Tag: disability

Can’t Stand Being in Pain

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

Can’t stand being in pain

I went downstairs for a little snack and nearly fell when I pivoted on my “good” foot. That nearly threw my back out on me, which was already killing me. I still cannot stand up straight without severe pain and spasms. I have been trying to rest but it hasn’t been easy. I have a pillow that is made for sitting on the bed to read and it is helping to straighten out my back some so I can read a little more comfortably. I read another chapter in the “Risk management with suicidal patients”. I have a chapter and a half left and then I will be done. I am proud that I finally finished a book. Next will be Harry Potter.

I got a signed copy of Neil Gaiman’s latest book today called “the view from the cheap seats”. It was bigger than I thought it was. It is giving me ideas on how I should proceed on my book, if I ever get back to it.

All my nerves are angry with me right now and I don’t like it. I took plenty of pain pills tonight so ease my discomfort. I might have to take a stronger one to ease things. Tomorrow I am not doing shit. I am only leaving my bed to use the bathroom and eat something. I think I will just have Ensure as I am not going to be doing much and I don’t want to be loaded with calories. My therapist won’t be pleased but I really need to watch my weight. I have been creeping up since I left the hospital, which hasn’t helped my back any.

It’s really bothering me that this pain has been going on for days now. I thought I was getting better but then I got up to get a snack and I am hurting again. That is when I took an extra pain pill. Now I have pain going down my leg and my crotch is on fire. Damn nerve pain. I don’t usually get pain there except when my back pain is really bad. I know I will be fine tomorrow. I just did too much today with getting the book in Harvard Sq. It was quite a trek for someone who has a bad back. I was tempted to take a cab home but I didn’t because I didn’t have enough money on me. And it would have cost me at least $20 to get home. The price of a cab has gone up. It used to be $15, plus tip.

I have therapy tomorrow. I am glad I can have it in the comfort of my room. I sometimes like having phone sessions but sometimes I want to meet in person. I try to see her at least once a month with the zipcar. I really like driving out to see her, when I am well. I would have seen her today had my back been ok. Damn weather is screwing me over. I hate being in this much pain. It’s awful. I just want to cry, but I know it’s not going to help. I just feel so useless. I can’t walk, I can’t stand, I can’t sit for too long. It sucks.

This morning I tried to do some PT exercises but I was in too much pain. Any movement of my pelvis caused me severe pain. And that is where most of my pain is. My lower back. I can’t even rub it out because it’s so sore. The weather really needs to be stable so the “switch” can go back off and I won’t be in so much pain. I hate these flare ups. I am trying not to get me down, but it’s hard because I can hardly move or do anything that I used to enjoy. I can’t walk that far. Just walking to the bus stop today nearly killed me, and that is only a block and half from my house. I have become such an invalid. Today I saw an older gentleman on a scooter and thought, that would be perfect for me. I am 40 years old and I am thinking of getting around in a scooter because of pain. How fucking sad is that.

Ankle Chronicles 12

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

Ankle Chronicles 12

I haven’t written a chronicle in a while so I thought I would as my ankle is being a fucker right now and I don’t know why. I didn’t do anything like I did yesterday so not sure if this is a delayed reaction or what. I just know that I am in pain.

I ordered my Chinese food tonight. My stomach is nice and bloated. I don’t know why I was eating while standing. That might be why my ankle is upset with me. I then stood to finish watching the game. Sox came back in the 11th inning to win 5-3. I usually stand in the kitchen because the box is hard to read, even with my glasses on, when I am sitting. I like to see the pitch count and other stuff. I finally figured out today what the fourth box was when they showed the score. It was LOB, left on base. I don’t know why they are showing this stat. It’s annoying.

Pain begins in my ankle and then trickles down my foot into my toes. It drives me nuts that this is the pattern every single night. Then when it is in my toes, I am in agony. I have yet to figure out the right combination of pain meds to stop it or at least decrease my pain. If I take it before it starts, I have a good chance but it’s hard to tell because I never know how severe the pain is going to be. It can be a 5-7 on a scale of 1-10 and then quickly move to a 9+. It’s worse if I get a cramp or a spasm. Sometimes I will get a “tic” where the foot will just jerk upward. It’s not really painful but it’s uncomfortable. I have to take an Ativan to calm these jerks down or I get no relief from them. It took me a while to realize I was having these things happen because they would be so far apart from one another. I still have no idea what sets them off.

