Tag: complex regional pain syndrome

It’s Pain O’Clock

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

It’s Pain O’Clock

Pain started around 2015 and has slowly increased. I took a pain pill about an hour ago, just to be able to stand long enough to take my night time meds. Because I didn’t fill my pill box today, it was hodgepodge night. I just take what I want and not the whole kit and caboodle. I will try and fill the box tomorrow morning when hopefully, my pain levels are lower. I hope I have a good night’s sleep. I can never know if I am going to wake up between 4-8 AM. Today I slept till almost 0800, which is highly unusual for me. But pain woke me up, actually, it was more my bladder, but I was still in pain. My right leg has been hurting all day, from hip to toes. I almost never have pain in my right leg. I think because I am a side sleeper and hadn’t moved for more than four hours, I was in pain. I am hoping the pain meds take care of that and my left foot pain. Right now it feels like someone is hammering my metatarsals. Just the last three. I think I would hit the roof if it was all five.

I have noticed that since taking the vitamin D again, my mood has changed, for the better. I still think about suicide, but the depression is not as heavy as it once was. I can breathe a little better, though I have been having awful anxiety with this pain flare up I have been having. I tend to breathe faster than I should and my heart is palpating. I have to take deep breaths to slow things down. I don’t know why I am so anxious with pain. I know it’s not going to kill me, though I am always in danger of attempting, or cutting. I still have it in my head that if I just cut the swelling, maybe I will be in less pain, that if the fluid is released, I will be fine. There is NO proof this will happen. I might just make things worse. And if I cut to the point of stitches, that will be a problem.

In two days I see my doc. I hope that he can give me something that will help my mental state. I can deal with the physical pain with medication. But I just want to figure out why the hell I have hammers hammering my bones! And why I sometimes feel a crushing sensation all along the edge of my foot. I haven’t been really active the last week and I have been in horrible pain. I see him in the morning and that is not going to be good. I wish I could see him at eight in the evening when the pain starts to flare up all the time, every single night. I am not going to be in horrendous pain at 0930 in the morning. I will have to stop my pain meds entirely the next few days if I want that to happen. I don’t want to go through that because I just got the pain under control again. I might have done the stairs a little bit too much today. I wish I could do a drawing of my foot and show you where it hurts the most. But I am not creative that way and I have no idea what program/app to use to make it. I don’t even know how to make a meme. I just am not a creative person when it comes to stuff like that.

I hope he won’t be mad that I stopped going to PT. I hated going because it just brought me more pain. And I could never remember the damn exercises the PT gave me, even though she gave me sheets on the exercises. I have too many things going on in my brain and so I just couldn’t retain what I was being taught. After my last session with her, my foot exploded and I barely made it home. So if he should tell me I need to go back, I just am not going to. The pain is just too complex at this point. What I would like is an MRI of my ankle and foot to see if there are any changes since my last one.

As far as meds go, I don’t think he will prescribe me another pain med. The NSAID hasn’t worked out as well as I was hoping it to. That would be the only change I could see happening. The baclofen has helped, though it doesn’t help all spasms. It has helped ease the tightness that I had surrounding my ankle and calf area. But it hasn’t helped the back spasms or hip pain that I have been experiencing. I am going to tell him about my hip and see if he can do something about that. My PCP hasn’t been too worried about it but this has been going on for more than eight months now. Today I was sweeping the floor and it caused my hip to flare up. I could barely stand afterwards. And it still is hurting me. It’s odd because it hasn’t bothered me in a few weeks and now with me sleeping on it, it flared up again. I know it is still weak from my surgeries. And I haven’t strengthened it since I pulled it out back in December. I sneezed and my back went out. My hip muscle is what hurts the most and I just can’t seem to stretch it enough to get it loose. It sucks. All the exercises that I have learned to deal with it haven’t helped at all. Course I don’t know what muscle it is that I have pulled so that kind of sucks. Knowing my luck, my hip will be fine come Tuesday morning.

Saturday Blog 26

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

Saturday Blog 26

I had a rough night of pain. I didn’t sleep well. I spent the day just resting my ankle as I really didn’t want to make it hurt again. The pain and swelling had really gotten bad. So I stay in and only went downstairs to stuff my face and use the bathroom. I plan on taking a shower soon. I think it will relax me. I haven’t taken a pain pill all day, so that is good. I will probably take a couple tonight just so I can sleep without worrying about pain creeping up. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow.

I watched “Gone with the Wind” after the baseball game. I never knew how much Scarlett was a two faced bitch. But then, that is what the character is. I couldn’t bare to watch the end as I know the child dies and wrecks the marriage even further with Rhett Butler. It’s just sad.

