Tag: David Jobes

book reviews and baseball

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging

Starting to feel better finally from this weird throat thing that I have. Now I am just congested with either a cold or allergies. My throat pain finally dissipated sometime this morning so I can swallow a little better but my head just feels like it is underwater. The pressure is incredible. I just took a bunch of pills to make it go away, from decongestants to antihistamines to Tylenol.

I am still debating getting out of the house and going to the ATM to get me a steak and cheese sub. I am starving as I have not really eaten anything in two days. The good news is that I lost some weight and hope it stays off. My appetite has not been what is has been since lowering my anti-psychotic meds. Since I have been having trouble swallowing the past two nights, I haven’t really been taking my meds. It just hurt too much. I just hope there isn’t a big backlash to that.

I am hoping to catch a nap today as I woke up at 3 in the morning in pain again, this time it was my throat and not my ankle. I am really tired and maybe that is why I feel so sluggish. I know not eating has something to do with that as well. I had a bowl of cereal today and it went down ok. But now I am not hungry, even though I really want a steak and cheese sub. I still have some time though to get it. I might get it for dinner unless my mother makes something that isn’t pasta. I am sick of pasta.

I have been feeling blue most of the day. I don’t really know why. I guess I still am not feeling myself and am not looking forward to going to my father’s appt tomorrow. I wish I could get out of it but someone has to take him because he doesn’t read English and someone has to be there with him to know what is going on. He can’t be trusted to remember what the doctors say to him because he gets confused, but then he is 81 years old…

I am doing a favor for my friend in writing a review for her books. Her book about dog companionship has me going into her life more than I already know about her. It is kind of fun reading it because she has some fun dog stories which I am sure were not fun at the time they happened. On the back cover of the book cover, is a man in an ’04 Red Sox Championship T-shirt holding a puppy. It is the cutest and the pic took me back to when my boys won that Series. It brings tears to my eyes still every time I write about it, but then baseball stories will do that to me. I had watched the DVD of the ’07 Series and cried all through it because I remember what the team went through to get to the World Series and sweep the Rockies in the end. Good times!!

Tonight my Sox are playing Tampa Bay. I hate that team. Can’t stand the manager at all, never have. It used to be that it was the weakest link the in the AL East but now they have become challengers for contention over the years. I don’t know how that happened! Now the weakest link in the AL is the Houston Astros. What I still can’t believe is that the Milwaukee Brewers are still a team. I thought they would have phased out long ago but since they have been on the National League, they never play Boston anymore so it’s easy to forget they exist.

My friend in Chicago has just started graduate studies for a doctoral degree in psychology. I told him I would help him anyway I could so I am sending, or will be sending him, a couple of Jobes books to him for his interest in suicide. I think that the books I will be sending him should be standard textbooks for all those in the mental health field, not just in the field of psychology. I may be biased because I am a HUGE Jobes fan but as long as there is interest in the field, I say go for it!! I would like to consider myself the Jobes representative in the East coast, LOL.

Ramblings 41

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging

I have not been feeling well the past few days. I have been in pain that has been unbearable and it has been unbearably hot. I still don’t have my A/C in as the temps are supposed to drop over the next few days. I cannot wait till it does because I hate to sweat.

I sent my chapter on my psychiatrist yesterday and got a response today. She loved it. I feel humbled by that as I thought there would be something she would want to change or take out and she just liked it as is. This is the book that I am writing. I wanted to show her what I was writing in case I had some things wrong or something and she liked it. She has been a major support of mine. I can’t tell you how much she has supported my writing. I remember when I my poster got accepted for my first poster session for the American Association of Suicidology. She wanted to be there but was there in spirit. She liked my writing then and really likes my blogs. I think I have learned a lot from her more than she realizes. But then we are going on twenty years of knowing one another.

I still don’t understand why my foot is bothering me today. I didn’t do anything except watch tv. I had my foot up most of the time. I just don’t get it.