After the pain settles down some, then comes the nerve pain. I really hate this part because I have to take gabapentin to settle it down or my foot will burn and feel like it’s on fire. It really is uncomfortable. Sometimes it is so bad that I can’t have anything touch my foot, like the sheet or sock. It just makes the pain worse. I hate having to take the gabapentin because the next day I will get the hungry horrors. It’s like no matter what I eat, I am still hungry afterwards. It’s like I have a bottomless pit for a stomach. I have to be really careful because I don’t want to gain back the weight I lost when I was severely depressed. I am back to eating solid food again instead of just drinking Ensure. I have three packs of it left because I didn’t think my depression was going to get any better. But with the increase in my antidepressant, I am feeling better and my appetite is back.

Because of stupid pain, I can’t walk like I used to anymore. Some days I can walk a few blocks and be okay. Other days, those same few blocks seem like an obstacle course for me. It’s hard to gauge when I will be in severe or moderate pain and when I will be in little to no pain. I think the weather has some say in it. Rain or dramatic changes in temps will cause my pain to flare up. Like yesterday it was 92 degrees. Today it has been in the mid-50s for most of the day, an almost 40 degree difference. Ouch.

Stair climbing is another reason my foot/ankle will flare up. I try not to but sometimes my mother will go shopping and need help bringing the shopping up the stairs. Other times, I am up and down because I need to use the bathroom or eat. I don’t keep food in my room because I don’t want pests. I do have some pretzel bites in a sealed plastic baggie. That is only in emergencies when I am hungry but am in too much pain to go down stairs. I keep it on my nightstand.

Being in pain all the time, makes you tired. It’s exhausting both physically and mentally.

just a ramble

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

About an hour ago, my foot exploded in pain after I took an NSAID and some Neurontin. Now the pain is a little bit more manageable. I keep thinking over today’s events with the AAS conference tweets. I like that my Twitter buddies went to difference speaking engagements so you got different things. I especially liked the Marsha Linehan talk. She is a great person, though I didn’t like her at first. That was many years ago and at a time when DBT was the “thing” to do for people like me.

Now I would love to see CAMS to be the “thing” to do. But I don’t think I will ever find or convince my therapist to take a workshop on CAMS. She thinks her way is the right way and there is no more “learning” to be done because I do it. I am the suicidologist, not her. I think her attitude reflects most therapists that have become set in their ways. She is collaborative, don’t get me wrong and I am grateful for that but when it comes to my suicidality, it increases her anxiety and so I get shafted. I have to “limit” what I tell her so she doesn’t freak out. She has become better since the letter that I sent her last September. She is more willing to do what needs to be done in therapy to help me rather than hinder me. I give her credit for that. I know it wasn’t easy to give up my sessions this week. Whereas before, she wouldn’t think twice about canceling. It would be a no and that would be all. I would have had therapy whether I liked it or not.

I think next month I need to spend more money on my laptop because the cooling fan is going. I saw how it was to be replaced and it’s too complicated for me. I am going to ship it back to Dell and use my old laptop. I should make sure that it works before I send this off. I changed the battery on it because it needed a new one. That was the easy part. I am just grateful I have a backup laptop that I can use for what I need. I know internet explorer is useless on it. There is a problem with the hard drive that makes it impossible to update windows. I never got a new hard drive because it’s a pain re-installing everything.

I emailed my psychiatrist and told her I wasn’t going to the hospital because there was zero data supporting that it would be helpful or useful for me. All it would do is babysit me and I don’t need to be babysat. The last time I was in the hospital, my psych thought it would be “helpful” for the team to know that my father was sick and that I was his “caretaker”. I went in there because I couldn’t handle being transgender, or being in chronic pain all the time. I went there for my needs not my father’s. I was pissed that she brought it up. And it’s not like they were doing psychotherapy with me, though I am sure they were billing my insurance company for it. It’s just stupid. I rather go to the city hospital and stay there for a few days. It will be worse as I won’t have any electronics to play with, including the use of my cell phone.

