Tag: depression

really vulnerable right now

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, depression, psychosis, suicidality

Had a painful day today. I am very sore from my fall that I took yesterday. Walking is more difficult now because my knee and thigh are involved in giving me pain.

I feel lousy because I still have this cold. I don’t know if it is getting better or worse, but it definitely isn’t going away. I have been taking vitamin D supplements to try and boost my immune system. And no that is not a typo, I meant D. I participated in a trial of vitamin D to help boost immune function and it does work. Since I have been taking it, I have not had bronchitis or pneumonia. It does lessen the effect of the cold but I have been lax in taking it every day.

Voices are still around taunting me. I am trying not to listen to them but it is so tiring to do so. My defenses are already down because of this cold that I got and my pain threshold has been increased. I am just really vulnerable right now.

I emailed my PCP’s office the other night and got a response. I had to laugh and ask myself, did they even read the message?? I told them the nerve block didn’t work and I was not going to see another specialist ever again for my ankle problem. Or have another test done. The nurse writes back “oh I see you have further tests to be done and see a neurologist”. I am like WTF are you kidding me lady!! Did I have to SPELL it out that I am DONE with anything anyone else can think of that is causing me this pain and not help me with it??? My pain meds are working and that is all I fucking care about. Just as long as my doc continues to prescribe them, there isn’t going to be any problems.

I got an email from my pharmacy saying that my medicine, which I just put in a refill on, is out of stock. So today I call to see if it has come in and find out the manufacturer is having problems making it. I am like what??? I heard about this shit happening but not to my medication!! I have enough to cover me and hopefully it comes in tomorrow but if not I don’t know what I am going to do. I need my Ativan! I hate having to ration it and just take it if I really need it. I might have to use more Neurontin to cover my issues as lately it has been helping me with sleep.

Been up since six this morning. I hate waking up this early and I didn’t take a nap today. I am really cranky. I made myself breakfast, like I always do. I might have breakfast for dinner. I am too lazy to make something else. My specialty is fried egg sandwich. Used to be scrambled egg but now it’s fried egg, once I learned how to turn the egg over, LOL. It is not an easy thing to do without breaking the yolk! And I love the yolk. Probably why my cholesterol is high but I don’t care. I just read something today that said that having chronic depressive episodes is “causally linked” to heart disease. So if I am going to have a heart attack that kills me before I kill myself, I am for it! But I wonder if the reverse might be true, that heart disease causes depression?? HMM there is something to ponder! But then you have the health junkies that die of a heart attack so I don’t get it.

Tonight, which is soon, all I am going to do is watch the TV show MASH and laugh. I love that show.

Oh and I forgot…today is my thirteen anniversary of CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome. 13 years ago today I lost my ability to walk and within a month got it back but I had to have back surgery to have that happen.

very bad in my head

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

Having a really hard time. Going through financial issues with my therapist because she got a new billing service and they have been harping on her for payment. I haven’t paid her in a long time since being disabled and the whole thing is stressing me out. So now I have to pay what I can pay her so her billing people aren’t harassing her. The whole stress of the matter, which I knew would happen one day, has caused the bad voices to come out and command me to do things, mostly to cut because I am a bad person. My therapist was telling me that this voice is wrong and full of shit. I wish she could hear them sometimes and maybe she would understand what I go through. It’s not easy telling them they are full of shit when they are screaming that you are nothing but a moron and an idiot all the time. Then I have another voice that is trying to get me to do the right thing and take care of myself and these other voices start harping on her. It’s very bad in my head right now and I feel so stressed about it. Every time I get a little stressed the voices come out. My therapist wants me to take some extra meds which I guess I will do tonight. And also to take my pain meds when I am feeling pain not hours later when it’s beyond control. I just don’t feel like I deserve it. Like I am being punished by this pain so just let it be but she said that is not how it is. I don’t know if I am making sense. I have been up since five and have not taken a nap. I am really tired and I am sick. I took a fall today and my knee is hurting. Everything is hurting. I wish the pain meds helped with the internal hurt but it doesn’t.

I have been having urges to cut since I cut last week I think it was. I don’t even remember. My therapist doesn’t want me to cut over the financial situation but I know that I will feel better if I cut. She said that she won’t. I gave her my word that I wouldn’t cut. I am also to keep texting her over the weekend to let her know how I am doing. She is worried right now because I am psychotic. And of course she brings up the hospital whenever I tell her about the voices. I sometimes hate bringing it up but I just let it happen and then I hate myself for bringing it up. She doesn’t understand what it is like living with them. These voices are mean and nasty. They watch everything that I do and criticize everything that I do. It could be the way I cut my chicken up or the way I go down the stairs. Sometimes they want me to take extra medication but I don’t do that. The only medication I will take extra of is Neurontin because I know the effect of this med. I did take extra Ativan the other night. I had to because all I wanted to do was sleep. I think I am going to take Neurontin with some trilafon tonight to ward off the voices. They don’t like the trilafon. That is the one med they don’t want me to take. But I need to because I don’t want to end up back in the hospital.

I emailed my PCP tonight. I told him that I don’t want to see anymore specialists. I just want adequate pain control and that is that. The nerve block didn’t work out and for three days I was in excruciating pain. It took two kinds of pain meds to bring my pain under control. I don’t want to go through that again. The pain was horrible. It brought me to a dark place, granted it didn’t take much to bring me there but still. I hated being there. And now I am thinking of ways of killing myself because I don’t know what else to do. I am tired of living a life in pain and if my PCP won’t acknowledge the fact that what we are doing is fine then I might as well kill myself now than go through hoops to get pain meds.

