Tag: disability

Ankle Chronicles 11

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

Ankle Chronicles 11

Hard to believe I am up to 11 stories about my stupid ankle. But here goes…

I woke up early this morning to my foot having fits and being a real ass. I had to go out today. There was no way I was spending another day in the house after I spent nearly all weekend and then some inside. So I took some pain meds and within and hour I was back to sleep. When I woke up my foot wasn’t as bad, until I started walking on it. It didn’t like it one bit. Shit. Too bad. I rebelled. I kept off it most of the day until I had to do an errand for my sister and then leave to go get my latte. My sister is a little nuts. I know she has anxiety when it comes to her kids but her kids aren’t little anymore. She wanted me to check in on the 17 year old to see if she had a fever. Really? My niece is not mentally disabled. I think she can stick a thermometer in her mouth quite safely to see if she is running a fever. So I hobble over there and find she is fine. No fever just some pain in her side that I contribute to either a pulled muscle or her period coming on. She is not throwing up, doesn’t feel nauseous, is drinking fluids. So I leave to catch my bus to the Square. My foot is not really hurting but before I leave to go to the train station to meet up with my friends, I take a pain pill just in case.

I met up with my friends and we had dinner. Then we went to the bookstore and I got a book that I wanted on Amazon and a new journal. I really wanted to get the $40 one but settled on the camo one for $30. As we are walking back to the car, my ankle decides it is going to act up. I have to play it cool so I just walk like nothing is bothering me. We get back to the train station to head home and we have to jog a bit to make it to the platform on time. Yea, my ankle REALLY didn’t like that. I thought all was good until I got off the bus and started walking home. I should have taken a pain pill while I was waiting for the bus. So I pretty much had to crawl home. It took me at least twenty minutes to get home when it normally would take me ten. I am half way down the street that I hate walking at night when I start to feel really nauseous. I had to stop for a few minutes and then continue. I had some dry heaves in the process. I didn’t think I was going to get home without hurling my dinner. I finally make it home, stomach contents still intact and where they should be.

Now I have to climb two flights of stairs to my room. My ankle is still being a whiny bitch and fights me every step. I also have to go to the bathroom but want to change before I do. I took a Zofran (anti-emetic) so I don’t puke. I am waiting for that to kick in before I start taking my handful of night meds and my pain meds. I go to the bathroom and come back to my room. Ankle is fuming at me now. It wants no part of standing to take my meds. My stomach is still unsettled to I take my pill box to the night stand and when my stomach is ready, least I won’t have to get up again. I am tempted just to take the one pill that I need and my pain meds and say screw the rest of them. Problem is, that pill looks like my Ativan so I will have to take both pills because I can’t really distinguish them without looking up the pill numbers and such. That is too much work to do when I am in pain and just want to go to sleep.

I had therapy today. Again she wanted to know where my writing was at. UGH. Why do my two treaters care where my writing is at when I don’t have the answer for them? It drives me crazy because I am not writing and I feel bad about this. It adds pressure for me and the more pressure that is on, I can’t write. It’s not writer’s block. The stuff is there. I just need motivation to actually write my thoughts out. But I am scared it is going to cause some unpleasantness, maybe some dissociation or worse, psychotic symptoms to come out. That is why I am treading lightly in my head before it is on paper. They don’t know this though. I haven’t told them because I just don’t want them to pressure me more. It has been months since I wrote something good. I think the NYT article was the last thing I wrote, outside my blog and journal. I got to find my mojo again.

Random 567

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

Thought I would write a little bit. I am feeling awake but I took my night meds so I hope that I get sleepy soon. I really don’t want to be up most of the night like I was last night. I had slept around 0100 till 0800, which is pretty good for me. I just wish I didn’t wake up in pain. I also took my pain meds with my night meds so I am hoping I will be toast soon. But it takes a while for these meds to work.

Sox came back only for Ogando to give the lead back to the Rays. I hate this pitcher. He always screws up. I hope they get rid of him. I started off listening to the game but after they gave up three runs in the top of the first, I kind of lost interest. I took a very long Facebook movie quiz that took about a half hour to complete. It was like 99 questions about scenes in the movies. I did ok. I got 86 of 99 so not bad. I didn’t think I would get any right as I am not a movie person.