There are a lot of things that I need to talk to my therapist about and I hope that we don’t talk fifty minutes of my father’s ailments. I don’t mind talking to my psych about my father because we just briefly talk about him and then we talk about my symptoms and how I am doing with it. We don’t spend the whole time talking about my father’s problem. My therapist is the crazy one. We always talk about the same things with my father. It’s never different because his ailment doesn’t change. He is a sick man and will probably die within a year if he continues to deteriorate. I have come to terms with that. My therapist just doesn’t see it and wants to talk about it like it’s so very important, thus avoiding my other side, the depression and subsequent suicidality.

I feel like taking a handful of Neurontin tonight. I just want oblivion. Maybe I will take a high enough dose and see what happens. My luck, nothing will happen.

cement shoes

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

Cement shoes

I was wearing sneakers but you wouldn’t know it. My feet felt like they were in cement blocks as I trudged my way down to the bus stop. I really didn’t feel like going out but I wanted a latte and I figure going out was better than making coffee at home. I wasn’t expecting my sneakers to change to cement blocks though. Each step took a lot of effort. I was exhausted by the time I reached the stop. I am glad they have a bench so I could sit down and rest.

The depression takes many forms with me. It is never the same with each episode I experience. Sometimes I am walking through mud. Other times I have cement shoes on my feet. Each step is always painful whether it be mud or cement. I just can’t get through to my head that there is a clear path and that there is nothing physically there to slow me down. The physical symptoms of depression doesn’t care. It holds you back when you want to move forward, all the damn time.

Recently, a Twitter friend said that I should keep fighting. I don’t think she realizes just how exhausting that is. It is so much easier to give up. To stay in bed until the sun rises again, when the black dog disappears. But you have responsibilities and that keeps you from staying in bed all day. Appointments must be kept. Prescriptions must be filled. It’s hard, it’s really hard to go on when you feel like this.

Feeling hopeless is the worse. I wasn’t feeling this when the depression started. This episode started two months ago and I lost my appetite as well as my thought speed. My thoughts became slow as molasses. It’s still hard to get the words out at times. I lost weight because I wasn’t eating. I felt tired all the time. I felt down a lot of the time. But I still did what I had to do rather than stay cooped up in bed like I would have loved to do. Now that my appetite is back, I am beginning to feel like this depression is not going to end, that it is going to stay around and I am forever in its grip. I feel hopeless that things are going to get better again. Part of me knows that it will. It just takes time. I have been put on medication that should help relieve some of this suffering but I still don’t know. I have to wait two weeks for this medication to work and I am overwhelmed by this because I can’t even think of tomorrow or the next day.

I have to just think of the present time. It’s the only way to get through the day. If I can get through this minute, that hour, I will be okay. But it’s hard. I am still not eating 100% of the time. I have to remind myself to eat. I have broken the “no food in my room” rule. I had to because pain keeps me from going downstairs to get food when I need it so I keep some pretzels near me to offset hunger. It might not be the best food in the world but it’s something. And something is better than nothing. If I didn’t have to worry about mice, I would bring some of my chocolate granola bars in my room. Those are good for hunger. The reason I have a hard time going down the stairs is because of pain in my ankle and foot due to a condition known as complex regional pain syndrome. I have been living with this condition for the past four years. It’s difficult when you can’t walk and walking is your main mode of transportation. I don’t own a car so I don’t drive that often. I used to be able to borrow my sister’s car but she traded it in for a monster truck and I just can’t drive it for fear of sideswiping another vehicle or something else.

The cement shoes have come on in the last two days. I don’t know when they will come off. I hate wearing them when in fact, I have sneakers on. The cement is so heavy. I feel so weighed down with them on. It’s like I can’t move. It’s so painful. You are exhausted by the time you reach your destination, which is only a few short blocks from your house.

The exhaustion from the depression has to be worse than a physical illness or about the same, depending on who you talk to. It really sucks because you might have energy before you get dressed and then when you are finished showering and putting on your clean clothes, you are wiped out. It sucks more when you are in physical pain as well. I don’t know what is worse at this point. Dealing with my chronic pain in my ankle or the depression. Maybe it’s both. I just need to find a chisel and a hammer to try and escape from these cement shoes. They are no fun.