Tag: CRPS (formerly RSD)

Daily living activities and pain

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

Daily living activities and pain

I made dinner tonight. Nothing extravagant. Just boiled some potatoes for potato salad and my mother made grilled cheese. The whole peeling the potatoes killed me even though I was sitting down while I peeled them. My foot just couldn’t take the pressure on the floor I guess. I must have stood maybe ten minutes to get the potatoes in a bowl and cool them off some so we could eat them. I made potato salad with vinegar as they were too hot for the traditional mayonnaise. I will make them tomorrow as we still have some potatoes left over.

I am in so much pain from doing a little cooking. I made myself breakfast this morning and it wasn’t as bad as it is right now. I can’t believe that just standing for a about 10-15 minutes caused my pain levels to explode. Granted I am not supposed to be doing any of this. I am supposed to be resting to get my swelling down but I just can’t stay in bed all day. I am really bummed out that doing something simple hurt me so bad. I was going to take a shower today but that is off the list.

I am supposed to go to the pharmacy tomorrow to drop off my prescription for my pain meds. I have no fucking idea how I am supposed to walk there when I am in this much pain. My sister has a graduation party to go to so it’s not like I can borrow her car or have her drive me. I am so doped up it’s probably good that I am not behind the wheel. I am going to have to force myself to walk the three blocks to the pharmacy tomorrow. I am not looking forward to it because I know I am going to be hurting. I might as well stay and wait to have it filled as I don’t want to pick up the script the next day. I will just be in the same position as I am in now. I still have to walk the three blocks either way.

My cousin called me today and pissed me off. He asked where have I been and said he left a message the other day. That is bullshit because I don’t have a call from him. I checked my phone log and the last time he called me was last week. I hate liars. Then he said maybe I didn’t get the message. That really ticked me off. I quickly got off the phone with him as I said I wasn’t in the mood to talk. But he would let me off the phone without knowing why I was so pissed off. UGH. I don’t know why I answered the phone to begin with!!

I finally got the number for the junk car company to remove my car in the driveway. Now I just have to make the call. LOL I was talking with my writing partner about this. My family has been hounding me to get rid of the car. I don’t know why. It’s not like it’s bothering anyone. But they just do it to annoy me. My sister even volunteered to call for me. But I got mad and said I would call, don’t be rushing me. I stormed out of the house and went back to my room. I have been in a lousy mood and it’s hard to call people when you are hurting. My family just doesn’t understand how much energy it take just for me to go down the stairs to pee. I hate being like this but this is what my life has become. I can’t do simple things anymore. I am just too depressed and overwhelmed. My family thinks it’s because I am lazy but I am not. I just am too overwhelmed with stuff. And I hate talking on the phone. I get worried that I might not get a good deal for the car and I will get screwed. One place already tried to get me at a lower price than what is advertised in the paper. I will call tomorrow. I have the paper by my bed and hopefully by noon, I will call one of the three numbers and see what I can get for the car.

I know my sister wants some money from me because she cleaned out the car. I didn’t ask her, she just did it on her own. It was nice of her to do it but I hate that she now wants money for it. No good deed goes unpunished, I guess.

I am really worried about one of my blogger friends. She is going through a rough time. I wish I could help her but she is across the country, on the west coast of the US. We chat usually late at night if I am up but my late at night is early evening for her. We have a three hour difference in time so it’s sometimes hard to arrange a chat. I just hope she gets through whatever she is going through without harming herself. She is talking about going back to the hospital as a defeat and I wish she didn’t think of it as that. She needs help and the hospital is there to help her. I think that is part of the stigma of having mental illness. People that are frequent visitors of the hospital take it as a personal setback of some kind when it shouldn’t be viewed as such. It’s reaching out and admitting you need help and that takes more courage than anything. I used to think like her but I realized that my life is complicated and I have severe mental illness. It requires me to be in the hospital time and time again. There might be some shame in that but it really needs to end if we are to end the stigma around mental illness.

I know a blogger/twitter person that instead of calling it mental illness, she calls it for mental health. To me, that is different. People who are mentally healthy don’t end up in the hospital a few times a year or take psych medication on a daily basis. They don’t struggle with their illness every day, be it bipolar, depression, or schizophrenia. It pisses me off when people try and pawn off one thing for something else. Yes, I would like to be mentally healthy but that is never going to happen and I am not being pessimistic. That is reality.

