mental illness – Page 180 – midnightdemons7

Invisible disease

Sun,29 Jul,2012, 3:27 by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Depression and chronic pain can be ckassified as an invisible disease because even if we tell people about it, and unless we look it, they are not going to believe we are in pain or are depression. Why? Because we look and act like everyone else, “normal”. We don’t act like a psychopath so therefore we are “ok” and should cheer up. I hate those 2 words. And it’s usually followed by “things could be worse”. I want to tell you if someone said that to me right now i’d deck them and tell them yea, I’m planning to kill myself so things are already worse ya moron!!
A friend of mine pissed me off, actually two did within the last 24 hrs. All for the same reason, they don’t think I’m a disabled person. I admit that I don’t like to be in that category but it’s taken me 9 months to come to the realization I will never be happy nor will I ever walk normally ever again.

I’m all ready so depressed I have had two hospitalizations in 3 months for psych. I’m constantly suicidal yet no one sees it or wants to hear about it. I try not to think about ending my life but it has become so automatic for me now soon as something bad happens it is the first thing I think about. I want to be dead because I simply do not find life worth living anymore. I’m so dead inside that I just wish my brain would turn off permanently. But that only happens like never. They say that is you meditate deep enough you can start to regulate your breathing and heart rate but it takes a lot of practice and patience. I don’t have time for that. My only objective would be to control it to stop it, which soon as I passed out adrenaline would kick in and I would start breathing and my heart rate would be back to normal again. Now putting a plastic bag over your head, that is something I’m toying with. A neighbor was found dead in the basement that way. It has been stuck in my mind for months now. And he was good too. He tied his hands up after placing the bag over his head. That is what I was planning to do with my hanging plan, place handcuffs on before jumping and strangling myself. I don’t know why I am writing about this but I am and I am sorry you are reading my deranged suicidal thoughts but this is who I am. My suicidal career has taught me a lot of things over the years and that is a good lethal plan is much better than a non lethal plan.
Speaking of which, my PCP is now scared that I might overdose on my pain medicine. I told him I am more worried about the tylenol content than the pain medicine ok. I don’t want to try and kill myself, fail, and then die a painful death because my liver fails on me. No thank you!! I then told him about the plastic bag. He still said that if I feel really blue and want to overdose to call him. He hears me soooo well. Here I am telling him I will die with a bag over my head and he still thinks I’m going to take pills. Wtf. And they wonder why the health care is so poor. Because doctor don’t listen to their patients. Hell least mine asks about my suicidality more than most doctors will. Some doctors are too afraid thinking the myth that if they ask they will be putting it in their patient’s head…

I guess I am done with my rant for now even though I know I went completely off topic with the title. But if my doctor was able to physically see my suicidality or my pain, I bet he would have no problems treating me and maybe he would have a little more compassion and empathy and possibly trust me when I tell him I’m not going to OD.

It’s 4am and I’m hardly breathing

Sat,28 Jul,2012, 2:10Wed,1 Aug,2012, 0:54 by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Just got finished with a couple of episodes of watching season 2 of criminal minds. I have fallen in love with this show though it is kind of creepy. I’m not sure which is freakier…that this fiction is whacked and someone thinks of this stuff or that it might actually be true and there are more serial killers/rapists/or more than I would like to think about.

The last few hours, my gastritis has been acting up. I wish I could say that it is keeping me awake but as tired as I feel, I am just not sleepy.
I have been in a psychotic state the past few days, having weird thoughts, paranoia and delusions.
I try not to give in to the voices but sometimes it is very difficult. It’s 4:30 and all I can think about is death. It is a constant struggle. With my nerve condition, CES (Cauda Equina Syndrome), I have had a bladder accident today that always sends me off the deep end. I know that sometimes sitting causes me to push on the bladder causing urine to come out. Because I have been on narcs and anti-psychotics, I have had some retention and don’t really know when I am full. I find it humiliating to find wet pants and not know it all the damn time. This week is also my 11^th anniversary of getting this blasphemous condition and with every bladder or bowel accident, all I can think of is that another disc is going.
The tension in my neck and shoulders from worry is causing my arms to feel weak at times. I can no longer hold the phone for more than 10 mins with out my arm going numb. And I feel that if I have cervical herniations, I will just kill myself. My only saving grace has been my nieces and nephew. I know they will not be okay even as much I try to think they will be, that they will be resilient enough to deal with my loss.