I wrote a distressing status on Facebook last night. I think it was like three in the morning when I woke up in pain again. I was pissed and hurting. I didn’t get any responses, none even in the morning. Only response I got was about posting that I was watching the movie and that was a cruel friend of mine calling me a racist. That really pissed me off. I should unfriend her as I am tired of her jokes. This is the first time she has called me a racist. I don’t care if it is in jest. You don’t call people that unless they truly are and I don’t think I am. I have never been prejudiced against another person for the race, religion, or creed. I don’t know how to hate a person for these things. I do hate a person if they are an asshole or not. You can be an asshole of any color, religion, or creed. Half the senators running for president are, well, they are more brainless than most people. How they got elected to their positions I will never know. Nor do I care to know. I just hope the country has sense not to make them president or this country will be a cesspool more than it already is.

Last night I was editing as I felt up to it. It was once of the few activities that I could do without moving too much. Half of what I wrote is getting tossed out. My therapist might disagree with me but I am the one writing this thing, not her. The stuff I am tossing out are the blog posts that aren’t really dealing with mental illness at all. It is just a blog post of how my day went. I don’t know what made me think that it would be good in a short story when there is no story or theme or even connecting points. I wrote a blog about coffee and therapy and it was more about how I drink my coffee than it was about therapy. That is when I started questioning what I was writing. Maybe I shouldn’t come out with a second book. My writing doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me anyway. Not like I can write on demand, I can’t. But I should be able to be creative enough to write something about mental illness.

The Boston fireworks are going off. Big bangs are being heard. I hate noise like that. Sounds like bombs going off. It scares me. There also seem to be helicopters flying in the area. That almost never happens. I know they were having some flyovers with some military jets but I didn’t get the memo about helicopters. Just weird. Maybe they are filming the fireworks. I don’t know. I lost interest in the works when I was a kid. I used to love 4th of July but then things changed after I lost my hearing in one of my ears. It wasn’t appealing to me anymore.

I heard there is a case in Belgium where a 24 year-old was granted the right to die because she is depressed. It will be, I think, assisted suicide. She apparently wanted to die since the age of six. In the story, it told of her wanting to kill herself with a pistol. I didn’t think a child that age could have those kind of thoughts. I started having thoughts of dying when I was eight. But I had an abused childhood. The article didn’t say if this girl was abused or not, or even go into specifics on why she wanted to die. Only that she was granted the right after being committed for two years. I have mixed feelings about this. She thinks she is a hopeless case, but all depressed people think that. I even think that. I know that if I went to my psychiatrist and told her she had to help me kill myself because I was hopeless, I would be committed too. I guess the laws in Belgium are different than the states because a two year commitment at a hospital is unheard of these days. The article also didn’t say what kind of treatment she has had. I am curious to know only because as bad as my depressions have been, they seem to get better over time. Granted the suicidality of my condition doesn’t change. I always want to die. I just don’t act on those feelings. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I am just not desperate enough to want to die. Or my despair isn’t that great as it once was. I don’t know. I do know that I don’t want to hurt people with my death and that keeps me going, sadly.

What A Day!

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

I woke up in pain, which is the first time in as many days. I haven’t been in pain in the morning in a long time. But it happened today and I could barely put weight on my foot while I was taking a shower and getting around the house to get ready for dealing with my father. I ended up taking a pain pill, something I usually don’t do when I have to go out, but the pain was so bad. I had to take something. I made myself some breakfast before leaving because I knew I would be at the hospital for most of the afternoon and will have a sugar crash around lunch time if I didn’t eat anything. That would be bad because I would become very cranky. I went to Starbucks and got my mocha, free as it was my reward. I had it loaded, with shots of caramel, hazelnut, and espresso (4). I needed the caffeine to get me through the day.

I spent most of the damn morning and afternoon dealing with my father. I had to endure his greedy stories about how bad my grandmother was to him and to her own family (not true by the way but he thinks it is). I couldn’t take the whole conversation, AGAIN. He has it in his mind that my mother’s family is living off the high horse (which they aren’t) and he has to scrape by, which he deserves because he is an asshole. I kept telling him I don’t care to listen to this bullshit (didn’t say that or I would not be living right now), but he kept talking away with such vengeance. I cannot stand him. I hate him. I really do. It stresses me out and all I wanted to do was get the fuck away from him. So much so that I nearly forgot to put one of his medications in his box, so I had to go back to his apartment after I left. He just gets me so riled up it’s not funny.

While I we were waiting for the doc, who of course was running late, my therapist texted me with a time she had available. I really didn’t want a session today but after the stories and lies my father was telling me, I think I need it. Did I mention how much I hate my father? The doc gave us a six month appointment follow up. My father is telling everyone he gave him, “6 months” because he is doing so well. I had enough of his exaggerations. And I still have to deal with him on Father’s day. I was going to get him a gift but I think I will wait until I have money this week. What difference does it make if it’s a few days late? We are taking him out for dinner. I don’t know what the name of the place is called but it’s in my hometown that I grew up in. I don’t consider where I am living now to be my hometown and never will. I hate it here, but I can’t afford to live on my own so I just suck it up.

