Tag: mental pain

The sad truth about CES

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, depression, medical, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

8-Dec-12

I’m faced with a dilemma. A friend of mine that I have known for the past year or so via email has just emailed saying that she is going to kill herself soon because she just can’t take it anymore. She feels no one will care and that Obamacare wants her to commit suicide anyway because she has a chronic illness and it will cost too much to keep her alive.

I feel I should let someone know but I don’t want to betray her confidence in me by telling people about her plan. She doesn’t want to be talked out of it. I understand where she is coming from and it troubles me that I can’t do anything to try and stop her. I know that if I do, she will probably not talk to me again and most likely be more determined than ever to try again or just attempt it without talking to me first about it. Her husband has neglected her emotionally. She has no one to talk to except via email. She has no close family members and is dependent solely on her husband for everything as she is in a poor state of health. I am mad at the husband for failing his wife. Maybe she is right and she will be better off dead. I often feel that way but I can feel the pain in what she writes and I know the agony and psychache she feels.

I just wrote her an email begging her not to go through with it and have me try and talk with her about things. To al least email me when she does so I can be with her so she isn’t alone when she dies. I don’t know what else to do or say to her. I know I could ask someone in the group to call her but like I said before I don’t want to betray her confidence. I know in suicide there is no confidences or promises but I hate just sitting here not knowing what to do. It really sucks to be in this type of position. Who am I to stop her? I know the pain she is going through. I know the misery it brings. I know the loss of dignity that this dreaded nerve condition brings. It’s awful that she has someone living with her that doesn’t care anymore. It makes me sad that she has to go through this alone. I hope that my email finds her and that she hasn’t done it yet. If I don’t get a response then I’ll know that I was too late in reaching out to a friend in need. I don’t even have her number to call her and check on her. I knew that she was suicidal in the past. We have talked about it many times before.I just didn’t know she would go through with it. Sometimes writing about what you are going to do puts you in a better frame of mind. It sometimes proves to be cathartic. I know that if I write the most horrible depressing, despairing letters I feel better afterwards. I don’t feel so suicidal afterwards. It sucks being in pain all the time and not having any relief. I get why she wants to do this and I respect her decision. All you can think about is death when you are in pain 24/7 because all you want is relief. Doesn’t matter how you achieve your death, you just know dying is better than living. It takes its toll on you that no one else can understand except for other who suffer with you. No one except someone with the same or similar condition can know the depths of despair, hopelessness, exhaustion, chronic pain, chronic worry that this condition brings. It’s an invisible illness as after surgery, you can’t really see the damage anymore on the MRI or x-ray but you can feel it. The constant burning, loss of sensation, loss of bowel/bladder, loss of sexual function all encompass this illness caused by stenosis, disc herniation, or trauma to the cauda equine nerves, the horse’s tail. It’s the bundle of nerves that begin where the spinal cord ends, usually at the L1/L2 vertebrae.

explanation of myths of suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in CES, Chronic pain, depression, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, suicide, suicide attempt

Today I did nothing but sleep. I have been in pain the last few nights and today was the first reprieve that I have had since then. I am not entirely pain free but I am feeling better than I was.

I wrote a crappy paper about holiday myths surrounding suicide. The myth is that there is more suicides around the holidays than any other time of year. That simply is not true as July gets as many as 111 suicides. For December, it is only 98. Still very close numbers but what kills me is that they argue that suicides are less but they don’t focus on the attempters. Those ATTEMPTERS may be the ones to complete a suicide during the holiday because they now know what steps to do so they can succeed. I maybe wrong. I had a friend that attempted the day after Christmas and this person is never going to do it again. This person states that she can never go back there again. I hope that is true. Not that I don’t believe her. Most people who attempt once will never try again. It is the chronicity of those that attempt multiple times that need the help the most. They are the ones that truly need the extra support during this time because they simply cannot cope with another holiday that is supposed to be joyous but they are not.

Holidays suck. People put on their happy faces to pretend when they do not care less about this holiday than any other. This day and age has stepped far away from tradition and more on materialistic styles of life. The iPad, iTouch, the cellphones, the big screen TVs. And then in January, they get the bills so no wonder by July people are ready to kill themselves because they can’t afford what they purchased and their six-month grace period is over. Am I being sarcastic? Hell yes. Is there truth to what I just said, maybe. I cannot prove it. I just recently paid off a credit card and find some freedom in that. Meanwhile I still owe Uncle Sam big bucks for my student loans. My credit sucks up the ying-yang. Do I want to kill myself to get out of debt, hell yea, but I don’t because the debt is going to be there regardless if I am alive or not. Granted I have no idea what happens to debt when someone dies. I know it won’t be in my will that so and so gets this portion and Uncle Harry gets this. I don’t even know if I will leave a will.

People talk about suicide notes all the time but the majority do not leave one. I know that I have been through many suicidal crises and have never really left a note. The past few years I have been writing them to save face for my nieces and nephew. So they know that I love them even though the pain I have caused them is meaningless. I hope they never think about taking their lives. It is a horrible place to be in when thinking about it. I shudder every time I think about where I was when I last tried. It wasn’t that long ago. I still remember the desperation I felt. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t write to anyone. I just took pill after pill hoping to take my pain away.

