Tag: persistant depressive disorder

An idiot, I am

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, disability, mental disorders, mood disorders, painsomnia

Pain got the best of me this morning. Early this morning I was ready to doze off finally after being up all night. Laid down and within 15 minutes, pain got worse. I had enough so I got the elixir out. I wasn’t sure how it was going to taste. I took a swig. It was peppery and I checked the ingredients to make sure it didn’t have pepper in it or my stomach was going to reject my attempt. I kept taking shots but nothing was happening. I waited an hour. Nothing. By now it was like 6 am. I maybe dozed off for an hour or two, not consecutively though. By 0700, I gave up. The stuff wasn’t causing a reaction. I was mad and pissed and a jumble of other emotions.

I texted my therapist at midnight saying I wasn’t going to see her tomorrow. She thought it was today so allowed me to cancel. Mood was all over the place. Then she texted saying she couldn’t see me because she was really sick. That was the last text I got from her. I sent her a few more but got nothing. I went about my day.

I went to see my friend at the Navy Yard. We chatted for a few before he had to go back to work. I then went off for my appt with OT. We discussed the caths and stuff related. I asked her what would be best in cathing in bed and she told me it might be easier but I could get too comfortable with it that it would be the only place I would. Right now I am just planning on doing it when my ankle is 12+ level pain so I don’t have to go downstairs. I got a urinal and she showed me an type of catheter with a bag from the same company that makes the ones I use. She is going to recommend them to my uro so she can order them for me. These will be so much easier as then I don’t have to worry too much about wetting the bed with an accidental miss. Throughout the conversation I was having trouble keeping it. Concussion symptoms were in high gear today. Memory was finicky at best and my thoughts were not always on point. I would forget mid-sentence what I was saying and then totally blank out completely. Didn’t help that I sleep deprived.

After the appt, I went grocery shopping. I wanted burgers and turkey bacon. 4 things and I wiped out when I got home. I wanted to nap but couldn’t. I asked my mother to make burgers. She did, almost using the two pounds of meat I bought. I told her not to use all of it because I wanted to make dirty gravy. Now I need to buy more meat, which means going out in the storm tomorrow. Fucking fuck. I am so pissed she just did what she wanted with my stuff.

The only side effect from my failed attempt is a sore throat. I haven’t officially told anyone. I feel more hopeless and useless now than i did before. I put in a call to the NP as the therapist wanted me to involve her in this. She (NP) never called me so not sure when or if she will. I texted the therapist about it. Still got no response so she must really be sick. I don’t know if she is going to figure out i duped her with appt days. I did ask saying if there was an opening to let me know. I cannot see her Thurs but will if i have to. I see the behavioral med psychologist then. I cannot see the therapist and him on the same day as insurance won’t allow it.

I really don’t want to let on I tried to end things today. I feel like I will get in trouble if I do or worse, get placed back in the hospital. I will know more tomorrow if the therapist is feeling better.

Wed morning I see the concussion specialist. I am being evaluated for a TBI, which is what a concussion is, a traumatic brain injury, though a mild one. I am having a lot of symptoms so hope they can help. I know I have been bad about screen time and resting my brain. It is so hard though doing absolutely nothing sitting in the dark. I wouldn’t mind if I was drugged out on something or maybe I just need an ativan to help me sleep while my brain recovers. I still am getting headaches and pain at the back of my head where I banged it. Short term memory is shot. I can’t remember things like i used to and i have to write stuff down. The OT suggested I have an alarm set to start being on a bladder schedule so i know when to pee. I think i am going to put it in my med app as i can order it for every 6 hours or so without disrupting the time schedule. Trick would be at night so i don’t wake up in the early morning hours just to empty my bladder. But if i should have to, i now have the urinal and obviously the caths to do it. The OT also gave me a few higher quality chux pads. That was really nice of her. Now I can order them through Amazon. I haven’t decided if I should get disposable ones or washable. The price is pretty much the same, except for washable you get 4, disposable I think is 50. If I get the washable, I won’t have to reorder them, which would be nice.

