Tag: CRPS

having a crappy crappy day

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

this is one of the few times I am not using word to type my blog before posting so if there are huge errors for the grammar police, I am sorry.

I have not done a single thing today. I was in bed for almost all of today. I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything. I need a shower. I need to brush my teeth, but I just can’t do any of that. I am just so depressed. I got it in my head that I don’t need therapy anymore and I have been trying to “sell” it to my therapist who is far from buying it. I successfully cancelled my appointment with her for tomorrow only for her to uncancel it because I have suicidal thoughts. I thought up a beautiful plan while I was in bed, in agony. My foo/ankle has been bothering me since the night before and other than cutting it off with a sawzall, I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I have been taking my pain medication around the clock and still have had no relief. So I started taking ativan too around the clock to try and make me chill. It has but I have not passed out like I was hoping to.

I am just sick of being in pain. No one knows because other than the four walls I trap myself in, no one else is around me that cares or listens to what I say. They still want me to go to the “top” doctor at this “top hospital” but I refuse because I am tired of seeing doctors. I am tired of them telling me (in an unspeaking code of course) you are fucked and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you. But I don’t care go back to your primary so he can load you up on pain meds and don’t come back to my office because I have nothing to offer you. Physically, there is nothing wrong with my ankle, foot, or leg. They just hurt for some reason unknown to any of the 20 or so doctors I have seen. I might be exaggerating a little but I have seen close to twenty, in all specialties, from neurologists, neurosurgeons, podiatrists, physiatrists, orthopedists, you name it. All tell me nothing is wrong and that three have said that I have complex regional pain syndrome. Which to me is a vague for saying I don’t fucking know but we’ll call it this. There is no real treatment for this condition. Physical therapy won’t help. acupuncture won’t help. so I am just stuck living with this fucking painful diagnosis.

So that is why today around 5 pm, I started thinking about taking my life and shared those thoughts with my therapist hoping she would give me the ok to go ahead with it. NOPE. I got a session out of it and I am not happy about it. I don’t want to talk about it. I am done talking. all the words in the dictionary have been used up over our 13 year relationship. and a few more words that we make up and swear about. Today in the text message she actually swore and told me “fuck that shit.” it was in relation to me telling her we had no session but she didn’t want to hear about it.

I am tired of living. I have a friend in South Africa that is terrified of losing me because he reads these awful blogs I write. but they are my escape. I feel better writing them than I do actually acting on my feelings for killing myself. I know what I write is horrible. Now one wants to read it, well go to another “happy blog”. this is what it is like living with suicidal thoughts and if you don’t like it too bad. I don’t write things that are hopeful because I am not a hopeful person. Things sucks in my life and I have no control over it but what I do have control over is writing about how I feel. So if you don’t like it, there is the door. Don’t let it hit you on your way out. I am tired of trying to keep these feeling inside all the time. It wears me out physically and mentally. I know a fellow blogger friend is in the throws of this horrendous condition we call like and would gladly take it away in a heartbeat. I feel bad for her because I can’t really help her. I can listen to her and I guess that helps. I hope it helps. I just wish there was something more I could do to really help her have better days. But we have each other to get us out of the darkness and it is helping. It is nice to help someone going through the same shit that you are going through.

I recently declared on Facebook that I am not going to be on it much anymore. I am tired of the stupid photos that say share this if you lost someone in heaven, or the ones that show puppy mills or beat up dogs half starved to death. I hate seeing that shit. Yes I lost someone in heaven but I don’t need a candle every day to remind me of that loss. I want to unfriend all those idiots about dogs and cats being tortured. but then I will get the “why did you delete me” and I want to tell them, because you are a fucking idiot that is why!! I have a friend that posts stupid jokes all the time and lately she just has been royally pissing me off so she is going to be the first to go. I can’t take stupidity in an agitated state. I just can’t.

Think I will be going back under my warm blankets to try an escape the world…

distress intolerance

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

Tolerating distress

I have been in a bad mood for the past hour. I have been in wicked bad pain and it has me thinking of ending my life once again. It is after midnight my time and there is no one that I can really call that will really understand what it is I am going through. I tried reaching out to a few people but as it is a late hour, I got no where.