I have been trying to get a hold of my pdoc but no response. I guess she is too busy for me and it hurts. I have known her for 19 yrs now, since I was 17 and now I feel like I need to see another doc but then she knows me better than anyone. I know that the stressors of last week with the screw up of my benefits set the stage for this psychotic break. I just hope that I can getit controlled before I have to seriously consider going inpatient again.
My fear there is that they will mess up my meds and then get it straight the day I get discharged. And besides, the docs there will most likely want to try a new expensive drug I have never been on to deal with my psychosis. No one understands the pressure of this and knows what kind of hell my head goes through. Yes, my physical pain sucks, but this madness is worse than that. Least I know that a vicoden or dilaudid can calm it down.
Any type of stress and boom, I am crazy. Typical “normal” people become anxious or nervous, maybe even have anxiety attacks. Me I just become psychotic. The voices get louder, I talk to myself more to give in to their endless questions, criticisms, and observance of who is going to kill me or saying negative things about me. Weird thing is that every time I get psychotic, it’s different. This time in addition of them reading my thoughts, the conversations continue and no one knows what I am talking about. The conversation in my head gets externalized and the people around me whom I am carrying on the conversation have no clue what I am talking about. Sometimes it is of an intellectual nature, such as the Maya or some history that I have read and think that they know about but truly they have not read it but I know they have because the voices have. I know it is weird to think this but I know my thoughts are amplified and people can hear it and maybe the voices too. I don’t know maybe it is just part of the madness.

It’s now 5 am so I am going to try and get some sleep for at least 6 hours as I need to get up for good old therapy…

Dark thoughts, things no one talks about

Fri,27 Jul,2012, 2:24Fri,27 Jul,2012, 2:24 by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Been thinking the last few days of how this blog has changed my life but yet the demons of my mental illness still play their cards. I have not really thought of ending my life today, until now because the physical pain I am experiencing is driving the voices mad. I forgot to take my medication this morning. I was excited in seeing a close friend and just forgot. The price you pay for sanity is a little pink pill. The voices have created this delusion that if I cut my leg open, I will be free from pain. I cannot help but see their point in this line of thinking. I have done everything to try and sooth my pain but cut. Maybe the release of endorphins is what I need to get over the pain but part of me knows I will not feel the release because my leg is numb. The last time I tried cutting which was a few years ago it was a god awful sound of cardbord being cut that I never want to experience again. Who would have thought that being numb had its vantage points. But that is what nerve damage does to you. It numbs you, making you jaded of the things around you. And then when the psychosis starts you begin to wonder what is truth and what is fantasy. I’m in a difficult spot because although I want to cut, I know the consequences of doing so. The chance of infection is greater because of lack of feeling or that I will feel the pain, just not right away like when I stub my toe on my left foot. Funny I remember when I was a kid I thought my left side was the “evil” side of me and had to be removed because my right side was the “superior” one and would defeat all. Yes I was psychotic back then but I always kept it hidden.
See no one wants to know that you are crazy, like really mentally ill and depressed. They say things like cheer up or things could be worse. How can things be worse if you are already thinking of ending your life and you are hearing voices cheering you on, almost daring you to go through with it every day??? Yes, things could be worse. Life as a vegetable or state commitment to a psych hospital would be a terrible consequence of telling someone that they are NOT telling someone they are hurting. Every time I hear people tell a depressed person to cheer up it makes me so angry because they are so ignorant. I want to shout at that for being dumbasses because it only created guilt in the depressed person that is just trying to survive the day without incident.
But throw in being psychotic and depressed, you have a different ballgame. Voices are constantly criticizing everything you do. You don’t tell anyone because I’ve learned that only the voices care. The voices are with you 24/7 and they know you better than the person that is saying cheer up. That person then becomes the enemy, the object of paranoia where the voices scream that he or she is going to kill you. To beware of what he or she is saying and doing because now they are after you and are going to kill you. This is what I deal with on a constant basis.
So the next time a friend tells you they are down, don’t tell them to cheer up. Find out what is making them sad because if it is psychosis, you might end up being the bad guy…

knackered, short story about Cauda Equina Syndrome

Thu,26 Jul,2012, 2:18Sat,11 Jul,2020, 22:24 by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, depression

