Tag: CRPS (formerly RSD)

bored to tears

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

Tonight my mother will be making fish. I saw the heads and tails were still on them. I won’t be eating that tonight, because ewww. I know that is how they come but her having to dissect them just freaks me out. And it is tilapia, which I don’t particularly like anyways. It’s a very thin fish that just doesn’t taste very good after it’s been thawed out. I’d rather have cod or haddock.

I have been pretty bored today. And my foot is a jerk. Just when I wanted to take a shower to go out, it starts hurting really bad. All I did was move it a little bit and it explodes in pain. I had to wait for pain meds to calm it down some so I could shower. By the time I was done showering, my hip went on strike. I give up. I guess I am not going to go to Walgreens to see if they have the new Oreos S’Mores cookies. I will try again tomorrow.

I was looking for a photo mailer to mail a pic for a friend. I have been meaning to send it to him and I just came across it. I failed to find it, which is why I wanted to go to Walgreens, too. I need a couple of mailers as I have some stuff to send out. Why must pain always dictate what I do? It totally sucks. And seeing that I am incapacitated, I decided to write a review for a research article I came across while looking for the mailer. I must have at least three copies, if not more, of this article. I thought it was a good idea but then the pain meds turned my brain to mush. Now I can barely write this blog. I am kind of blunted in my thinking patterns. It also doesn’t help that my vision seems to be impaired. I have been having a hard time focusing today for some reason. I really think it is because I have been solely using single vision lenses for the past month and not my progressive glasses. I can’t wait till next week when I can order them. I really hope that they can make the lenses out of the existing frames that I have. I really don’t want to buy another set of frames. I have too many old pairs of glasses laying around my room. I am also hoping that if the glasses don’t cost me that much, I can get a new phone. My phone keeps acting up and it’s pissing me off. Yesterday my therapist was calling and it took four rings for the stupid call answer button to come on. I am just glad it didn’t go to voicemail by then. Usually the call answer button comes on before the number even registers but this time it was the reverse. I am so done with this phone. And if I can’t use it as a fricken phone, what is the point of it?? My therapist was kind of in distress last night. She doesn’t know what she did, but she erased all my text messages that I sent her. She was literally panicking when we were talking about it. I kept telling her it was ok, that I am sure it’s there but hidden some how. After we talked, I sent her a text of my latest short story. She said it was the only text from me. OOPS. I think she needs another phone, too, but that will give her super anxiety. I find it funny and I do laugh. She is just so anti-technology, I just don’t get it. I mean, I use my phone for emails, texts, Twitter, Facebook, and the main thing, a phone. She just uses it for texts and phone.

I am going to write the review for that article. It will be another blog post and I will share it with my therapist friends on Twitter. I haven’t written a review in some time and it will give me something to do. I have written about this article in other papers that I have written, but never solely on this material.

I thought about editing the blog I wrote the other day but didn’t. It just seems like I don’t have the brain power to get my thoughts coherent enough to put on paper. And it’s very hard to write when you have a foot that explodes just because it feels like it. Also sucks when you stand up and your hip decides to go wonky. I hate being in pain all the time, every single fucking day. It just takes so much out of me and I end up doing nothing. Then I am bored to tears. I just want to give up. Just take my life and end things so that I won’t be suffering anymore. Because me not even being able to write because my brain turns to mush due to the medications I have to take to control my pain, just sucks.