Today was to start the pill but I am still bleeding so I am debating on it. I might hold off another week. I kind of am afraid of using the patch because I am afraid with the heat I will sweat it off and then what am I going to do? I know this sounds brilliant just having to use a patch for week than take a pill every day but with the heat wave on, I am a little cautious. I just hope I don’t have an allergic reaction with it or something. That the other thing that I am worried about. I got sensitive skin. I just don’t want the adhesive to hurt me. I hope that it also comes off easily.

Don’t know if I mentioned this, but my therapist pissed me off about psychache scales and such. I tried taking one yesterday but I am in so much physical pain, it was next to impossible to sort out my emotional pain from my physical. I couldn’t believe I was caught in the conundrum. I thought it would be an easy assessment as I was not feeling any psychache but the questions were specific and I just couldn’t separate how I was feeling physically with how I was doing emotionally. I found it very frustrating. I had to leave it half undone. So then this got me thinking that maybe I should read Managing Suicide Risk to get some insight into how to separate my thoughts from how my physically I am feeling but I couldn’t get into it. It’s not like it was technical or anything, I just didn’t have the brain power with this heat. Even now all I want to do is sleep. My Sox game is being delayed due to the weather.

I haven’t been eating much the past few days. I have had no appetite since this heat wave started. I haven’t lost any weight though, which is weird. I guess I am eating enough for my daily requirements. Today all I had was a bowl of mac and cheese and an ice cream sandwich. I didn’t feel like eating anything else. I have been drinking a lot of fluids though. I had at least 3 big glasses of lemonade/ice tea. I figure I have to keep hydrated even if it means going to the bathroom more.

Hot and muggy

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging

Hot and muggy

It’s a very warm day in Boston today. I am sweating and not liking this heat very much. I have not done anything except edit my book and talk to my therapist. She wants me to do a SSF, suicide status form as “the situation calls for it.” I could care less at this point. I am just so pissed off. I didn’t want to talk to her today. I should have canceled but I know she would have called me anyways.

Since finding out my date, she has been acting like a total psycho. I guess the date has some significance for her and it’s not like I knew that. I didn’t. I know her birthday is in Aug but it is NOT the day I picked to end my life. So I don’t know what her problem is. People die every day. We have put the date off for now but I don’t think I can. I want to end my life because I am tired of being in pain all the time. I can’t stand living like this anymore. I feel like a useless piece of shit. I told her I wrote to my psychiatrist a letter that I will probably send the day of the deed. I just can’t send it to her now because she probably will hospitalize me against my will again. I don’t want to be in the hospital and it will do no good being in the hospital because they just want to change your meds and if they can’t do that than within three days you are released. What are you going to accomplish in three days? NOTHING.

Why am I against the SSF? I don’t know, maybe because I am the one that introduced it to her and I feel like it is a slap in the face. I don’t think this will work because she never follows through with the whole thing anyways. We never resolve my suicidality. Soon as I don’t feel like doing one, it gets dropped and the whole thing fails. I guess I feel like why should I fill out a piece of paper that is going to tell me how I already feel? It’s not like I don’t hate myself, have psychache, am stressed to the maxed, am hopeless beyond belief, and am going to kill myself in a few months. I have no reason for living, and plenty of reasons for dying. Having my menses still is one of them.

I have had my menses for more than a month now. I am tired of it and my skin is irritated by the feminine products I have to wear and by my underwear. I am not used to wearing elastic fitting underwear that women wear. I rather wear boxer shorts but you can’t hold a feminine product in them. It makes me so uncomfortable and angry. More angry than I know what to do with and I have no one to take it out on. It’s not anybody’s fault really. I have the xx chromosome and not the xy so I guess I can blame my father as he is the one responsible for the Y chromosome! Another reason to hate him!

I know a shower might do me some good, washing off the stink of things and maybe cool me down some from this heat but I just can’t be bothered right now. I will later today. I have to as I really reek. I can no longer use deodorants because I have a rash under my armpit. It is going to be an interesting summer. I also have not shaved in a while because I have an open scratch where the rash is. I can’t help it. It is itchy!! So far the only thing helping is hydrocortisone cream. I hope it goes away soon.

