all over the place today. I got really irritable and angry over someone’s comment that they left on my blog today. I don’t know why it bothered me so. I had a long conversation with the voices over this. It helped to air it out and once I did, I wasn’t as agitated. Then I got a stupid migraine and that made me scared. My face went numb within minutes and my eye felt like it was going to pop. I took my migraine pill and waited anxiously for the pain to subside. I had just started to read a research article when my eyes went blurry and the migraine started. I guess I will read that article tomorrow. I am not in the same mood I was in before the migraine hit. After the migraine subsided and I was feeling better, I read some more of Harry Potter. Hogwarts got me the escape I was looking for. Reading has been suggested by a doctor who does man therapy. If you look it up, it is pretty dumb. But men need something stupid to be able to laugh at themselves and break up their manliness. I know I do at times. I don’t know if his particular therapy has helped men but I took his suggestion of reading a book to escape to relax.

I also told my pdoc about my sleeping habits as of late. Three to four hours a night I have been getting, which doesn’t help someone with Bipolar illness. I am lucky I can sleep during the day to try and catch up but I don’t always. Sometimes napping causes more trouble. I never feel rested unless I have a six hour nap. I usually am able to get one over the weekends usually. I don’t know why that is. I tend to sleep better during day time hours than at night anyways. I am a night owl. The funny thing is, I was never really able to work a night shift. By 4 or 5, I was so tired that I needed sleep. And if I got it on my break, I usually slept for an hour, which was against the rules. One time I think I slept for two hours and my supervisor wasn’t happy. But I no longer work so I can stay up till whatever time and sleep all day if I want to.

Today is my therapist’s birthday so I will be texting her a lot. I will stop once she texts back a “thank you”. I can be a pain in the ass, too! She always makes a big deal out of my birthday so it’s payback.

My ankle is really hurting me for all the walking I did today. I have a bum ankle due to nerve damage that I got when a disc exploded in my back. The disc compressed the nerve that controls the muscles in my ankle and foot. I never was able to regain the strength in my foot after surgery. That was 14 years ago. If I didn’t get strength back in the first two years, I am certainly not going to now. What I am left with is pain due to a pain syndrome no one can identify. Some have called it complex regional pain syndrome, others have just called it tendonitis. But if it was tendonitis, rest and ice should have cured it by now and I have been resting it for three years. The pain has gotten a little better but on days like today where I was walking too much, it flares up and is hard to settle down without pain medication. I don’t know why they call it pain medication when the meds are supposed to relieve your pain, not cause it. Just an oxymoron, I suppose.

The article I was going to read before my migraine made it impossible was on the language of suicide. I am a suicidologist from the inside out. I love studying about suicide and read everything I can about the subject. I have the experience to go with it as I have attempted more than a few times. That is why I write this blog. It helps to write out my suicidal thoughts and feelings I am having in the moment. I know that if I don’t write about them, I am as good as dead. After I write my morose feelings, I usually send them to my pdoc and therapist, well sometimes just my therapist as I am afraid of sending them to my psychiatrist. I sent her a goodbye email once and that ended poorly. She sectioned me and I spent the next three weeks in the hospital. It wasn’t fun. The police came and when they couldn’t find me because the ambulance had already taken me to the hospital, they broke into my house by smashing a window. I was very upset. So I am hesitant to send my pdoc my suicidal writings.

It has been at least a month since my last writings. I haven’t really felt suicidal since I gave up the day I was going to kill myself. My therapist and psychiatrist were against the idea of me dying. Go figure. I still am angry with them for keeping me here. I had everything planned out, sort of. I knew how I was going to die, but I just didn’t know where. I didn’t want a family member to find me so that sort of kept me here. But the writing that I was doing before I gave up my date were my one outlet. Now they are gone and I don’t know if I will be that productive ever again.