Then I thought about all the DBT bullshit that I have been through and thought I am doing this wrong. What if I am supposed to be feeling the distress as much as it is intolerateable? I don’t know if that is a word but it is the closest thing that I can think of to describe what I am feeling. The thinking is that if you tolerate the feelings you are better off. I am not sure how. Feeling this way sucks and all I want to do is get rid of it. I mean I am feeling this way only because my foot is killing me and there is nothing I can do except wait for the pain medication to kick in and give me some relief. Listening to my favorite playlist is helping me. I listened to Laura Branigan and her voice always soothes me. I thought about writing in my journal but I am not up to putting pen to paper just yet.

My AAS blog was just published and it started off with today I am in distress because I wanted to kill myself. Why am I still alive when I want so badly to be dead. I just can’t go through with it and it is killing me, being alive, and suffering so much. I know that if I were a dog or cat, I would have been let down already. Funny how we are more humane to animals than we are to humans. The reasons are many and I won’t get into it because I am just not sure it will help me calm down. Anytime I talk about hurting myself I get riled up. And when you throw in that humans suffer because it is, well, expected, it just pisses me off. Would you expect a person dying of cancer to suffer?? Or Parkinson’s disease or any other terminal illness? That is what irks me so much, I have a non-terminal illness and am expected to suffer and go about my life like it is not weighing me down. I hate being like this. I cannot tolerate it. So the hell with the distress intolerance bullshit. It is not helping me just making me wish that I was dead all the more.

my heating system sucks

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

Today started off ok. I got my niece ready for school and walked her to school. We took the way I normally take because there are no inclines or hills, which is normally good for my foot. But I guess all the up and down stairs yesterday and the few that I did today to get my clothes finally took its toll. My ankle and three toes are aching like no tomorrow and feel like I have my foot submerged in a bucket of ice water. I have it wearing a sock and under 3 blankets. There is no warming this foot up and frankly, I don’t want it warm because I will be in more pain. It will get warm then VERY HOT, like it is on fire. Happens all the time. The weather is very cold today even though the weatherman says it is 56 degrees. They are lying as Google just told me that it is 42 degrees. It is so cold in my room, despite the heat being on, that I think my radiator finally shit the bed. It was hot last week. I don’t know what happened. Maybe I didn’t turn the heat up high enough. My heating system sucks. It has to be the worse heating system on the planet. The only way to get it to turn on is putting it higher than 70 degrees. Then the house melts, you lower it and it stays warm for a little while. I am not as cold as I was earlier but it doesn’t matter. My foot has its own heating/cooling system since it has nerve damage. That is why I try to keep it as warm as possible during the colder months of the year. It is not easy as even in the summer it will be cold. I have to wear socks 90% of the time. I miss being barefoot but I just can’t risk getting my foot cold, especially as we have ceramic tile floors. They get REALLY cold, and fast.

I did nothing this weekend but vegetate. I needed some time away from the blog and my book. I got wicked stressed out Friday and didn’t want to risk another psychotic break so I stepped back. I had to for my own sanity. I thought I would be able to get back to editing today but I didn’t sleep very good last night and then had to wake up early for the kiddos.

Today’s WordPress challenge is about Dear Abbey. I thought about posting a good piece of advice but that is not what my blog is about. Most I have is to have a good therapist that is willing to work with you, and that goes for all professionals, from doctors to physical therapists. If the doctor already has it in his mind about you before you walk in the door, see someone who has a brighter bulb in their head. It is hard for chronic pain patients to get treatment because these doctors have been sidelined by the fake patients who say their back hurts and get pain medication just to use it illegally or to sell it. But the sad part is that these pain patients are undermedicated sometimes which leads to possible overdoses because they cannot get a flare up under control. I know, I have been there. I might not overdose myself all the time, but when I do, it is for a good reason. And that reason is PAIN. I don’t mean overdose in the sense I take the bottle. NO I DO NOT DO THAT, though I may be thinking that. I mean that instead of my allotment of 4 pills a day, I might take 6 or 8 a day. Fortunately for me, those 6 or 8 pills a day are far and wide in between. My doctor trusts my judgment. I am fortunate that he does otherwise I would be six feet under, NO JOKE. And it all stems from that day that I saw a chiropractor to adjust my spine and she ruptured my disc, permanently disrupting my life forever. I always will have nerve damage. I always will have weakness in my foot. It might not be visible to the world but I can assure you it is felt every single day. My minimum pain level is always a 3 on a scale of 1-10. That is what I live with on a daily basis and my surgery is coming up on 13 years. So that is why my heating system in my foot is all messed up.

ankle chronicles 4

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

Woke up this morning and I am still in fricken pain. It’s so bad that I really can’t move my ankle/foot. It’s the same type of pain I felt yesterday morning that lasted all day and into the night. I slept for about six hours before it woke me up again. I just had breakfast so I am hoping I can get back to sleep. Looks like I won’t be going out today, and if I do it will be comfort food like donuts. I had a good donut at Starbucks yesterday, a raspberry/blueberry one. It was very good. I like their new line of pastries, though it is kind of expensive.