Midnight demons are out tonight

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

Midnight demons are out tonight

Since Midnight I have been in some serious pain. I got very distress and despondent. I thought about killing myself and was cursing my therapist for allowing me to still exist. A blogger friend was posting blogs so I asked her if she wanted to chat and we chatted for a few hours. She had to go because she had some stuff to do in the morning. Which is fine. I understand.

I still am in pain three hours later despite taking pain meds and using a pain gel. I don’t think I am going to sleep tonight and all I can think about is killing myself. I posted on FB that I wanted to use a chainsaw to chop my leg off. I seriously wonder if that is the better course of action. Just cut out the part that is hurting. I know there will be something called phantom pain afterwards but it can’t be worse than what I am going through right now. At least then, I will know WHY I am in pain. There is NO FUCKING REASON why I should be in pain. I didn’t do a damn thing today to warrant this pain. There is nothing wrong with my damn foot and ankle. Yet it hurts really bad. And it is burning me so bad. Pain is so bad I can’t even describe it. All I know is that I am hurting and want to kill myself. Just everything is dark and gray. I feel so hopeless. I know I am never going to get better.

I was talking with an ex-coworker tonight. I missed talking with her and she answered my text. We chatted for a bit and she asked when I was coming back to work. When I said I didn’t know if I could because of my pain, she chimed in that if I stop complaining maybe I would have my job back. I was dumbfounded. I couldn’t believe she would say something so insensitive. My pain is real and I suffer greatly. I don’t know why I suffer the way I do but I do. I got really upset. But then I thought she is ignorant and doesn’t know what I go through every day. She doesn’t know how hard it is going down the stairs or that I have to limit my standing time or I will pay dearly for it. Sure I can suck it up and not complain. But then it will only fuel the demons. I kept quiet about my internal psychological pain for years and where did that get me? Nothing but psych hospitalizations after psych hospitalizations. Lead to cutting and drinking and more hospitalizations. So when I can finally express myself, why should I keep my physical pain inside? That is one of the reason why people kill themselves because people don’t know just how bad their pain hurts them. That is why people see their doctors only to get turned away because their pain doesn’t show up on any test. My x-rays and MRI shows there is nothing physically wrong with me. Yet my pain is real and it hurts really bad right now. So bad I am thinking of taking my life. So how can that be made up? How can it be held inside? The longer I keep it to myself the deeper it grows. They say that if you swear after stubbing a toe it lessens the pain. Well no matter much I swear, there is no lessening of this pain. I must rely on pain medication to help me deal with my pain. I wish it worked on my psychological pain but it doesn’t. Nothing helps my psychological pain. When both flares up (physical and psych) I am in the deepest waters struggling to stay afloat. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I am not. When I am not, someone comes by with a dinghy and I stay afloat.

I think my foot hurts just because it wants to. I think that I have been in pain for so long it doesn’t know what else to do but hurt me. And that causes my demons to worse and give me self doubt that this is all in my head. My therapist thinks that because of PTSD I have to be treated for my pain for my own safety. That if I am not treated, my PCP might as well just sign my death certificate. She is partially right. But I have a high pain tolerance and I haven’t been in this much pain in sometime. I know it is because the weather changes and having Hurricane Arthur pass by didn’t help me much. Plus this whole up 90 degrees and then down to 70 degrees really wrecks havoc on me. That’s a 20 degree difference. It hurts!

I keep looking at my pill bottle and wonder what will happen if I empty it. I have never OD’d on Tylenol before so I am kind of scared that it will cause me liver damage that I will regret. I think that is the only thing saving me from taking the rest of the bottle and hoping for the best. If I had a barbiturate or some other powerful sedating drug handy, I would take it. I just need/want some sleep. It’s 0330. I am glad I don’t have to get up early tomorrow. But I know I am only going to get a few hours of sleep and wake up. Probably wake up at 6 or 7. I might as well wait till 0400 to try and get some sleep. I took two pain pills to try and get me to calm down this pain. I just need it to be a 3 so I can sleep. It is a 7 on a scale of 1-10. I am sure that once I get nice and comfy, I will have to use the bathroom. Never fails. UGH how I hate that.

