Tag: CRPS (formerly RSD)

On being suicidal

by Midnight Demon, posted in baseball, Bipolar Disorder, blogging, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicidality

Hate mixed states

I feel like I am in a mixed state right now. I feel hyper and manic and the next minute, I feel depressed and full of psychological pain. The oscillation is killing me. I just want to go to sleep but am unable to because of fucking baseball. I have to see if the Mets win this game after they fucking blew it. They had the lead and then they gave it up. Unreal. This is an elimination game. The Mets lose this game and the Royals win the series. I will be very upset if this happens.

I have been noticing my numbers (stats) have been up more than usual. Today the US has read my blog more than the UK. Yesterday it was the reverse. And still my “Knackered” blog is the most read for the day. It is my most popular blog.

I was reading more of the book “Dead Wake”. What I read really upset me because if the British acted, they could have avoided the tragedy of the Lusitania. They knew in advance that the Germans were tracking her. It’s just sad that things like this happened.

I took my nerve pain meds to try and ease this uneasiness that I am feeling and hopefully get some sleep. I am very tired but I am fighting it for some reason. I don’t like how I am feeling. I feel like I am walking a fine line of insanity vs sanity. I hate feeling keyed up one minute and feeling like I am going to fall flat on my face in another. I need sleep but I am too wound up.

Well, the Royals just fucking scored so I guess they win the series. I am very upset. The score is 7-2, I don’t think the Mets can score 5 runs to retie the game or win it. So fucking close and so damn sad.

I tried doing a psychache scale tonight. It was fine until the last four questions. Then I couldn’t distinguish between my physical pain from my psychological pain because my foot was acting up at the time. As I read the questions, my pain just screamed at me. The total score was 54, which is mediocre. I am on the cusp of a suicidal crisis. But because my therapist and I have basically called a damn “truce”, I can’t discuss this with her. It makes me angry that I have these suicidal feelings and I can’t talk about them openly with her because we are trying to work things out between us. But I can talk about my feelings here because that is what my blog is about. Being suicidal and talking about it. Because if I didn’t have this outlet, I think I would act on my feelings. Or be in dire straights at this hour. With this blog, I can tell people I am suicidal and it’s okay to talk about it. I am not going to get shunned for it. I just want to die because my feelings at the moment feel that way. I know this will pass and I will feel better in the morning. But right now it sucks like all hell and being hyper isn’t helping. I don’t want to reach out because I know I will fall asleep soon. I am already starting to feel sedated from the meds I took (nothing in extreme). I might send this blog to my therapist so she knows what kind of night I am having. Maybe I won’t because it might freak her out. I am tired of being in pain both psychologically and physically. Right now, it is not at the point where it is unbearable but I don’t want to feel either. I have resources to me when I feel this way but I don’t feel like using them. I am too tired to explain why I am in pain and want to take my life. They won’t understand psychache and constriction and perturbation. No one understands it except Shneidman. But he is dead and there is nothing I can do about it. He was the person that taught me about this stuff. Reduce the pain, reduce the suicidality. Question is how to reduce the pain when nothing works on it. The reality is that you need to uncover what the person’s needs are in this moment of crisis and try to alleviate them as best you can. If they need validation, validate them. If they need affiliation, affiliate them. If they need understanding, show it to them. Ask them where do they hurt and how can I help you? It doesn’t take rocket science to figure this out. My heart is breaking into a thousand pieces because I don’t feel validated or understood.
Meds are taking over now so I am going to go to sleep and hopefully not wake up to this nightmare of feelings.

I don’t want to exist

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

I was going to install the drivers for my printer on my old laptop when I realized it can’t be done. I need to have the laptop unplugged and I can’t do that. The battery is dead. So until I get the new battery, I can’t print anything. I really wanted to print that story I wrote a few weeks ago so I can work on it. Always something hindering my procrastination for getting this story done.

I tried to finish “Order of the Phoenix” tonight. I failed. I got through one chapter and that is all my brain could absorb. I really don’t know why I am having such difficulty. I usually go through Harry Potter books like they were child play. But for whatever reason, I am having real difficulty. I think it’s because the depression has gotten so bad.

I was going over my stats tonight. My “How to Save a Life” paper is going through the roof. I don’t know why. My CAMS paper is also getting a lot of views, not as much as save a life but getting there. I found out today that Jobes will be having a second edition of his book in the Spring. I can’t wait. I emailed my friend tonight to see if there was a CAMS therapist in my area. She said she would email him and get back to me. I asked if there was a database. It’s not listed on the CAMS-Care website. It would be cool if it did.

I got really upset by one of my twitter buddies. I don’t think he realizes how triggering his tweets can be to sensitive people like me. He was talking about rape of boys and the inhumanity of it. I agree with him that it is a social injustice, but going into detail about it, people don’t need to know. Yes, it happens and it is a terrible thing. I am not shoving it under the rug, but do I really need to hear about how the boy was penetrated? NO. That to me is wrong.