It was cold when I left the house so I dressed appropriately. Then the heat turned up and I was dying. It got really warm by 1400. I am in my AC’d room cooling down. I don’t care that it isn’t a heat wave, I just need cold air. Because the pain in my foot is still acting up, I made an appointment with my physiatrist (muscle and bone doctor). I think something is going on with either the tendon or with my toes. Whatever it is, I am in serious pain. But I have no swelling, which is odd. Usually I only get foot pain if my foot swells, but it’s not swollen. Damn nerve damage has really fucked me over. I would see my PCP but I know he is just going to refer me to the physiatrist. It just sucks that I am having a hard time getting around today. I don’t have anything to do the rest of the afternoon so I am just putting my foot up on my bed and going to wait till the pain meds kick in. I have thought of moving it along faster by drinking alcohol but I don’t think my therapist or psychiatrist would approve. Honey whiskey from Jack Daniels will have to wait another day.

While I was at Starbucks this morning, I did some writing, but no editing. It was way too early and I didn’t have the brain power to do it. So I just wrote in my journal for an hour. I was tempted to get a breakfast sandwich but my funds are running low so I have to be skimpy. I have a 0930 appointment tomorrow with my psychiatrist so I need coffee more than a sandwich. I think I will have the same drink I had today. It was very good! I love my snickers latte.

I forgot to mail my therapist her letter, again. I totally forgot about it until I was at the bus stop. Figures. It’s just about the book review that I wrote, nothing else. WOW, I cannot believe the throbbing of my toes right now. It’s like someone is hammering each bone in my foot. I feel really nerve wracked about this. I hate being in pain and I have been most of the day. I had to walk to my father’s pharmacy to pick up his prescription and then walk to his apartment complex. The doctor just wrote for a week’s supply, which I am not happy about. I called and left a message as that is just not good practice. If it was his cholesterol pill, fine, but it’s his heart medication that controls his heart rhythm. My father has afib so kind of needs this medication. And I hate that I would have to call back next week for yet another refill because this asshole is an asshole. My father doesn’t have an appointment with him till the 30th. He could have written the script until that day, which is two weeks away. I just get frustrated with this doctor. He is always in a rush, writes shit while not talking to you, flips through papers while trying to talk to you, and I just get annoyed. He thinks I am going to jump ship to his system, he is crazy. All my father’s doctors are at the hospital I took him to today and that is where he is going to stay. I am not going to switch him to the worst hospital in Boston because that is where this jerk practices out of. Not while I have a say over my father’s medical care, and my sisters are behind me on this. It’s just sad that I can’t get a PCP at the hospital where I take him. If I worked there, I would know who to call but I don’t anymore.

What the fuck is it with my parents annoying me today?? I know I am in pain and that doesn’t help but fucking A. My mother just called about dinner and was being snotty about it because I didn’t want eggs. UGH! I need to get the fuck away from them, I really do!

More Suicidal Ramblings

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

Tonight I was going through my blogs and came across one called “Am I still a Midnight Demon”? I remember writing that one because at the time, I was writing during the day, not at my usual midnight hours. The time had shifted because I was sleeping regularly and wasn’t so suicidal.

Now my sleep is messed up and I am again thinking about taking my life. I have been thinking about this plan for a long time now. But as much as I want to go through with this date, this time, I just can’t. I cannot take my life because I am stuck here. I would hurt too many people, those around me, those far away from me, people I don’t even know that well. So I am writing because my heart is dark. I recently took a “Rorschach” type of test on the internet. It said that I was dark. My aunt had used that term after she read my book. We were supposed to get together for a chat but we never did. Typical of my family. They always make these plans on getting together but never follow through. No matter. The chat might have caused me to feel bad and I would have hated that. She would be one of the people that would have been hurt the most by my death.

I recently did a google search for a former therapist so I could send her my book and give her a little update on where I was. If she contacted me, and I was dead, that would so suck. I am not expecting her to contact me, but you never know. I hope she remembers who I am. I spent three years of therapy with her so I hope she does remember me.