Another thing about the SSF, it is not that I don’t like it. I actually praise it because it is a good tool to use. But the draw back like I said before is that I don’t think it can help me because I know how to “cheat” on it, per se. I know what the answers should be and that does not help me in the long run.

Another thing she asked me today was what was my psychache. I have not filled out a Holden psychache scale in so long. I don’t know what it would be. And again, it doesn’t matter. All it will prove is that I have psychological pain. I just feel very hopeless about this. I can’t help it. I am trying to get her to see that she will be losing me and to get away from me as far as she can and she just won’t do it. I just don’t care.

a painful day

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide, suicide attempt, writing

Woke up today in pain. It should have been a sign not to go out today but it was such a beautiful day out I decided to go out anyways. I got my coffee at Starbucks, my West Java which tastes like a little chocolate coffee. I started journaling but got bored so decided to write a letter to my therapist about how I feel about our last few sessions.

I feel like she has been blowing me off when I tell her I am suicidal. The most she can say is go into the hospital instead of trying to work through it. And that just pisses me off because the hospital is NOT the fucking answer to being suicidal. She doesn’t use the pain scales or even use the SSF’s when I get suicidal anymore. I think I am barking up the wrong tree. I don’t even know if she is taking me seriously anymore. I have not thought how I would kill myself but I just know that I want to die. I am trying to write this all down but my head is still half asleep because I took a pain pill before leaving the house and it makes it hard to concentrate. And the music today in Starbucks was a little louder than it normally is so I was being distracted very easily and could not focus on what I wanted to write. So I texted her that I wanted a check in, not to tell her all this, but just to tell her I am having a hard time. I hope she calls me but then we have an early appointment tomorrow so she may not.

On my way home, a three wheeled stroller got on the bus next to me. On my way off, my bad ankle couldn’t clear the wheels and I sort of tripped. Just fucking great. I now am in really bad pain and I have a golfball swelling on my ankle bone. I just iced it, took another pain pill, and put on the compound mixture of different meds to try and get it to calm down. So far, the pain is down a notch but that is all. I am screwed. I know tomorrow I am not going out as I need to rest it. All because I wanted to get a coffee at my favorite coffee house.

Today I finally learned how to print a PDF from my new laptop. I really didn’t want to have to switch laptops to get it printed. But control P works! The article I printed was about CAMS, Collaborating Assessment and Managing Suicide. It was a nice article that summarized the breakdown of how it evolved and where it stands now. I love this idea and I wish my therapist would open her pea brained mind just a little bit to let this in but noooo. I don’t want her to become a suicidologist, just to open her mind a little about the current trends out there that might be helpful to me. Is that too much to fucking ask??

My safety is kind of in question at the moment. I really want to slice open my ankle to let the swelling out but I don’t think I will get anything more than just blood. I would have to cut pretty deep to get to the root of the swelling and cutting deep would mean stitches. If that happens, I am liable to end up in the hospital. I don’t want that. I just want the swelling and pain to go down. Ice has not helped. I get to ice it again in an hour or two. I know part of the reason it hurts is because it is swollen. There is not much space for swelling to happen down there and it hurts when there is fluid build up. I was hoping that compound might shrink the tissues but it does the opposite with one of the ingredients. It brings blood to the surface to absorb the stuff. I can’t tell if it helps. I only have used it twice so far.

No ball game tonight so I will be bored. Maybe I can get some reading done. I have not been so great at that. Facebook games have been distracting me. But seeing as I will be laid up for a while until the swelling in my ankle goes down, I think reading will be good, as I got like a 1,000 page book to read. It is called Team of Rivals and is about how four people became the republican nomination for presidency in 1860, and also about Lincoln and the war. I have not ventured too far in the book but I am making headway as I am at page 150. It is easy reading though I cannot read too long because then my eyes do a weird thing that makes things double. I feel like I could use another cup of coffee. I am so tired but I don’t feel like going downstairs to get it. It will put too much of a strain on my ankle.