Pain and suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, suicidality

I started off my day in pain, around 0400. I hate waking up in pain. I stayed up for a little while and finally gave in to taking pain meds around 0800 when I just couldn’t take it anymore. I texted my therapist and she gave me a time for today. I really need someone to talk to. I feel like I am losing my mind with this loss of sleep. I went back to sleep after I had breakfast and the pain meds kicked in. I had weird dreams about my psychiatrist. We were on a boat and she wanted to give me a cortisone injection in my hip. That was the first dream. The second dream was also on a boat but other than that, I don’t remember much. What was weird, is that when I woke up, my hip was hurting me. I think I need to go back to physical therapy to get it looked at. It has been bothering me for some time now, since November of last year. I sneezed and pulled my back out. It took me a month to recover and then I sneezed again right before Christmas and took it out again. I have been limited in what I can do. Today I walked to Walgreens which is only a block and half from my house. By the end of the block, my hip was in agony and I didn’t think I was going to make it but I pushed through. It got a little better by the time I reached the store. I only went in for a couple of items and by the time I reached home, I was still sore. I haven’t done any lifting or sneezing the past few days so I am not sure why my hip is bothering me so much. I know it’s muscular because if I rub where it hurts, there are knots there. I just hope that it’s not the beginning of getting my nerve condition again. I have no other symptoms, like radiating pain down my leg or increase in loss of my bowels or bladder to make me think I am in trouble. But the thing with CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, things can escalate quickly and without warning. The main reason I don’t want to make a fuss about it, is that I know most physical therapists don’t understand nerve injuries. Yes, muscle pain is common in back injuries but my back muscles have been injured because of nerve damage. That is why my hip goes out when I have a horrific sneeze attack.

My foot still hurts. It has been hurting more since I came back from the store. I can’t stand that I am still having trouble walking after all this time. Last night, I had swelling, severe pain, and the veins popped out in my foot. I don’t get how this is not CRPS, Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. I know the skin changes are not that drastic. But then when I see a doc, I don’t have the worse pain of my life. I might be a 3-5 on a scale of 1-10 when I see a doc. What annoys me is that my PCP doesn’t believe that I have this condition, even after three doctors have told me I have it. It just makes me want to kill myself in frustration. Severe pain always brings out the suicide part of me, not like it isn’t already there to begin with. The pain just gives me the little push I need to think about it more. I just feel trapped. I know that if I kill myself, more than 115 people will be crushed. The people most devastated will be my family and psychiatric team (therapist and psychiatrist). It is this reason why I haven’t attempted. I think that if I had a place to go to, I might be more willing to try. I don’t want to kill myself at home because I don’t want my family to find me like that. But I can’t afford a hotel room and I can’t risk someone finding me in a public place, like a park or something. I can picture myself going through with any of my methods that are running in my head, but I just don’t have the guts to actually go through with it. I am pathetic.

Balancing act with Chronic Pain

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

I stayed up pretty late last night as the baseball game was on the west coast time. We kicked “King” Felix’s butt and seeing as we took care of Sonny Gray the other night, I have to say this road trip is going fairly well. Sure we have had a couple strings of losses but overall, the hitting and pitching has been much better. I hope it continues. Today’s game is at 1600 so I will most likely be lurking in the BPD chat. It happens every Sunday at that time. Last week was a good chat.

I slept till 0330 today, so my day did not start off well. I just woke up from a nap as I so needed it. I even had coffee before I took a nap and it didn’t keep me up. I feel rested. I didn’t go into a deep sleep, but slept enough to feel better than I did before the nap. I didn’t have any dreams. Lately, my dreams have been really weird. But I don’t remember them long enough to write down or keep in the memory banks. I just wake up feeling discombobulated.

I made breakfast when I got up late morning. I had a bacon sandwich. I really don’t feel hungry for lunch or dinner right now. My bowels have been going most of the day. I guess the senna is working really well, maybe a little too well. Only thing that I think I am going to eat next is rice or a grilled cheese. My mother is most like going to call me soon. I don’t care that is what I want for my dinner, when I get hungry. And I got no appetite right now.

I need to take a shower today but my back has been acting up while I stand. Even sitting, my lower back just wants to cramp out. I don’t know what that is about. I haven’t done any heavy lifting or twisting of any sort. But there has been a change in the temperature so that probably is what is causing this havoc. I can still move, just gingerly. I had set a goal for myself today to shred some old prescription papers. I still haven’t done it, yet. I keep meaning to when I go downstairs but I just don’t grab the stack to take with me. I probably will do it after the game as I won’t have anything to do this evening.