Saturday Blog 27: Struggle with Suicide and Bereavement of Others

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide, suicide attempt

Saturday Blog 27: Struggle with Suicide and Bereavement of Others

I will never again go to the Square on a Saturday! I got stranded there because there were no buses to take me home. I waited two hours and Twitter was no help in finding out why or the public transportation system for that matter. I had gotten a text saying severe delays due to traffic but not that there would be no service to the Square. I was so pissed. I hadn’t eaten anything but a bag of chips so was starving when I came home. I was lucky my sister was home and could pick me up. Then I got a migraine that just made things worse. So I am writing this blog a little later than usual because of the migraine.

I watched this video about “Life after Suicide”. It really made me think about the people I would be leaving behind and the affect it would have on my “kids”. It also made me feel grateful that I can talk about my suicidal feelings with my therapist and psychiatrist, openly and honestly. I think that if I kept those feelings to myself, I would probably act on it. It helps to hear my therapist say that she would be devastated if I went through with my thoughts. I don’t know how my psych would feel. Probably the same as I have known her for over twenty years. The thing is, I don’t want to live. I had made a decision with myself when I was young to take my life so I wouldn’t be old. Here it is twenty plus years later and I still struggle with suicide. It’s like it gets bashed around, deeply thought about, planned, and just never happens. I haven’t made a suicide attempt since I was eighteen and then I spent two and half months in a psych unit at the local hospital. I had met a psychiatric resident who believed in me and we worked together for three years. It was the most stable relationship I ever had with a professional, aside from my current therapist. I was still in and out of psych hospitals. When I was first hospitalized, I was damned if I was going to end up like the people around me. I was in a lot of psychological pain that I wanted it to end. Even though that pain has subsided somewhat, I still think about suicide. I now suffer chronic physical pain and it keeps the thoughts swirling around in my head.

In the video, the woman who talks throughout it says that you need to talk about suicide. In London, they have a place called the Maytree where suicidal people can stay for up to five days to deal with their crises. It is run by none other than a suicide attempt survivor. I have no idea if a place like that exists in the US. I know in my town, there is something called a residential place that is similar to what they were talking about. It was so long ago, I forget the criteria for going there. I know you had to be a part of the Department of Mental Health system to go to it. I was so ill then. I didn’t stay at the place. It was run down and dirty looking, nothing like the Maytree. But it was an alternative to the hospital. I don’t know if they exist anymore with budget cuts to the mental health system. They closed so many psych units in the last twenty years. Even the world famous McLean Hospital isn’t what it used to be.

Also in the video, there is a segment with Dr. Rory O’Connor (person that I got the video from) that talks about entrapment and how a suicidal person often feels trapped and feels the need to escape. This is often true. I feel trapped because of the guilt I would place on others by my death. I die and others feel hurt. In the meantime, I am left to deal with my own suffering that no one else can feel. How is that fair? And don’t dare tell me life is unfair. I know that already, I live with it every single day. I pissed and crapped my pants today and didn’t know it so don’t bother telling me that life is unfair. Another misery that I have to deal with and don’t want to. Dealing with the physical pain is one thing; it’s quite another to deal with your bodily functions not working right.

Throughout the video, I thought about my friends David and Melinda, who lost their significant others by suicide. David lost his fiancé almost six months ago. His fiancé was my friend Chris. I had felt guilty about his death because I am so involved with suicide prevention and yet I never reached out to Chris. I never knew the demons he was facing. He was always a stand up guy and looking at him, you never knew he was depressed. He hid it well. We will never know what made him take his life. David has been open about his grief on FB and it has been one of the reasons why I am still here. The grief he feels is so palpable it hurts to watch him go through it. Chris was the first friend of mine to die by suicide. I have had other friends die, but not like this. It is a unique death that no one can understand or make sense out of.