Some people have been asking me about the hospital and I finally read the blog that dealt with it. Seeing as my psychosis has been unstable, I might have to go in to get stabilized. But I am doing better so I don’t think that will be the case. I guess I wasn’t too clear in the blog what I was thinking. It made sense to me when I read it but apparently it wasn’t to everyone else.

I started journaling again. I am almost done with the journal and will need to get another one soon. I bought a few a couple of months ago. Now I just have to decide which one to go with. As I was writing last night, I was thinking of turning it into a blog. Sometimes I write and think it’s good writing and then type it up. But I hate typing up what I write because reading my handwriting is bad. I hate trying to decipher what I wrote like it’s a code or something.

I got a letter from my LTD insurance. They want me to call to give them an update on my condition. I am the same. I still have pain. I can’t stand too long. I can’t walk too much or for long distances. Even though I have been taking less pain medication, I still need it, especially at night when it will flare up out of the blue. Tonight it happen around 2020. I didn’t do anything except move my ankle just a little bit and boom, it flared up. There is no way I can work second shift like I used to. My dream job of being a barista is out because I can’t stand long. Office work is out because my leg swells up after about four hours of sitting. So I guess I am still disabled. And it sucks. So the restrictions that I had before are still in force. They haven’t changed despite me being basically on bed rest these past three years. I don’t know how they can say I have tendonitis still. It should have gotten better by now with all the resting I have done. Granted I am no longer using an AFO anymore, but that is the only improvement that I have. I still have weakness and fatigue if I do the things that normal people can do, like walk several blocks and stand more than twenty minutes. That is the physical part. The mental part, I still can’t work because if I get stressed, I become psychotic. I get delusional and paranoid. Then the bad voices start and I am back in the hospital. It’s been more than a year since I have been in the hospital for psych reasons. There have been a few times in the past few months that I should have been in, but I avoided it like the plague. I know my psychiatrist is wanting me to go in. She said as much the last email I sent her. But I refuse because of the responsibility I have with my father. I know my sisters could probably do his meds, but they will need to talk to me and if I am on a unit that doesn’t allow the use of cell phones, what am I going to do? Plus, my sister needs me as the back up babysitter for my niece. So I just avoid the hospital unless I am really whacked and have no other choice or because I am imminently going to kill myself, which isn’t going to happen. There is a chance my psychosis is getting out of hand but I will work things out with my sister for my father if that happens. She is understanding of my illness, even though we don’t talk about it. It will be extremely hard to do because I hate going in the hospital as all they do is drug you up more than talk with you. But when you are psychotic, meds are sometimes better than talk. I just hope the stress of talking with my insurance company doesn’t cause a psychotic break as I already had a few psychotic episodes in the past few weeks. I still am hearing music when there is no music playing. And my normal voices have been “louder” than they have been before. They are also more demanding to be spoken to. I just hope the extra trilafon helps ease this episode away. I really don’t want to be drugged up and taking a million pills because their pharmacy doesn’t have the dose pills that I take. Last time I was in the hospital, I had to take 4 pills for my blood pressure medicine because they didn’t have a 40 mg tablet. It sucked. I felt like I was at the med window forever taking more than a handful of pills. It sucked worse than being in the hospital!

Death Dates

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

Death dates

Whenever I am suicidal, I pick a date that I want to kill myself on. Then if I don’t want to die on that day, I don’t have to go through with it. So far, I am still alive. It was a close call my last date because I wanted to die very badly. I had enough of living and figured it was the only way out of the situation I was in. But my therapist and psychiatrist got me through it. I felt cheated and angry they stopped me. The only thing that got me through was picking another date. This time it is almost a month a way from now. It is how I manage being intensely suicidal. Trouble is, I am not feeling terribly suicidal at this time. Suicide is furthest from my mind, yet I have this date in mind and I am thinking about going through with it anyway just so I don’t have to suffer anymore pain like I have tonight.

My therapist knows about this date but my psychiatrist doesn’t, least not yet. I don’t know if I am going to remind either of them of this plan. I don’t even know how I am going to die. Sure, I have a few ideas but I am not going to do them in my room where a family member will find me. No, I want to be found by a stranger some place away from home. I would love for it to be a hotel room but I don’t have the money to do the deed. How sad is that? Here I want to kill myself and I can’t basically afford to do it in a place I would like to do it in. There has been no downward circumstances to cause me to think about this date. I just wanted it to be before my birthday.