Cauda Equina Syndrome: A complicated syndrome that often brings more questions than answers, more despair than hope. Questions like when will I have my old body back? Will my back/legs/feet ever be normal like they were before my injury? Will my bowels and bladder ever be normal and I won’t have to constantly think about the last time I went to the bathroom. These questions are always, if not in the forefront, are always in the back of the mind of those that suffer from Cauda Equina syndrome (CES as those of us call it). It is a neurological condition that occurs when the cauda equina (horse’s tail) nerves are compressed somehow due to a trauma injuries such as a disc herniation, fragments of the vertebrae, a spinal tumor, or some other injury that compresses the nerve, such as a surgery clamp. The cauda equina nerves ends around the L2 level where the spinal cord ends. The causes of this syndrome are many and as we have 5-6 levels of lumbar vertebraes, the different levels of damage vary. The most consistent rule is that soon as symptoms of weakness, unbearable pain, and/or loss of feeling occur, surgery should happen within 24-48 hrs.
Do we recovery after this? Anything is possible. Some of us do, some are left with permanent injury because treatment did not happen or was delayed or it was simply too late to recover. Some have seen recovery after a few months, a few years, some times more than that. Some have gotten worse after surgery as surgery itself holds its own risk. One thing that has gotten to be the never ending questions is, how do I live like this? How do I live with the pain, the never ending nerve pain that no narcotic can touch? How can I live when I can’t feel myself having a bowel movement or feel myself urinate. How can live with these dysfunctions, always in the back of my mind knowing where my feet are cause if I get distracted or am too tired, I will trip over them.
It has been eleven years since my first injury. Almost six since my second. My first diagnosis happened at level L4/L5. My second was at L2/L3, higher and more disruptive. It caused me to be where I am today, disabled to a degree that is permanent, more permanent than my initial injury. I do not know if all people that suffer CES x 2 will have what I have. I just know that I hurt, that I can’t walk more than a few blocks without debilitating pain, that I have to take meds everyday to live my life with some functionality. Otherwise I will lose my mind and be on a psych ward never to be a functioning member of society again.
The past year has been hard to deal with. I finally realized that my initial injury never quite healed the way I thought I did and so left me wide open for injury when I was hit the second time. Now while I am awaiting accommodations from work, I am doing what I do best. Writing my life story so it can be used as a voice.
By being a voice I can tell people who have been suffering with this condition that they are not alone with this. They have support in their pain and despair. We all have been through the learning to walk again, the painful spasms, the night time burning and shock pains that keep us up at night. The nights of lost sleep from the constant worry of being in pain and seeing endless doctors to find no relief or some relief. My voice can help answer the questions that arrive at each stage of recovery and when there seems like there is no recovery in sight.
It is an always constant reminder that you are not “normal” anymore. You have your good and bad days but a good day usually consists of making it to the bathroom on time or having some pain relief, even if it is for a few hours. A good day might be the day where you just collapse in exhaustion and sleep the day away because you were up all night in horrific nerve pain that just wouldn’t quit no matter how many pills you popped before bedtime. I still have not been able to find the right time of taking my doses. Though it has been a few weeks since the 2-4 am pain cycle, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be back. I think most of the time I have not been feeling too much pain is because I have been out of work the last month or so. Pain has become less but if I happen to walk too much or stand too long, I pay for it at night.
Most of the time, people think that you are fine because you don’t have anything physical wrong with you. I find that to be true because other than my foot swelling up, no one would know that my leg is hurting me so bad I can’t walk far or stand for more than 20 minutes. They might see the AFO (ankle foot orthotic) but that is what helps keep my foot aligned. So far I have not been questioned on this by anyone, but then this will be the first summer I will be wearing it. I got it in early November because I do not walk correctly due to the weakness in my foot. Instead of walking heel to toe, up/down, my left foot goes heel and swerves to go back to the toes. It has pulled my muscles and tendons so badly that when they flair up, I am in such agony, that all I can think about is killing myself. And this pain was 24/7. It drove me nuts because there was nothing I could do for it, nor was anything I was taking calming it down. I was on anti-inflammatories, narcotic pain meds, neuropathic pain meds, and still I was in bone crushing pain. All the tests, MRI and x-rays said things were normal. But if I was so damn normal, why was in so much pain??