I have been feeling really low today. Actually, the last few days my mood has been lower than it should be. I haven’t thought of suicide but I am not that far from it. It’s always in the back of my mind. It’s when it’s in the front of my mind that things get from bad to worse. Every day I do this Mood Traces app activity. It lists all the criteria for depression. Each day you rate how your mood is. If this app is accurate, I have been pretty depressed the last few days. Of course, I don’t really need an app to tell me this. But it’s nice to monitor my symptoms. It is going to suck when I switch phones. I don’t think I am going to keep the app. As great as the app is, I find it depressing to know how depressed I am every day. It kind of makes me feel guilty about my moods, like I am not trying hard enough to make myself feel better. Every day it also records your daily activity levels. Even on days when I don’t leave the house, I can get a few minutes of activity as I walk around my house as I am always carry my phone, usually. But then there are days when I have 0 minutes of activity and it makes me feel bad that I didn’t go out or at least try. Mostly those days are rest days because my ankle needs to rest. If I have too much activity, my pain levels are going to spike. Then I am going to be in a worse mood. It’s always a balance act in dealing with chronic pain.

I read my “idiot” book today. The plot thickens. I am really enjoying reading this book. I think the next book I am going to read from Dostoevsky is “the Double”. That was a very interesting story. I finally wrote the review for the “Graveyard Book”. I posted it on Goodreads and Amazon.com. It was a short review, nothing elaborate. Just short and concise, which I think every review should be. When I was reading the reviews for the book (which was over 1200), I couldn’t believe how long some of them were. It was like reading a book report on some of them. And if you didn’t read the book, the reviewer gave away most of what the book was about, which I thought sucked.

Tweets from Last Night

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

Tweets from Last Night

Last night I was in a rough spot. I was feeling really depressed and decided to take out my frustrations on Twitter. I some how digressed and came into being of my comparison of psychache scales paper. I went through it trying to find the link of the article as I can’t post it without infringing on copyrights. The PDF is available online, but for a price. In the article, it has the psychache scale that I used to use. I still have it in some old journals, with some modifications of my needs. Anyways, I was going through this paper and I realized I left out that reference. So at around 0230 in the morning, I am fixing this error. It was a crazy night.

I had started off saying why I do not trust the American Psychological Association. And then it somehow veered into my paper. I don’t know what else I was talking about. It was late, I was wicked tired. I wasn’t in pain, thank goodness. Otherwise, I might have had another Hyde episode. I was careful not to say how suicidal I was because I didn’t want people coming after me in the morning or on my Facebook page. But most of the later tweets never made it to FB for some reason.

I got an email from my psychiatrist this morning reminding me that she will be away next week and that another doc is covering for her. She said that if I need someone urgently, to page him. I don’t think paging someone at three in the morning is a good idea, especially with someone I don’t know. She will be available via email should something non urgent comes up. I still will have my therapist I can bug and text any time of day. She doesn’t responds to my text but will go over them in session. Then I have to try and remember what the hell I texted her. It can be a little frustrating sometimes. I am going to try and see her on Tuesday, if I can get my sister’s car. Course it all depends on if my leg cooperates with me. Today I woke up in pain. I didn’t have pain last night but woke up with it this morning. It is so random that it becomes very frustrating. I had to go to my father’s today to do his pills. He again didn’t take one to two days. So frustrating and the reason he doesn’t take it, is because he doesn’t want to pee every “ten minutes”. Tough shit. He is a sick man and needs to have the fluid out of his body. I just wish that my mother’s docs would put her on another diuretic so that her ankles aren’t so swollen. But they don’t. I find it sad that she doesn’t get the care that she needs.

My father’s girlfriend came over today. So we spent some time talking with her. She is a nice lady. I then had to leave after about a half hour because my pain was getting to be really bad. Plus it was kind of sickening seeing my father show PDAs toward her. He never showed that to my mother all the time they were together. He is really a bastard. I ate while I was over there. My father made chicken cutlets. Surprisingly, they weren’t too salty. I really want a pizza now. I have been craving it the last few days. But I don’t want to get a whole pizza because I just won’t finish it all. I wish I could get half a pizza delivered, and fries. I love fries with pizza. Maybe that is what I will order later tonight.

Baseball is on late tonight. They are in Seattle playing the Mariners. It is going to be a long night. I am tempted to make coffee so I can stay up. But I probably will be up anyways, least until midnight. I just hope that if I do stay up and listen to the game, the midnight demons don’t come out.