I fired my therapist today, several times

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

It is really hot today and the humidity is killing me, making me really irritable. I only left my room for the usual items: coffee, food, and bathroom. I did manage to go to the bank to make a withdrawal. I am going to ask my Brother in law for some cash because I need my meds. And this month I am short. It’s my own fault because I thought I wouldn’t need groceries. I can never keep it to the minimum of what I need.

Sallie Mae keeps calling me every three hours now. I am going to answer the next time they call and make them look like a fool. If they ask what can I pay them, I will say $10/month. Screw them. I can barely buy groceries and they want $132+ dollars a month? Fuck them.

I talked to my therapist even though I fired her. I wasn’t in a talking mood. She did the SSF to see where I was. I was so out of it I don’t remembered what I answered. Doesn’t matter now. My sister is home so I can’t kill myself even if I really wanted to. There is no way I am killing myself with the potential of my little niece finding me. So I am stuck here, again. And I am not happy about it.

The only good news to report is that my pain levels have shifted downward. I am not in as much pain as I was. I hope this stays this way for the next week because I am out of my pain meds, again. I don’t know what possessed me to have my doc reduce my number of pills. Course, there was a time when I was hardly taking them. I would have pain flares at least twice a month. Now it’s like almost every week. I know it is just to adjust to the temperature. I get that but why does it have to be so painful?

I started a letter, in a word doc, that I thought I would post as a blog. It was for my therapist and her foolish ways about me wanting to live. Anyways, it got a little more personal than I would like and never published it. I might read it to her tomorrow or might password it so she can open it but she isn’t too tech savvy so I am not sure it is worth doing. I might get more aggravated than helped.

Issues around my body came about today. I told her I was ugly and there is no fixing that. She was trying to tell me otherwise but it was falling on deaf ears. I can tell I really want to talk about this because I keep checking the internet and twitter for the past 1/2 hour. So I will just leave it as I am ugly and my therapist is fired because she thinks otherwise.

spoon shortage

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

Spoon shortage

Earlier this week, my mother asked me where our big spoons were. I said I didn’t know, maybe the dishwasher ate them. She wasn’t amused.

It got me thinking about how much I need spoons lately. Just for me to shower and go to the store took more spoons than I realized. Spoons, for those that don’t know or are new to my blog, is a metaphor for energy based on a blog I read years ago. I have posted it here so you can try and understand what I am talking about.

I am in a lot of pain right now. I think I am done for the day and that is too bad because I wanted to see my Australian friend today. He said we would meet up sometime in the afternoon but I still haven’t heard from him. Maybe he is out of spoons, too. He was in a car accident the other day and has whiplash. He was hurting pretty good. Whiplash sucks. I experienced it once and never want to again. Tonight is also my nephew’s birthday party. I don’t know if I will be making an appearance or not. Depends if I can get this pain that I am feeling under control or not.

It sucks being in chronic pain. I haven’t had a break all week. Today was going to be a rest day but I had to shower and then go to the pharmacy to pick up my prescription. I also wanted chocolate. So after my shower, I got dressed and went to the pharmacy. I also did some shopping as my mother wanted pudding. My protein bars were on sale so I grabbed some of those as well. I got home and my mother flipped out on the “junk” I bought. I didn’t say anything to her. I swear sometimes she thinks I uses HER money to buy MY stuff. I don’t. If I want to use my money to buy “junk”, then so be it. Least I didn’t order food like I wanted to. I have been craving Pad Thai but I am doing good and not buying it. I still have to go to the meat market and get my burgers. I also need to learn how to cut up an avocado so I can have it on my burger. I love avocados.

I was feeling some more of the self hate again today. I saw a shadow of me and one of things on my chest and I got really sad. I so want to be flat chested. It’s very distressing to me and I can’t talk to anyone about it. I don’t think I can even talk to my therapist about it because then she wants to “fix” the problem and have me see the people at the gay clinic. I just can’t be bothered with it. I just rather die than deal with it. Even if I could grow facial hair, I still will have breasts. And I doubt testosterone fixes that. It’s really hard for me to talk about. It’s just another thing about self-image that I cannot tolerate. My therapist says I don’t see myself, that the image is not what it is. She is right. I don’t see myself as a man and never will as long as things are the way they are. She just doesn’t get how much it hurts me to the point of wanting to take my life. And if I ever have the opportunity to take it, you know that damn well I will take it.