For some reason, my 9th anniversary of my cauda equina syndrome diagnosis is coming up in two weeks and it is bothering me. Normally the day passes and I don’t even notice. But I marked it on my calendar and the memories of that time period have been flooding back. I remember not being able to move my left leg at all because it was too weak. I lost a lot of strength with this surgery. I had to have a blood patch because I had a CSF leak and then I had to be operated again because a fragment of the disc was embedded in my nerve root causing me these problems. It was not a fun time. I then got a nice UTI that made me sick. The antibiotics made me sicker and then they discharged me only for me to come back to the ER the next day for fluids as I was shitting my brains out. I was very sick. But that surgery and the rehab afterwards failed to notice my current problem and that is why I am disabled today. That is why I have pain every day of my life for the past three years. That is why I cannot walk more than a few blocks at a time. My walking distance is 0.4 miles which isn’t much considering that I was once able to walk 20 miles without a problem. Sure I was sore the next day but that was to be expected. But now I can barely walk a mile without pain. And I leak urine if I walk too much. That is something that I have no control over. This is one of the reasons why I want to end my life. I am tired of the pain, the leaks, the immobility. But that is just the physical side of things. It has nothing to do with the mental side.

The mental side I am very depressed. I see no future but lately I have been. It’s been tough to see but I think things are not as bleak as they have been in the past. Despite my physical disability, I am able to look ahead. Just yesterday, I decided on the place where my sisters and I will eat out on my birthday, should I leave this date that I have planned. Four weeks I have to decide to go through with it or not. I know my therapist and psych would rather I not talk about this. Perhaps, they might not want to know about it. I just think that if I want to die, the decision should be left up to me and not my treaters. Sure they have the legal right to hospitalize me against my will but that will not stop the thoughts or planning. Am I a danger to myself? Not today. Will I soon? I don’t know. Depends on a few things.

very early morning thoughts

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

Since coming back home, my computer is running really slow. I don’t know if it’s the internet connection or the browser. I plan on shutting off the router and turning it back on to see if that helps any but my legs are too sore to stand on at the moment. It’s 0330 in the morning. I woke up with a dryness in my throat and now my legs have decided they want to hurt. I feel a Charlie horse coming on in my left leg but it hasn’t occurred yet.

I have been using my phone, so I think the problem is with the browser and not the internet connection. My phone has been able to connect to the internet without a problem using the same internet connect as my laptop. I don’t know. It’s just annoying because everything is slow to download. I had to have three tried to get my blog to load earlier, and I wonder how long it is going to take this time around. I just don’t know why things are slow to download. I restarted my laptop to see if that helped and that seemed to make matters worse. I just don’t get it.

Walking is going to be difficult today. But I have no choice but to do it because I need to run the weekly errand to my father. I just got word that his sister is not doing too good. She is in the hospital after a series of falls with a broken hip and several cracked ribs. She needs surgery but they need to get her blood levels stabilized. She is not exactly in the best of health but then she is 92. I hope she pulls out of this ok but she is going to need round the clock nursing care when she gets home. I don’t know if that means she will be in nursing home or not. I am very sad about this because she is my Godmother and she is special to me. I hope she can make it out of surgery okay. That will be the biggest hurdle. I know he is going to want to visit her and I hope he doesn’t hound me to hound my cousin to get information when I see him later today. My cousin was hoping to get her transferred to a better hospital where all her care has been given up to this point. I just am really worried.

I have therapy this morning so that will be good. We probably will be talking about the blog that I sent her about the troll. Then I know we will be talking about my appt with my pdoc. I got my medication that I needed. I would have run out today. I didn’t realize I was cutting it so close. I usually am good about getting my meds refilled before I run out, but sometimes I forget.

Sometime later this morning, I need to take a shower. I am not sure if I am going to wash my hair or not as it has become so dry you can use it as kindle for a fire. I had been using a two in one shampoo/conditioner but that doesn’t seem to help. So hasn’t the head and shoulders dry scalp formula. It gets really itchy because it is so dry. I’m going to have to ask my cousin, who is a hairdresser, what to use. I hope I don’t have to get anything fancy. That will just suck. And I got short hair so I don’t get why I get dryness. I wash it every other day as that is my shower schedule. I just don’t understand it. Maybe I need to get a conditioner that isn’t a combo. The reason I have been putting it off is because that means more time in the shower and sometimes my back and/or leg are not up to the task. Standing for more than ten minutes causes me pain so I try to get in and out as quickly as I can.