There has been two holidays that I have tried to take my life. The first was in 1994 and the second was in 2005. I was hospitalized in 1994 for Christmas and New Years, hell Thanksgiving too. It was a bad time for me. I had severe depression and could not get a grip on things. I overdosed on some pills and the next thing I knew I was in the hospital for three months.

In 2005, it was different. I had planned to take my life Nov 5th of that year but my therapist begged me not to and some how we got through it. I vaguely remember it. I didn’t attempt anything but I did plan every single detail. I ended up in partial hospital as gone were the days of long admissions. I learned some things while in Partial but I still wanted to end my life. Thought about it everyday, just kept changing the date. That is how close I came. The following year I took a psychometric class and learned about psychache, perturbation, and press. Not in the class. The professor was an idiot when it came to these issues, but on my own learning. I am somewhat of an autodidact and pick up more on my own than in the classroom. But that semester I learned more than any other. And I was grateful for it because it gave me a chance to learn more about suicidality than I had previously. Finally someone understood my struggle. Finally someone understood my pain. Though I then became a member of the American Association of Suicidology, I still am today. I am a proud member and I get to go to their annual conference and learn more about the treatments are for people like me.

holiday myths about suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Apparently there is a still a myth that the holidays bring on suicide. The study published today at USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/05/holiday-suicide-myth/1748351/ ) stated that the highest is in the Spring and summer. July brings 111 while December is “low” at 98. Still those numbers, to me anyways, are high. And that doesn’t account for all the suicide attempts or near suicide attempts.

While there is the myth that the holidays brings more suicide than any other time of year, you still have the holiday classic “It’s a wonderful life” to show that there still are some people contemplating their life during the “happiest of seasons”. There is no data that supports my saying this. It is just a well known idea that people should be happier this time of year than the rest of the year. While mood disorders such as Season Affective Disorder is in full swing, there is no evidence that these disorders bring about more suicide. If anything, people want to get help so they can change their lives and be in a better relationship. This is why during the holidays, detox goes up during time of year more than any other. People want to become happy but they do not understand that it is a long road from happiness when you are at your rock bottom. I am reminded of a young kid, we’ll call him Jay for confidentiality purposes. He was with me while I had my hospitalization a few years ago. He was a meth addict and wanted to get sober for his kids sake. He was doing the program of staying sober but he had a lot of challenges. He was on the street and his current resident was the hospital. He reminded me that it is possible to look forward and survive despite having a drug addiction. I don’t know where he is now but I do hope that he was able to leave the hospital with new tools to help him cope better with this addiction issues and that he was able to find a sponsor to help guide him through the rough waters ahead of him.

just a blog 2

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, mental disorders, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Today I got a Christmas letter from a good friend of mine. He sends out a Christmas letter every year since I have known him, going on fifteen years now. He is old fashioned and types his letter on a typewriter. For those not familiar with one, it was an old keyboard with ribbons that transfers what you write on a scroll type mechanism. If you watch episodes of M*A*S*H, Radar is always typing on one for his daily reports.

I will not be sending out Christmas cards this year. I thought about it and I certainly have the time to do so, I just don’t have the energy. This is the first holiday season where I am out of work. I thought about sending out a Christmas letter with an update about what I have been doing and that I am no longer working, that I am on disability from work, and that I am a writer or at least working on my writing through a blog and other professional work. I am not getting paid for any of it but they don’t need to know that. Since not being able to work, I have found that my writing is my solace. It is the one place I can be free at and be at least content with it. Don’t get me wrong, I still have my severe bouts of depression, my suicidality that peaks whenever a flare up occurs, and being suicidal in general. Just because writing makes me content doesn’t mean that my illness has been cured. Far from it as my psychiatrist and therapist can attest.

Last night I had one of my flare up that lasted until almost four in the morning. I was not a happy camper. I couldn’t sleep because my foot exploded in pain. I wrote to my psychiatrist at two thirty in the morning, telling her exactly what is going on. The police has not shown up at my door so I am guessing she is ok with what I wrote. I was venting because I needed to and I wanted to let her know what goes through my mind during these awful episodes.

Last night I also emailed a psychologist but for a different reason. I wrote to him thanking him for coming up with his pain scale and the reasons why I use it and how effective I have found it. I have not heard back from him as of yet. Maybe I won’t. Or maybe he is just too busy right now to answer something from someone he doesn’t know. Or maybe he saw the email and thought it was junk and deleted it.

I had a busy night writing last night. My hand was still sore for typing so I used a pen to write down most of my thoughts. My journal entry has at least three pages of writing. Write, write, write. Seems like that is all I did last night. I couldn’t read because I just didn’t have the mindset to do so. I just didn’t have the concentration necessary for it. I was too much in pain and in restless spirits to lay down and read. I really need to catch up on my Hamilton book. This is a 600 page book and I am only in the one hundreds. I have been updating my Goodreads website about my progress which I haven’t done in quite some time. It is an interesting book and keeps my attention. It is just very, very wordy.