Tag: mood disorders

waking up with more back pain

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

I realized I didn’t have my quote of the day so I just posted it. I don’t know what I am going to do when I am finished with this section of the book. I have been slowly reading it to get more quotes but nothing is “popping” up at me. I might have to get another book and start from there.

My back still hurts. I woke up and found myself sleeping on it. Then I really couldn’t move. It’s a little ginger when I twist or try to stand up but it is getting better, I think. Last night, I ordered a sandwich and only had half. I think the rest of it is going to be my breakfast. It’s pretty good, turkey breast with avocados, bacon, and cheese on sourdough bread. It’s the first time ordering a sandwich from this place. I usually get their burgers, but I wasn’t in the mood for a burger. Their burgers are huge and I wasn’t that hungry. I haven’t eaten much all day. Taking pain meds and muscle relaxants most of the day kind of kills your appetite and everything else. I haven’t gone to the bathroom in two days. It’s going to suck when I go. It always hurts when I go, another reason why I want to be dead.

I still want to get my blasted donuts. I am determined to get them, even if I have to crawl. But my walking isn’t too good. Even going a short distance in my house, say from the living room to the kitchen, hurts me. I don’t know how I am going to make it down the street. I might have to take the bus. The rain has stopped so I don’t understand why I am still in pain. It should have stopped like a switch going off. I just don’t get it. And the temperature is still “high”. It’s in the seventies now. Weird weather for October.

It’s weird typing on my old laptop. The keys are a little differently spaced. But I am getting the job done. Pats won last night 36-7. I am so happy for them. They have yet come into an opponent they have competition with. It’s been fun to watch though. I didn’t see the game as I was in la-la land because of my meds. I took them early because I didn’t want to get up again to take them. I am glad that I fixed them in my pill box because otherwise, I wouldn’t have taken them all. I would just take the important ones and screw the rest.

I still need to get a haircut. If my back is doing better later today, I will try. I also will bring a copy of the NYT article with me to show it off to the barbers. I don’t know if they would be interested but I don’t mind bragging a little bit. I hardly get to brag.

I’m going to get that sandwich now and then hopefully get back to sleep.

Quote of the Day 30-Oct-2015

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, psychache, Quotes, suicide

There is nothing intrinsically wrong (or aberrant) in thinking about suicide; it is abnormal only when on thinks that suicide is the only solution. –Edwin Shneidman, Suicide as Psychache

Back Pain Sucks when It Rains

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

Back Pain Sucks when it Rains

Since around 0130, my back went out on me and I haven’t been able to move around too much. I had my sister go to my father’s for his pills. There was no way I could do it as I couldn’t move. I really wanted to get donuts today but it will have to wait another day. As long as I stay still, I am not in too much pain. Laying down has its challenges. If I try to move to another position, I am hurting. It sucks. And the thing is, the rain stopped so I don’t know why I am hurting so much.

I wanted to get my hair cut today. That is also not happening. I just need to rest and move as gingerly as possible. I just made myself lunch and now need a nap. I am trying to increase my fluids, thinking that will help. I also took some naprosen to ease the inflammation. I would have taken the NSAID I normally take but I just took what was handy. I can’t stand too long. Sitting I am ok, so far. I am really tired, probably because of the meds and not sleeping too good last night. With me being cooped up, I really hope I can finish the Harry Potter book today. It is a goal that I want to accomplish. The witch that I had trouble with was taken away and shouldn’t cause anymore problems. But I know one of the characters dies in the last few chapters so I am not looking forward to it. This book is quite a bit of emotion.

Mail hasn’t come yet and I hope the battery for this laptop comes in today, but it could be tomorrow. I will be happy when I get the new battery. This one is deader than a door nail. I don’t know what I am going to do with it. I suppose I will have to go to Staples and see if they take laptop batteries to recycle them.

My ankle is acting up. Not surprised as it has to hurt whenever another body part hurts. I haven’t don’t any walking, just going up and down the stairs to go to the bathroom and make myself some lunch. I guess it didn’t like the stairs too much. Oh well. I need to keep using it or it will just atrophy away. And that would not be good. I probably am putting more weight on my ankle than I need to because I can’t walk right. I am walking hunched over at the moment. Any attempts to straighten out my spine while standing causes intense pain. My whole lumbar area is wiped out. I feel like I have an invisible band and any attempt to loosen it or get rid of it, I am in a lot of pain. The temperature has also gone up ten degrees, which isn’t helping me. Yesterday it was 47. It is now 73. OUCH. My back cannot take drastic increases or decreases in temperatures. I am still wearing just my underwear because I put away my short PJs. I am not really planning on leaving my room anyways so I can stay in my underwear. No one is going to see me. I would put the ceiling fan on but that would take effort. I just don’t have the effort right now. If it gets warmer, I will have no choice as I cannot stand the heat.

I was so looking forward to having donuts today. It’s not fair that I can’t have them. I have no idea how much it costs for a dozen. I haven’t bought a dozen donuts in so long, but my mother has been craving jelly donuts, too, so I will share with her. I wish the donut place delivered. That would be so awesome.

Last night, when I sent out my latest quote, one of the suicidologists that I follow liked the quote. Apparently, he has used the same quote in his book. I felt honored that he recognized it. Tonight will be another Shneidman quote. I have quite a few lined up. It’s funny, I was looking at the first page of the book and it listed a counselor’s name that I don’t know. He is from Alabama. The sticker is too adhered to the page so I am unable to remove it. It just makes me curious why this counselor would want to get rid of such a wonderful book. Maybe he is no longer in practice or he died or something. It has my curiosity piqued.