I hope my backache is gone tomorrow. Every time it rains, I hurt. It hurts so bad, I can’t lie down. I have taken meds to ease my discomfort but it hasn’t kicked in yet. What is also causing me pain is the temperature keeps going up rather than down. It was 47 degrees when I got home earlier this evening. It is now 63 degrees. That could be why I am hurting, too. I hate that I am a human barometer.

My older laptop now has EndNote ready to go. I think I am going to make a database of all my citations that I am co-authored on. I think if I go to PubMed I can export them to the database. That would be cool and handy. Unfortunately, I don’t have the PDF for the last article I am authored on. It was the last paper before I left research. I did a lot of work with the samples for this paper. Just thinking back about it, causes my hands to hurt. I was working with -80 degree samples. They were cold, even with gloves on!

My quote of the day should have been published by now. I will have more Shneidman quotes as time goes by. He was such a cool guy. Towards the end of his life, he wanted his work to go out without copyright hindrances. I thought that was pretty cool. There are certain things that are still copyrighted, but that is mostly because it isn’t his work, like Murray’s frustrated needs. That is one thing that I never understood in all my readings of his work. There are 20 needs and the sum of the need must equal 100, so each need must have a score of 5 or less. It just and still does, boggle my mind. I tried scoring the thing on myself and couldn’t come up with 100. And he is gone now so I can’t ask him about it. He really was a psychometric type of psychologist. He loved assessments and such. It is too bad that his pain scale could never some to fruition. It is too complicated and has a great risk of misinterpretation. But there are other scales that have been shown merit. Two that come to my mind that I use are the psychache scale based on the work of Ronald Holden in Canada and the works of Jobes, the SSF, suicide status form. These two have really helped with my suicidality. I don’t use the psychache form too often anymore. In fact, I don’t even know where the scale is right now. I used to copy it in the back of my journals. But I stopped that a long time ago. The SSF my therapist and I use when I am in crisis. It is useful for her. I just find it annoying sometimes because I feel like she is ignoring why I am suicidal rather than what’s behind it. I don’t know if that makes sense. She rather assess my reasons for living rather than my reasons for dying. Both are important but I usually have more reasons for dying than living. It just frustrates me. She also just assumes that I will call her or use my crisis response plan when I really just want to talk. But when I want to talk it’s late at night and I know she isn’t going to get the text until the following day. That is also frustrating. I am not saying she needs to be available 24/7, that would be asking too much. I am saying there has got to be a better plan in place that I can soothe myself so I don’t go crazy, or at least be accountable to actually doing the crisis response plan. She never checks in with me about the plan. I don’t want to cause more trouble with her. I am already on thin ice. We are just starting to make headway in what we want to do going forward. If I bring this up, she just is going to say she isn’t a suicidologist, which to me is a cop out. That is like saying I am a therapist when I am not. I just don’t get her deal. It really frustrates me that I thought things were cool and then she goes to a consulting group and that is messing things up for us. She is truly taking the stuff to heart and I feel like I am getting booted, like she doesn’t want to work with me anymore because I have become a leper or something.

I don’t know if I am suicidal anymore. I just know I don’t want to live. I don’t want to exist. It’s too painful, both physically and emotionally. I have severe heartache and chronic physical pain. Mixed together, it’s just a suicidal script. I wish I knew how to break it. Reading Shneidman has been helpful. He gets the suicidal mind. I have two options: exist or die. I rather die but instead I am existing, only because my family, psychiatrist and therapist would miss me greatly. I am existing because of guilt. It doesn’t make me feel good living this way. If I knew my death wouldn’t cause pain, I know I would be dead in a heartbeat. Depression is part of it but it’s not the whole of it. And no one understands it. That is why I am so frustrated. I have to keep changing my date to satisfy others. This is no way to live. I don’t know how to live but I am pretty sure jumping suicide dates is not the way to go.

Cramping and other things

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

Cramps and other things

Last night, I fell asleep sometime after the 7th inning of the Cubs/Mets game. Mets won and will be going to the World Series!!! Baseball season is still going on and as long as it is, I will be paying attention. I fell asleep before the game was over. It was a blow out anyways and I didn’t think the Cubs were going to come back. Unfortunately, I must have moved my ankle the wrong way while I was sleeping because it cramped up pretty good. I couldn’t get it to straighten out without manually pushing it. I hate when I get cramps like that. It’s around 0415 when it started. I am glad it went away but now I can’t sleep. I took my pain meds and some Ativan in case the cramps come back. My ankle is really hurting from being contorted so I am hoping the pain meds help.

