Tag: complex regional pain syndrome

write the pain

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

Write the pain.

For those that are frequent blog readers, you know I write about my pain, physical and emotional, most, if not all, the time. It has been the cornerstone of my blog. I can articulate what few can and my readers like what I write because they can relate.

Writing about pain has been a staple of my blog. It seems I cannot write without some measure of pain. It can be the pain associated with depression. It can be the pain associated with the chronic pain condition that I have. It can be a pain that keeps me awake at night. The pain that tears at you and is unrelenting. Whatever type of pain that I have been feeling, it has caused frustration, anguish, despair, suicidal thoughts, and agony. It makes you dread waking up in the morning. It makes you want to sleep forever, to have this escape of no consciousness. It wears you out. And exhausts you. It causes you to be unmotivated. To want to stay in bed and not face the day. But for me, it also has been the stimulus behind so many writings. I write about my darkness that is a short story. I write about the chronic pain and suicide ideation that happens frequently.

Pain has been sadly, the inspiration to write this blog because it causes such dark thoughts, and by dark thoughts I don’t mean just depressive thoughts. I’m talking about suicide ideation. Thoughts that make you think you would be better off dead than to continue living. Dark thoughts of suicide, the ones where you cannot express in normal conversation. Most of my dark thoughts are expressed in this blog because the therapist hours do not occur between 11 PM and 3 AM. It’s hard to find any here to listen between those hours. So I read about the pain. I write and I write till I am succumbed by pain meds or psych meds or exhaustion. I write the pain. Because if I did not have this outlet, the dark thoughts would take over. And I would cease to exist.

Pain is exhausting, be it physical or emotional. And to have both occur at the same time is just torture. When the meds don’t work, when the pain is overwhelming, when all you feel is anguish and misery, that is what causes you to feel like life is not worth living. Writing helps to express what I cannot it sort of makes life more bearable as the father of suicidology has said many times, decreased the psychache (pain), decreased the suicide. I have found writing the pain decreases in my dark thoughts. This doesn’t mean I have found a life worth living. It just means life is more bearable for me.

constant physical pain makes me depressed

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

I am up early yet again. I just can’t sleep more than eight hours anymore. I sleep six hours and then I am up. My foot is hurting so I guess I should take something for it before it gets worse. I already went downstairs twice for bathroom reasons. My ankle didn’t appreciate that at all. I don’t know why it is so stiff today. But then today is going to snow so that might have something to do with it. Seems every week there is some snow going on. I can’t wait for it to stop. It makes walking very difficult, especially when people don’t shovel their walk. Drives me crazy. Then you have to walk in the street and the cars get mad at you.

I am thinking of changing my “about me” blog to just living in chronic pain and having suicidal urges. I realize that is all I write about. Sure there might be a few blogs just about my depression but most of it starts with me being in physical pain. I am in constant physical pain and it makes me depressed and often times suicidal more so than my depression alone. But now that I have the pain managed to a good degree, I am less depressed about it. But I still think that I should maybe add that I also suffer from chronic physical pain.

Yesterday when I went to pick up my prescription, I was asked for the first time what my diagnosis was. I had heard people tell me that pharmacists now need a diagnosis in order to process but it never happened to me before now. Funny on my main pain medication they didn’t ask me for a diagnosis but the one I take for break through pain they did. Very weird.

It’s Sunday and I hope there is a televised spring training game for the Sox playing today. I miss baseball so much. It is the one thing that I can watch without getting bored.

It’s almost seven in the morning. I have no idea what I am going to do today. It’s cold out and is supposed to snow so I guess I will just stay inside. Monday I have my appointment with my pdoc so I will be out of the house. I don’t think I will be getting a latte anymore as the last two that I have had, has given me the jitters. This sucks. I guess I am back to drinking coffee. Sad thing is that there is no new Clover coffees that I like or are interested in. I still want to try the Mexican coffee. Maybe I will tomorrow. Their sun-dried Ethiopian coffee I didn’t like. It had a very weird aftertaste. I don’t like it when coffee has an aftertaste.

I still have depression, though it seems to be lessening as I can now type without it bothering me cognitively. I hope this continues because I would like to work on my short story this week and maybe my blurb for my book.

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 story and pain

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression

I have been continuing to add to the “darkness always win” blog that I wrote the other day. I am trying to channel the inner darkness and write it out but it is very hard to do when I don’t feel that way all the time. I felt a little bit of it today so wrote some more but have not typed it up in the word doc. I am really tired. I literally spent the day at Starbucks just writing. I also went to my eye doctor who said that I have just a bad migraine without pain when my eyes don’t focus the way they should. I guess I was more worried about the appointment than I should be as I felt so relieved I almost had to take a nap afterwards. I have been up since eight. I finally got some good sleep. I am hoping to stay up late tonight so I can finish working on this darkness story.

It is cold where I live. And supposed to snow tomorrow night into the next day. I hope they are wrong as that will mean I won’t be able to go out until Thursday. I have to be careful when it snows because I can easily slip and twist my already sore ankle. I wore the AFO today and it was good to wear it as I am not in a lot of pain tonight. I hope that continues but my foot is getting colder as I am typing this. UGH I think I am going to have to take some Neurontin if it gets hot. I hate the burning of nerve pain. Nothing helps but Neurontin and sleep aids (Ativan).

I hope I am not getting sick. I have been sneezing for the last twenty minutes. I hate when I have a sneeze attack. I don’t feel ill, so that is good. But I am tired. I don’t know if I am going to make it till nine tonight but I got to try and stay up late because otherwise I will wake up at three in the morning. That’s not fun! I swear, since losing my job, my sleep cycle has gotten worse because I have no set schedule anymore. I am tired I lie down and if I sleep, so be it. If I wake up in the middle of the night, so be it. I just play my game and be up a few hours and then go back to sleep. Granted it gets more complicated by pain, but lately, my pain levels have been, well all over the place. One day I won’t have any pain and the next it will be soaring high. I think since taking the Neurontin the other night, my pain has been less or I don’t think about it as much. It still throbs every day regardless. It just the level of throbbing that gets to me. Right now it’s at a level of 3 on a scale of 1-10. That could change when my foot warms up and I am ready to sleep. Also for some reason my right foot has been giving me grief in the morning. Naproxen has been able to control it for now but usually, once I start moving about, the pain stops. I think it’s just a muscle thing. I hope it’s not a fascititis thing as that will never go away! I hate it when my left foot gets really cold. I have a sock on it and it is under a comforter and sheets. Just not looking forward to the warm up part of it. I go through this almost every night. It gets cold, then really hot and finally I have to sleep with the foot hanging off the bed because anything that touches the foot will hurt like hell. Classic nerve pain or CRPS. I don’t know which diagnosis I prefer. I just know that either is painful enough to send me into a suicidal crisis if severe enough. And I am not talking about a level of 3. I am talking an 8+ or when there is no level to describe the pain.

I have finally figured out a way to pay off the editor sooner rather than later. My mother has decided to lessen the amount this month that I give her. With this money, though I am supposed to use it for my membership to the AAS, I have decided to pay off the editor so it’s not hanging on my head anymore and maybe that will be incentive for her to push up my number or something. I just want to publish my book and sooner rather than later before the doubts that I am having take hold full force. Because once I hit the send button or publish button, I can’t stop it. Screaming at the computer screen to cancel is not going to work. I have done that with text messages and other emails. You hit send, that is it. It is on the web forever. And I don’t think there is an eraser button for the internet.