So I am psychotic, in a lot of physical pain, and am deeply depressed. Yup…I am FUBAR…fucked up beyond all rehabilitation.

Is suicide ever justifiable?

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, CES, chronic physical pain, depression

Is suicide ever justifiable?

I read an article about this today and it has me thinking. Would my suicide be justifiable? I am living in chronic physical pain every day that is sometimes helped by opioid medication but yet is not at times. I suffer from depression but no anti-depressant seems to help me. I am on a mood stabilizer that helps with the ups and downs but doesn’t help with the lows that I get. So would my death be justifiable because I have exhausted every available method of treatment for both conditions? I think I have. I think it is time that suicide should be given more thought. It isn’t wrong. It isn’t selfish. Sure there would be people that would miss me but if they know that I have tried everything and it all failed, I think they would rather have me dead than suffer. I cannot not go on suffering like this anymore. Everyday it is a battle. Which pain will cause me more suffering, mental or physical and lately physical has been winning. I am losing the battle and there is no one I can talk to about this. Even if there was someone to talk to about this, they wouldn’t understand. They would want me to try harder but I am tired. I am so very tired of fighting this losing battle I cannot win. So I have been making up my own rules. I have been dosing myself without regard to time tables. If I hurt I take something no matter the hour. But my mental pain is a whole another story.

This pain creeps on your and stays with you like a parasite. It grows on your fears and your doubts and your sorrow like no tomorrow. And nothing eases this hurt. I am frustrated by the psychiatric community that has not found a cure for this kind of ache. This all encompassing ache that is deep down in the soul and blacks out all the good in the world and in your heart. I was free from it at one point but it has recaptured me. Whether it is because the physical pain has gotten to be too much I do not know. I just know it hurts to breathe. It hurts to think. It hurts to be. And I don’t want to be anymore.

They say that if you are suicidal you are not in your right mind. That if you give yourself time, you will not think about it in a week or two. I have thought of killing myself for too long. I want this suffering to end. I am a lowly human being that deserves to die. I have done many things wrongs in my life. But I still feel that I am in my rational mind. In ancient times, if the citizen asked the government three times to die the wish was granted on the third attempt. Why can we have the same kind of rules now? I have asked my treaters if I should die and yet they want me to continue to live in this painful existence. If I was suffering from cancer, would that change their mind? No one is guaranteed a tomorrow. I am just asking that I be put to death to end my suffering because there is no cure for my ailments.

Cauda Equina Syndrome Thirteen years later

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome

On this day in 2001, I was showing symptoms of Cauda Equina Syndrome and didn’t know it. I just knew I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t walk or feel my toes. As time progressed this would happen to my right foot and then I knew I was in trouble. I called my psychiatrist a couple days later because I had an appointment to see her. I told her what was going on and she said to call an ambulance right now. I never heard her be so stern before. And couldn’t figure out why she was freaking out. I was in another world of pain and misery that I really didn’t care. But I know that I needed help and I got it later that night. I was in the ER for hours before they finally figured out I have this “Cauda Equina’ syndrome, what ever that was. No one bothered to explain it to me. I was left on my own in figuring it out but I know that I couldn’t walk. I was twenty-five years old and I was in a wheelchair. The residents were telling me I had to have emergency surgery. I felt like I was in a daze, that this wasn’t happening to me. So I asked if this surgeon was a board certified surgeon. She wasn’t but she was “eligible” whatever that meant. I said no, I wanted a board certified surgeon or there was not going to be any surgery. So at five in the morning I got my surgeon and he said I was going to the OR in an hour or so. I bawled. I didn’t know what to do after this. I still kept thinking all I needed was physical therapy and pain meds and maybe a walking device and I would be ok. No, I had to have surgery to preserve what I was losing. Luckily my bladder wasn’t too much effected by all this and I had a good surgeon whose only mistake was putting me on the wrong antibiotic, which later caused a staph infection two weeks later. I still feel like if I was place on the right antibiotic, I wouldn’t have needed a second surgery to clean out the gunk in my surgical bed. I am just grateful they got it in time or I would have been in worse shape.

This happened over thirteen years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday. I guess you never really forget something like this happening to you. The most humiliating thing was that I couldn’t go to the bathroom on my own. It took several nurses to hold me up and another to wipe me off. You don’t forget something like that easily. You also don’t forget relearning how to walk again, this time with something called AFOs because your feet are still doing flip flops by themselves. You have no control over your feet. You have no idea where they are. Your balance if off and this is a terrifying time. Because it’s been more than three days and you still can’t feel your toes. Doctor said it would be three days and I would be up and walking. What a lie. He didn’t know the damage I suffered. He didn’t care that I was going to be in rehab for quite a while. His job was done. He did the surgery and that was what he was supposed to do. The rest was my job, though no one told me what it was. I had to figure it out all on my own. And I did figure it out months later when I was walking with a cane and visiting a support group for those suffering my condition. Some had it worse than I did. Some had it the same but had bowel and bladder problems. I guess I was one of the lucky ones that just had the foot drop and weird walking moves. I learned everything I could about the nerves and dermatomes. That helped me to understand where my pain was coming from.

Today I still have the AFO. It might not be the same one I had thirteen years ago but it works. It helps me walk without pain. And that is all that I care about at this point in the game.