I have yet to receive the October edition of the journal Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior. It has a few articles that I really want. I could get it on this old laptop but I won’t be able to print it out. So I am holding back. That is why I want this new battery to come sooner rather than later.

I don’t want to exist

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

I was going to install the drivers for my printer on my old laptop when I realized it can’t be done. I need to have the laptop unplugged and I can’t do that. The battery is dead. So until I get the new battery, I can’t print anything. I really wanted to print that story I wrote a few weeks ago so I can work on it. Always something hindering my procrastination for getting this story done.

I tried to finish “Order of the Phoenix” tonight. I failed. I got through one chapter and that is all my brain could absorb. I really don’t know why I am having such difficulty. I usually go through Harry Potter books like they were child play. But for whatever reason, I am having real difficulty. I think it’s because the depression has gotten so bad.

I was going over my stats tonight. My “How to Save a Life” paper is going through the roof. I don’t know why. My CAMS paper is also getting a lot of views, not as much as save a life but getting there. I found out today that Jobes will be having a second edition of his book in the Spring. I can’t wait. I emailed my friend tonight to see if there was a CAMS therapist in my area. She said she would email him and get back to me. I asked if there was a database. It’s not listed on the CAMS-Care website. It would be cool if it did.

I got really upset by one of my twitter buddies. I don’t think he realizes how triggering his tweets can be to sensitive people like me. He was talking about rape of boys and the inhumanity of it. I agree with him that it is a social injustice, but going into detail about it, people don’t need to know. Yes, it happens and it is a terrible thing. I am not shoving it under the rug, but do I really need to hear about how the boy was penetrated? NO. That to me is wrong.

I hope my backache is gone tomorrow. Every time it rains, I hurt. It hurts so bad, I can’t lie down. I have taken meds to ease my discomfort but it hasn’t kicked in yet. What is also causing me pain is the temperature keeps going up rather than down. It was 47 degrees when I got home earlier this evening. It is now 63 degrees. That could be why I am hurting, too. I hate that I am a human barometer.

My older laptop now has EndNote ready to go. I think I am going to make a database of all my citations that I am co-authored on. I think if I go to PubMed I can export them to the database. That would be cool and handy. Unfortunately, I don’t have the PDF for the last article I am authored on. It was the last paper before I left research. I did a lot of work with the samples for this paper. Just thinking back about it, causes my hands to hurt. I was working with -80 degree samples. They were cold, even with gloves on!

My quote of the day should have been published by now. I will have more Shneidman quotes as time goes by. He was such a cool guy. Towards the end of his life, he wanted his work to go out without copyright hindrances. I thought that was pretty cool. There are certain things that are still copyrighted, but that is mostly because it isn’t his work, like Murray’s frustrated needs. That is one thing that I never understood in all my readings of his work. There are 20 needs and the sum of the need must equal 100, so each need must have a score of 5 or less. It just and still does, boggle my mind. I tried scoring the thing on myself and couldn’t come up with 100. And he is gone now so I can’t ask him about it. He really was a psychometric type of psychologist. He loved assessments and such. It is too bad that his pain scale could never some to fruition. It is too complicated and has a great risk of misinterpretation. But there are other scales that have been shown merit. Two that come to my mind that I use are the psychache scale based on the work of Ronald Holden in Canada and the works of Jobes, the SSF, suicide status form. These two have really helped with my suicidality. I don’t use the psychache form too often anymore. In fact, I don’t even know where the scale is right now. I used to copy it in the back of my journals. But I stopped that a long time ago. The SSF my therapist and I use when I am in crisis. It is useful for her. I just find it annoying sometimes because I feel like she is ignoring why I am suicidal rather than what’s behind it. I don’t know if that makes sense. She rather assess my reasons for living rather than my reasons for dying. Both are important but I usually have more reasons for dying than living. It just frustrates me. She also just assumes that I will call her or use my crisis response plan when I really just want to talk. But when I want to talk it’s late at night and I know she isn’t going to get the text until the following day. That is also frustrating. I am not saying she needs to be available 24/7, that would be asking too much. I am saying there has got to be a better plan in place that I can soothe myself so I don’t go crazy, or at least be accountable to actually doing the crisis response plan. She never checks in with me about the plan. I don’t want to cause more trouble with her. I am already on thin ice. We are just starting to make headway in what we want to do going forward. If I bring this up, she just is going to say she isn’t a suicidologist, which to me is a cop out. That is like saying I am a therapist when I am not. I just don’t get her deal. It really frustrates me that I thought things were cool and then she goes to a consulting group and that is messing things up for us. She is truly taking the stuff to heart and I feel like I am getting booted, like she doesn’t want to work with me anymore because I have become a leper or something.

I don’t know if I am suicidal anymore. I just know I don’t want to live. I don’t want to exist. It’s too painful, both physically and emotionally. I have severe heartache and chronic physical pain. Mixed together, it’s just a suicidal script. I wish I knew how to break it. Reading Shneidman has been helpful. He gets the suicidal mind. I have two options: exist or die. I rather die but instead I am existing, only because my family, psychiatrist and therapist would miss me greatly. I am existing because of guilt. It doesn’t make me feel good living this way. If I knew my death wouldn’t cause pain, I know I would be dead in a heartbeat. Depression is part of it but it’s not the whole of it. And no one understands it. That is why I am so frustrated. I have to keep changing my date to satisfy others. This is no way to live. I don’t know how to live but I am pretty sure jumping suicide dates is not the way to go.