I was reading my Twitterline last night and a family doctor that I follow tweeted about a study of back pain and narcotics, saying that it wasn’t any good. I didn’t read the article because I knew it would upset me. I have heard over the years that the pain med I take is not good for acute pain, just chronic pain. Now I have this article and I don’t know what to think. I just know that if I was given pain meds when I first hurt my back, I might have avoided seeing a chiropractor and not ended up with cauda equina syndrome! I might have ended up with it the second time, anyway as I certainly wasn’t seeing a chiropractor then. If you have herniated discs, I encourage you NOT to see a chiropractor. I am not writing off the whole profession, just be wise that not all of them care about your spine and will want to keep you as a patient for as long as possible. I was helped before I got injured but then after I got injured, I wrote them off because I had herniated discs or slipped discs. Any spinal manipulation can cause CES if you have herniated discs. And don’t get me started on epidural injections. Those are just a money maker for doctors and have no real benefit for YOU. There is a 50% chance you might be helped and a chance you could get worse symptoms. I have scar tissue on my back (four back surgeries will do that) and in my nerves so I will NEVER get a shot in the back, no matter how enticing the doc may be.

I think the Mets and the Blue Jays are going to be in the Series. I could be wrong. Jays are facing a won game elimination so they really need to come back if they are to play. I really don’t want to the Royals to win.

My old laptop battery is dead. It cannot be revived. I luckily found one that was cheaper than $50 at Office Depot on Amazon.com. I love Amazon, I can get practically anything there. I always make sure that I go over $35 so I get free shipping. This order, I am ordering a bunch of baseball movies. I don’t know if I will be able to play them on my laptop as the screen is messed up, I might have to wait. But I got the classics like Sandlot, Major League and a League of her own. I wanted Bull Durham but it’s out of stock right now. I figured the movies might help my baseball depression, though it’s slowly moving toward my regular depressive state. I keep having thoughts of ending my life. I imagine doing something that takes my life away and then my niece finds me. It is unsettling because I don’t want her to be the one that finds me. It will be too traumatic for her. Not to say it will be any easier on another person, but a little kid would be too much.

One of the authors that I follow on Facebook posted pictures of this new writing space. I wish I could clear my room so I can get to my desk and then clear off my desk so I can have a space to write. Maybe it will be better than writing from my bed all the time. It might help me mentally not to have all that junk on my desk. I know most of it are my disability papers and old invoices and such. I haven’t touched them in more than two years so I think it’s safe to junk them. My author friend had his laptop and an old typewriter, but no paper. I found this odd. How are you supposed to type if you have no paper? It was very tidy, which kind of unnerved me. I am not a neat freak. I can’t stand things in proper places. I like clutter, but not too much. Unfortunately, I have a ton of clutter and can’t get out from underneath it. I have a bunch of my clothes in a box right now because I just can’t get to my closet because of stuff. It may sound strange but the clutter makes me feel more grounded and packed in. I like it even though it drives my family members crazy. Sometimes it does annoy me, especially when I am looking for something and can’t remember where it is.

Meds are kicking in now. I hope I wake up in time to make pancakes. I am addicted to oatmeal pancakes. They are my favorite food right now. It will be a good hearty breakfast. Until later.

just done

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

I didn’t sleep well last night so I have been tired most of the day. I didn’t want to have coffee because I thought I would go out. But I didn’t. I had therapy and was exhausted so I just took a nap.

My therapist was in a talkative mood today. It annoyed me. Not even half way through session, I spoke up because she was just started talking about how I should be an editor. WTF does that have to do with my depression or that today is my CES anniversary day? I got so pissed off. Then when she finally shut up, I didn’t talk the rest of the session and I didn’t care. I was done. I told her I didn’t want to talk to her the rest of next week and she pulled the brakes on that idea. Maybe meeting twice a week is too much. Maybe I just need once a week. I just know this isn’t working out. Then she says we need to meet in person. Yea, lovely idea. How when I don’t have a stupid car? Like meeting in person is going to solve the problem. I am just done with her and therapy. I almost cried while we were talking. I don’t know why I wanted to cry. But she didn’t have a clue or a sense that I was ready to cry. She never has a clue.

I wanted to kill myself in the worst way today but I just decided to sleep. My day will be coming soon enough. I am just so damn done. I am done being in pain and dealing with an airhead therapist. Sadly, I don’t think I can find another therapist in my area. Most that I have tried to see end the conversation soon as they find out I have a suicidal past. So screw that. No one new wants to help me so be it. I think after 11 times is enough searching anyway. Course, having to go through 13 therapists are enough. I should have stopped at ten and ended my life. Thing is, I am not really that depressed, yet I want to kill myself. I really don’t think you need to be depressed in order to try and kill yourself. People think this but it’s not clear. I mean there are a lot of people who suffer from depression. Not all want to end their life. Some do. Some don’t. And what separates those that do from those that don’t? No one really knows.

I’m just done. I don’t have anymore fighting left in me. I don’t have any hope that things are going to get better. Both my ankles are starting to hurt and I am scared something is wrong with my Achilles in my right foot. I can’t deal with anymore pain.