I really feel at a loss. If I don’t go ahead with my plan, I will be forced to “live” and I don’t quite know what that means. I have been struggling with death for so long that I really don’t know any other way to live. My life, to me, feels worthless. I don’t have a future. Hell I can’t even imagine what will happen tomorrow and that will be happening in the next few hours. I know my sleeping problem is part of the reason I am depressed. I tried to convey this to my psychiatrist at my last meeting but I think I just made light of it and it wasn’t heard. I often say that I am depressed but really don’t tell her how bad things are. I still have appetite issues, even though I haven’t lost or gained any weight. I think my on/off appetite makes up for it. The caloric intake that I have equals itself out on my eating and not eating days, I guess. I feel useless, worthless, full of guilt at times. And you can’t forget about the psychache. Tonight I have had to take deep breaths trying to dislodge the heaviness in my chest. It’s like a heavy coat that I always carry but no one sees. I wish my psych had some magic pill I could take to make it go away but she doesn’t. Her hands are tied because I am such a fucking treatment resistant case. No pill has worked to alleviate my depression, successfully, for a long time. It was remeron that saved me last summer but I don’t think it is working anymore. Hell, I want to give up all my psych meds except my abilify and Ativan. But I know that if I do, I will just feel worse and might be impulsive enough to try and attempt suicide. I need to stay on the abilfy to keep the voices and other psychotic symptoms away. The Ativan I just need to take with the abilify to keep the side effects away. I also need the Ativan to keep the crazies away when I need sleep. It helps to shut my brain down enough so I can go to sleep when I am hyped up, for whatever reason. I don’t get hyped up too often at night but sometimes when it’s after 0200, I need the shut down. Otherwise, I might be up all night. The “crazies” are when the thoughts that are ruminating and I can’t turn them off. I often don’t know what to with myself.

I often think about what my death would bring. If people would be better off without me in this world. I sometimes feel like I am a burden to all that I touch. I hate living this life feeling this way. Nothing makes me happy or brings me joy. I always feel discontented all the time. The only thing that I value in my life is my writing, which sometimes I feel is useless ramblings. I got the brilliant idea of collecting these ramblings and making another book out of them. But then I thought, who wants to read about my suicidal feelings? It’s one thing to post this to the internet. It’s free. But having a book means someone has to pay to read it and not that many people would, I think. My words are meaningless.

I just started a book about shame and perfectionism. It’s a self-help book that deals with insights into what is causing shame. Author has ADHD. She talks in circles and it’s hard to follow her. I don’t know if I am going to get anything from this book but I have learned what has caused my anxiety with the few pages that I have read. I never had anxiety until I moved into the town I currently live in. And it’s because of change I get anxiety. Having a chronic pain illness changes you and I have anxiety because I never know when that pain is going to shoot up. The author doesn’t talk about suicide or suicidal thoughts. My guess is she veered away from that as much as possible. I seriously doubt that in the 20 years she has been practicing, no one has been suicidal at times. But then she doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know that part of the reason I want to end my life is because I cannot take the physical pain I feel nearly every day. Tonight the pain is way up there despite taking my pain medication. I might have to take the stronger pill to quiet it down. I just never know when and if the pain meds are going to work. The pain is from nerve damage that caused a pain syndrome. Most of the pain is physical because the pain meds usually do work but tonight I am feeling different kinds of pain all at once. And it is shooting up my heart rate causing me to feel panic. I think that I might get something known as Cauda Equina Syndrome again and it sets off my post traumatic stress disorder symptoms nearly every time. This change is what causes me to panic. I might not have a full blown anxiety attack but I feel really nerve racked. I try different things to get the pain under control besides medication. I write, I distract, I listen to music. I even talk to my “normal” voices. Sometimes that helps. Not every time, but it helps the anxiety more than the pain flare up. I don’t know if the anxiety that I feel jacks up my pain levels or vice versa. It’s hard to tell. I just know that since I developed this pain syndrome, my life has changed and it hasn’t been for the better. Another reason why I want to take my life. I just want the pain to end and if that means my life has to end, too, well so be it.

Another thing this author talks about is dignity. She states that it can never be taken away because no one can take it from you. How wrong she is. My dignity has hurt in so many ways from my pain illness it’s not funny. I have bladder and bowel accidents. Every time I crap my pants it hurts. My dignity takes a hit. It takes me days to recover from this. My bladder has leaked more over the last few months and I am so used to it that it doesn’t really bother me as much anymore. It’s still in the back of my mind, but it still reminds me that I am not a “whole” person anymore. Those days are gone, long, long gone. I have been dealing with this loss for nine years now. I wish I could say that it gets easier but it doesn’t. The smell always reminds you that you are not a fully functioning person anymore. I used to wear diapers when I went out for more than four hours. But now I don’t. It depresses me more when I take the diaper off and I have urine stains on the it. I don’t realize I leak because I can’t feel myself due to a nerve injury to my cauda equina nerves. They are the nerves in your back and control all the functions below the waist. I usually don’t drink enough fluids throughout the day because the more you drink, the more you got to pee. But some days I am just so thirsty that I need to drink, especially now that summer is approaching. It just sucks.