Then there is the bouncing game where you go from one specialist to another hoping to get a new treatment, new diagnosis or just plain answers but all they can do is give you no answers and refer you to yet another specialist. My neurologist is good for this. She has sent me to a physiatrist, an orthopedic, and a physical therapist which all said they have no idea what is wrong with my foot. They have no idea what is causing the pain, be it from my back or from my foot (a mechanical problem as it turned out to be).
I have come to the conclusion that despite my many attempts to find the right doctor to see for my physical pain, there isn’t one out there. My last appointment this week was the last new doc I will see in a while. I am tired of being put through the tests and the endless questions just to be told maybe this might help, maybe not but go through it anyway. Seeing as I don’t have insurance at the moment, I say the hell with it. I cannot fathom going through something that might or might not help for six weeks and then be told, well at least we tried. Nowhere in the literature did I sign up for that. AND this is a NEW form of therapy so it might really not work at all. Not everyone is the same when it comes to pain. I don’t even fit the typical symptoms of what my neurologist diagnosed me with (complex regional pain syndrome) so how am I supposed to have confidence for six weeks, oh and did I mention this is a “drug free” program. I am supposedly weaned off my pain meds. SCREW that. I can’t function as it is without them. I can’t take a shower or go down the stairs or walk unless I take them. Living with this, Cauda Equina Syndrome, post (CESp) is life altering. Throw in mental illness and you got a time bomb of suicidality you don’t even want to think about. Most of my midnight demons comes from the pain I feel at 2 am in the morning. No doctor sees a patient at 2 am unless you are in the emergency room so of course my level isn’t astronomical at 11:40 am when I see a doctor or my psychiatrist. All I can do is shoot off an email at 2 am and tell them I am hurting. Sometimes I get a response, sometimes I don’t.
I’m done with seeing new doctors. As long as my PCP provides me with pain relief that is all I care about right now because otherwise I will end up 6 feet under. I can barely stand when I get up in the morning and no one understands. I don’t understand how the medical profession can know so much science and technology yet know so little about how to treat pain. I’m just getting fed up. Fed up and tired that no one listens and cares that someone already with a depressive condition is being made to suffer because of the “ills” of opioid therapy. Granted there are people out there who have addictions but these people can be weeded out if the physician just takes a little more effort in listening than prescribing to get rid of the patient. I still long for the day when I can page a doctor at 2 am and tell them I hurting because I really think then they will understand that I am not just some nut job but a person who is truly in pain and suffering a great deal but that day will never come. I will always be the one to suffer and as long as I do, whether it be physical or mental, I will have suicidal thoughts. I know that one day I will take my life by my own hand. I think at this point I am just too tired to even do that. Yes, TOO TIRED, EXHAUSTED to take my life, to end the pain and suffering caused by the damage of tiny disc fragments that compressed my spinal nerves for 5 long days. That was all it took to wreck my life forever. I often wonder if I would have finished my degree by now had CES not enter my life for the second time. I believe that this second occurrence is what truly disabled me, physically and mentally. I have more damage than I had before because a tiny fragment was left on my nerves for 4 days after my surgery to help me when I was losing control of my bladder. That problem was solved but then because of this tiny fragment, I was left with paralysis of my left leg, the leg that is now the vain of my existence. No one knows of this cauda equina syndrome, yet no one has suffered from it twice and been “okay”. I can still walk but I am tortured by it every day. Every day my ankle refuses to flex when I wake up and now it seems I have to take pain meds just to get out of bed and down the stairs to use the bathroom. That is if I don’t have to go urgently, then it’s screw the pains meds and go one step at a time down the stairs. This is what my life has become. Not one doctor in the entire city of Boston wants to help me. Mentally I can’t really complain. I have the best psychiatrist I could ever ask for. But medically, I do not have anyone I can truly trust. People just take it for granted that after surgery they will be ok. But no doctor deals with the aftermath of traumatizing surgery and the pain that comes with it. I am sure if I go to my surgeon today he will either want to do another one or refer me to a “pain doctor” for an injection but injections in the spine have not been shown to be useful. They might work in 50% of the patients but not all and some may even be harmed by this practice. I call it a practice of negligence.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: