Tag: CRPS

Pain and Anxiety

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

Pain and Anxiety

Last night, I took my normal pain pills around 2200. At midnight, the pain got worse. My heart rate shot up and I became nervous, again. I had already taken my night meds at the same time I took my pain meds. It was too early for me to take my normal pills so I had to take a stronger pill. It took another hour for the pain to fade enough for me to sleep. I also took an Ativan to calm down. I spoke to my doc about this and she said the anxiety is the body’s response to not liking pain. Great. Now I have to deal with anxiety on top of my other problems. I don’t like being anxious or nervous. It really irritates me and makes me feel unsafe, like something terrible is going to happen. I have to mentally play with ideas of it just being a physiological reaction, that I am okay, even though I don’t feel that way. It’s very hard to mentalize when your heart is pounding like you ran several blocks. I don’t become out of breath but my breathing speeds up. I have to take deep breaths to calm down, or try to. It’s very difficult to do. And it also makes me feel helpless because other than taking drugs to stop the pain and anxiety, there is nothing I can do. I am not hyperventilating so breathing into a paper bag won’t help me. Music helps to a degree but not all the time. After a while, it just becomes background noise.

I have not been trained in any capacity to deal with anxiety. I don’t know how to deal with it other than take medication. But even then, I have to wait a half hour or more for it to work. In the meantime, I am very nervous, in terrible pain, and keep wondering what to do. I can’t walk because the pain is too intense in my foot, so pacing is out of the question. I usually just have grin and bear it. I don’t like doing this. It just messes with my head. And then I become agitated, which does me no favors. Last night, I tried to read. It didn’t work so I tried writing in my journal. If I could have done something physical, I would have but writing is the only thing that usually works when I am anxious. It is my go to whenever things are going wrong, or are perceived to be.

All this bullshit could be avoided if I didn’t have this pain syndrome. I didn’t do too much yesterday so I don’t know why my foot decided to explode at midnight. I had been resting for hours, but I got hungry and went downstairs to have something to eat. When I came back up stairs and propped my foot up, I got hit with the pain wave. Other than amputation, I don’t think there is anything I could have done to avoid it. I just don’t understand why because I had taken my normal pain meds two hours before hand and that should have avoided a 10+ pain flare. But that is the thing with pain syndromes. You never know when they are going to spike.

I need to pick up my niece later. I plan on ordering pizza before I pick her up. This way, the pizza is a little cooled off before gobbling it up. The last time I had pizza with my niece, she ate half a box! It was crazy but she was hungry. She ate all of it too, crust and all. She is too funny but is still growing like a weed. I just hope that walking to her school doesn’t aggravate my foot more than it already is. I really don’t want a repeat of last night. I have my appointment with my psych tomorrow so I really don’t want to be really drugged up or sleep deprived when I see her. It’s in the afternoon so I should be awake enough when I see her, but sometimes after a bad night of pain, I am not in a good mood the next day. Only day that I don’t have something planned is Saturday. I can rest all day then. I still need to finish my editing, which includes proofing what I have written and then putting those edits in the word doc. I have stuff to take out too, as one of my stories is listed twice, but under a different name. Don’t know how that happened.

So pain and anxiety is not a good thing for me, or anyone, really. Pain causes the anxiety and I don’t like it one bit. It makes me feel helpless. My therapist is on vacation for the next two weeks. I am to write her a letter and text her while she is away. She also wants me to send them to her so when she is back, they will be in her office. We talked about the anxiety part but really didn’t talk about what to do with it. She just wants me to take an Ativan. I am just afraid that I will become addicted to it, which is why I am so hesitant to even take the pill. But I guess, I need it so my heart rate slows down and calms my nervous agitation that doesn’t do me any good. I swear the pain is like drinking five cups of coffee the way it makes me feel. I just wish I had more control over it but I don’t and that is what is so frustrating! I hate not being in control. Pain takes that away from you and then your heart rate soars up and makes you feel even worse. So you are battling the demons in your head, the pain in your foot and the nervousness of it all because it’s a physiological response. How the hell do you combat it?? I guess I am going to have to research what to do about anxiety, an unknown entity to me. I never was an anxious person until pain entered my life. It doesn’t happen ALL the time but when it does, holy hell! I am noticing it more with each pain flare up. I really wish I had better control of my pain, like if I had a warning before the pain would flare, that would be awesome. But I don’t. It’s one minute low level pain and the next high level pain. Sometimes it is because I moved my ankle, either flexed it or moved my big toe. That is all it takes to set the pain off in my foot and/or ankle. It just sucks not knowing when to expect severe pain. It’s the million dollar question that no one can answer. And I am not okay with it, not one bit!