Pain and Anxiety

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

Pain and Anxiety

Last night, I took my normal pain pills around 2200. At midnight, the pain got worse. My heart rate shot up and I became nervous, again. I had already taken my night meds at the same time I took my pain meds. It was too early for me to take my normal pills so I had to take a stronger pill. It took another hour for the pain to fade enough for me to sleep. I also took an Ativan to calm down. I spoke to my doc about this and she said the anxiety is the body’s response to not liking pain. Great. Now I have to deal with anxiety on top of my other problems. I don’t like being anxious or nervous. It really irritates me and makes me feel unsafe, like something terrible is going to happen. I have to mentally play with ideas of it just being a physiological reaction, that I am okay, even though I don’t feel that way. It’s very hard to mentalize when your heart is pounding like you ran several blocks. I don’t become out of breath but my breathing speeds up. I have to take deep breaths to calm down, or try to. It’s very difficult to do. And it also makes me feel helpless because other than taking drugs to stop the pain and anxiety, there is nothing I can do. I am not hyperventilating so breathing into a paper bag won’t help me. Music helps to a degree but not all the time. After a while, it just becomes background noise.

I have not been trained in any capacity to deal with anxiety. I don’t know how to deal with it other than take medication. But even then, I have to wait a half hour or more for it to work. In the meantime, I am very nervous, in terrible pain, and keep wondering what to do. I can’t walk because the pain is too intense in my foot, so pacing is out of the question. I usually just have grin and bear it. I don’t like doing this. It just messes with my head. And then I become agitated, which does me no favors. Last night, I tried to read. It didn’t work so I tried writing in my journal. If I could have done something physical, I would have but writing is the only thing that usually works when I am anxious. It is my go to whenever things are going wrong, or are perceived to be.

All this bullshit could be avoided if I didn’t have this pain syndrome. I didn’t do too much yesterday so I don’t know why my foot decided to explode at midnight. I had been resting for hours, but I got hungry and went downstairs to have something to eat. When I came back up stairs and propped my foot up, I got hit with the pain wave. Other than amputation, I don’t think there is anything I could have done to avoid it. I just don’t understand why because I had taken my normal pain meds two hours before hand and that should have avoided a 10+ pain flare. But that is the thing with pain syndromes. You never know when they are going to spike.

I need to pick up my niece later. I plan on ordering pizza before I pick her up. This way, the pizza is a little cooled off before gobbling it up. The last time I had pizza with my niece, she ate half a box! It was crazy but she was hungry. She ate all of it too, crust and all. She is too funny but is still growing like a weed. I just hope that walking to her school doesn’t aggravate my foot more than it already is. I really don’t want a repeat of last night. I have my appointment with my psych tomorrow so I really don’t want to be really drugged up or sleep deprived when I see her. It’s in the afternoon so I should be awake enough when I see her, but sometimes after a bad night of pain, I am not in a good mood the next day. Only day that I don’t have something planned is Saturday. I can rest all day then. I still need to finish my editing, which includes proofing what I have written and then putting those edits in the word doc. I have stuff to take out too, as one of my stories is listed twice, but under a different name. Don’t know how that happened.

So pain and anxiety is not a good thing for me, or anyone, really. Pain causes the anxiety and I don’t like it one bit. It makes me feel helpless. My therapist is on vacation for the next two weeks. I am to write her a letter and text her while she is away. She also wants me to send them to her so when she is back, they will be in her office. We talked about the anxiety part but really didn’t talk about what to do with it. She just wants me to take an Ativan. I am just afraid that I will become addicted to it, which is why I am so hesitant to even take the pill. But I guess, I need it so my heart rate slows down and calms my nervous agitation that doesn’t do me any good. I swear the pain is like drinking five cups of coffee the way it makes me feel. I just wish I had more control over it but I don’t and that is what is so frustrating! I hate not being in control. Pain takes that away from you and then your heart rate soars up and makes you feel even worse. So you are battling the demons in your head, the pain in your foot and the nervousness of it all because it’s a physiological response. How the hell do you combat it?? I guess I am going to have to research what to do about anxiety, an unknown entity to me. I never was an anxious person until pain entered my life. It doesn’t happen ALL the time but when it does, holy hell! I am noticing it more with each pain flare up. I really wish I had better control of my pain, like if I had a warning before the pain would flare, that would be awesome. But I don’t. It’s one minute low level pain and the next high level pain. Sometimes it is because I moved my ankle, either flexed it or moved my big toe. That is all it takes to set the pain off in my foot and/or ankle. It just sucks not knowing when to expect severe pain. It’s the million dollar question that no one can answer. And I am not okay with it, not one bit!