All of this psychosis that I have been having is making me think that life is not worth living. I keep thinking of the studies that show that people that are psychotic are more likely to die by suicide than non-psychotic individuals. Great. Why can’t I go through with what the voices are telling me to do? I am scared though, scared that I might start cutting again because that is what the voices want. I haven’t told anyone outside this blog how things are. My sister wants me to babysit my niece tonight. The only good thing about that is I will have a huge screen TV to watch the game. The little one will be asleep so I don’t have to worry about entertaining her. I have been meaning to tell one of my sisters I am doing poorly but I just can’t seem to bring myself to. It’s not easy telling others that you are psychotic. I told my psychiatrist I was crazy and of course she tells me I am not. OK, like normal people hear voices all the time. And without the stupid “normal” voices, I can’t read like I used to. I need the narrator voice to concentrate while I read. It’s the only way that I can retain the information.

But I am in the middle of a pain flare up. There is no way I am seeking out psychiatric care other than my therapist and psychiatrist. I know that I will be in put in the hospital and I probably won’t have access to my pain meds. That will NOT be good at all. I am so tired of being in pain all the time. I didn’t do anything to my fricken ankle so I am not sure why it’s so angry with me. It hurts all around the bone on the outside of my ankle. It’s like something is crushing the bone, or trying to. It is maddening and despite not trying to think about it, it doesn’t work. The pain is just too intense. I am really hurting and wondering why this is happening to me now. I know that is one of the things that I will be asked when I am in the damn hospital. “What set things off”? I don’t fricken know. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to complete the book. Maybe it is because I had a dissociative episode and now I am paying the price by hearing voices. I just want it to end, to have the voices stop. I am not hearing them now because I am too tired to listen to them. And somehow when I am in great physical pain, it’s like my psychiatric symptoms are on hold except for the depression. The depression is always there no matter what. And I still feel like I am carrying around black clouds. The thing is, that while you are in the hospital, your medical care goes out the window. They really don’t care about your physical complaints, unless you are having a heart attack or something, then they care.

I am just worried sick about where I will end up and if it will be close to public transportation or not so I can get home without bothering my sister. But if I end up in a faraway hospital, I will need a ride home. I know I shouldn’t be stressing about where I will be placed but it just helps me to know. But none of that matters right now because I am in a pain flare up and until my pain levels are under control, I am not going anywhere.

I had planned on watching college football today and the Sox game but I just don’t feel like it. The Nebraska game will be on at noon today, Sox game is I think at 6, and OSU is at 8. But I just took my pain meds and soon will be seeing Morpheus. You would think that I would be used to taking two pain pills that it wouldn’t affect me now but it still does. Funny how it only seems to affect me during the day and at night, not so much, unless I take an Ativan.

I am mostly packed for my stay. I just need to put in my hormone pills. I hope this works and I don’t get my menses this month. I will really be upset if I get it. Being in a locked psych unit is one thing, but having your menses on the unit is quite another. I am bringing my stuff with me just in case I do have bleeding. I just hope I don’t have to use it.

Damn this ankle pain is so fricken bad. I should probably ice it but I am starting to feel the effects of the pain meds so I know I will be knocked out soon. I don’t want to keep the ice on my foot longer than twenty minutes because that isn’t good. I once fell asleep with the ice wrap on. My foot didn’t like it and was grateful when I woke up and took it off.

For those that are reading my blog for the first time, I have cauda equina syndrome and complex regional pain syndrome that is causing my pain in my ankle. I also have chronic tendonitis in this ankle that no one knows why and has not been helped with standard treatment (rest, elevation, ice, compression). I have nerve damage in this ankle/foot and it becomes fatigued very quickly as I have weakness also.