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.

two days of pain

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

I woke up around 0630 in pain, again. It was the continuation of last night. I took some pain meds and then hobbled to the kitchen to make some breakfast. After that, I went back to sleep and stayed asleep until my mother called me around 1515. I heard her come home and was going to yell at her for not telling her second mother (aka my aunt, her sister) that she went to the doctors this morning. My aunt, who definitely has an anxiety disorder, was flipping out because she couldn’t contact my mother. She was calling the house like every fifteen minutes. I luckily had turned off my phone because if she woke me up, not like she didn’t with the million phone calls to my mother’s line, I would have screamed at her. She left me a panicked message and then when I called she was even more panicked but sly. She said she was going to go to the house (which I doubt as she never goes anywhere outside her home). She lives a few houses down from me. But the whole situation and the excess worry was for nothing. She had forgotten my mother told her she was going to the doctors and when she couldn’t remember, she was in a panic of her own anxiety making, calling the doctor’s office to see if she was there. Surprising to me that the office would tell someone that they were at the office given that is what HIPPAA is all about. I guess someone didn’t care this morning and gave my crazy aunt the information she was looking for. Not ever going to that doctor’s office. I am just bullshit that my sleep got interrupted, again by this crazy bitch. And it’s not like she waits three rings, nope. She calls and lets the phone ring for an eternity or at least until the damn answering machine kicks on. I am so annoyed. When my mother called me around 1515, I did yell at her. I don’t know why my aunt is so fucking nervous about not getting in touch with my mother fifty times a day. And if she doesn’t get a hold of her, she fucking panics, like the world is coming to an end.

I tried going along with the conference tweeting today but I just wasn’t as interested. They had someone tweet Jobes this morning and the tweeter kept misspelling his name, so I would modify the tweet and correct it. She has done this a few times in the last day or so, misspelling people’s names. And it is annoying me. Get it right or don’t tweet at all, for crying out loud. People are not going to know who Jones is or Quinet. Then I got a tweet that one of the past presidents of AAS was doing a panel with students. I cringed. I hate this guy and the fact that he is trying to influence fresh minds, well, it bothers me! He just rubs me the wrong way.

I still am in pain and might go back to sleep. I emailed my psychiatrist with a “why” subject line and then realized, I never asked her a question. She never responded. I might email her again and ask what is the point of living this crap when I am in pain all the time. And I don’t mean mentally this time. Two days of being in pain is not fun. I really feel like a HUGE hypocrite because I am for suicide prevention for others, just not my own. I know one day I will die by my own hand. Question is when.

I just am not a happy person. I have accepted myself as being chronically depressed. I don’t think things are ever going to get better, for me, anyways. My mood is like the stats of blog. One day I might be hitting 80 views and the next I might hit 9. Or vice versa. I never really know who will be reading my blog just like I don’t really know how my day is going to go. I do know that if I am in pain, I am screwed. I stay home, I don’t go out. I take my pain meds that either knock me out or keep me up. I am just glad I have Starbucks coffee that I make at home. It might not keep me up the entire day, especially when I take my meds, but it sure clears the cobwebs so I can write or read.

Right now I am reading The Idiot by Dostoevsky. My therapist asked me what it was about and I wouldn’t tell her. I was not in the mood to give her a book report. Frankly, this book has taken so many turns in the first part that I don’t think I am following it. But it keeps you wanting more, and so I read more. I haven’t read it in a few days because my head just couldn’t get into it. Plus, the print of the book is tiny and I am having trouble reading it as my glasses are now expired. I hope with the new set of glasses, the print is better. I am going to get new glasses sometime next week, if I can get to Harvard. But it all depends on if I get my LTD payment or not and my level of pain. I really wanted to get out today but waking up before 0700 just sucked and I got depressed. I said the hell with it. I didn’t even make coffee today.

sleepless night 2

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

Can’t sleep. I got a lot of things on my mind. One is how I am going to afford groceries next week when I get paid. The nice thing about PeaPod (online grocery delivery place) I can preview my order. I just don’t know if I will have enough money for groceries and my meds. I really would hate to rob Peter to pay Paul again. But we’ll see.

A friend got my book and started reading it. She emailed me and said that she was upset but didn’t elaborate. I am still waiting for a response to make sure she is ok. But I might not get one till morning.

I started working on my short story and then got out of ideas. I literally was staring at the last word I had written and couldn’t think of anything else to write. I am short of like 80 words to make 1000. I know I can do it but I just need to get into the mindset. It just is so hard when I am not feeling it.

I watched a YouTube video on back pain. It was really stupid in my opinion. I didn’t find it helpful at all. But he did mention Cauda Equina Syndrome (CES), which I guess it is important but he didn’t go into grave detail about it. He just said that if your bladder or bowels are affected you have CES. He didn’t say go to the hospital right away, nothing. Just that it was a “red flag”. So stupid.

My menses finally stopped today. I am so happy. I can wear boxers again. I hope this is the last of it. I kept track this time so I will know how long it has been since the last time. I don’t have a good memory anymore so it’s important that I write things down. Course, remembering where I write it is also important.

I don’t think my friend is going to email me back tonight. Oh well. I do hope I hear from her tomorrow. I am going to try and go to sleep. I think I will take some Ativan to help me relax a little bit. I read some of the Civil War book today so I really don’t want to read another chapter. I finally read about Gettysburg.

Foot has decided to act up so I will be up for a little while longer. Fucking hate when I want to sleep and it gives me zaps. It caused me to jerk my ankle and now everything hurts. It flared up the pain syndrome. Just what I needed, not!