I am feeling pretty worthless about failing, again. I guess I am just not meant to die. And this bothers me so much.

Saturday blog 7.12.19

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

I had my MRIs done today. It was an hour and a half long and I forgot my meds to take when I got there. I did surprisingly ok. Right now as of 1830 today, I have 53 hours till results. I am wicked nervous about it. I think the hard part was the MRI.

I have made a semi decision. Weather is going to be nice beginning of the week. If the doc days I need surgery, I am going to tell him I will think on it and then end things in the next few days. If everything is hunky dory, then I don’t do anything. I might still go through with it. I don’t know. So much to ponder. I haven’t kept a good promise to myself to end things this year. I guess the therapist is right and I am too scared to die. No other reason. Guess being a failure at kill myself is what I will always be.

nervous and overwhelmed

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Nervous and overwhelmed

I got a call from the neurosurgeon’s secretary today. MRI is scheduled for Saturday with a follow up appointment with surgeon for Monday. I am fucking nervous. I wasn’t expecting it to be this fast. The MRI will be done not at the hospital I go to but another affiliate hospital which is further in the heart of Boston. I have to take two trains to get there and walk a little bit. My back is going to be so sore after I just hope I can walk. The MRI is going to take a minute of an hour and laying on my back hurts just after 15 minutes. I always have back pain afterwards. I hate it. But I guess it is better to know now rather than later.

I went to the pharmacy to pick up my meds and fell. Slipped on the ice and whacked my head off the cement sidewalk. I feel so wonderful. Head is killing me but is getting better. I took some Tylenol. I didn’t pass out but damn was I stunned. Hit my head so hard my glasses came off. I didn’t realize it until I was walking toward the pharmacy. When I took a walk back I didn’t see them right away. I found them a few feet from where I had fallen. Because of the snow, I didn’t see them right away as the frames blended in. I am glad they didn’t break.

I started this earlier in the day and realized I never finished writing this. It is now past midnight. I am exhausted but the pain in my ankle and foot has gone astronomically high. I don’t think it is on a scale. I can’t take anymore meds though I just took an Ativan because I am ready to lose my fucking mind with this pain. I am so damn suicidal right now but I won’t do anything. I can’t do anything because 1) I am home and 2) I can’t fucking stand/walk to get to where I want to fucking be to end my life. The therapist is back next week. She supposedly will text me to see if I will continue seeing her or not. I sent her the blog that talked about the ambivalence I have with therapy. Depending on how things go Monday, I may not need therapy at all because I will just end things next week. I am supposed to see the psychopharm and that behavioral psychologist but I sort of canceled the psychologist because of the neurosurgeon’s appointment is close to it. I can’t reschedule the appointment with the neurosurgeon because he is taking time off in December so his schedule is either Monday or January. I can’t bear to wait till January to go over the results. I will be a fucking wreck. I could still make the appointment with the psychologist but I might be late depending on what time I get out of the neurosurg office. Last time the appointment was over an hour as we were discussing things and he was looking at my films trying to find out what was wrong with me so I don’t think giving myself a half hour to get to the psychologist’s appointment is a good idea. I left him a message to reschedule or have me be late.

My head is hurting again. I am really, really tired but I cannot sleep because of this intense pain that I am in with CRPS ankle and foot. I even put lidocaine on and that caused more pain. I think the application of the medicine is what triggered more pain but how else am I supposed to put it on? I got to touch the skin. I hate when a flare is this bad. I really don’t know when the fuck this flare is going to go away because it’s been a week now with the same level of pain. I know I need to slow down. I might reschedule my appointment tomorrow with the occupational therapist because I am so damn nervous about Saturday’s MRIs that I think it is just going to make the flare worse. I don’t think the fall I took helped and there is a lot of walking involved with the OT appointment. She is understanding about my pain so she won’t yell at me. I will try and do it the following week when I don’t have so much going on. I sent her an email explaining things that I am not ditching her, I just have things going on.

painsomnia hits again and about therapy

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Painsomnia hits again

I’ve been up all night in pain. I took a shower about a half hour ago to see if that would relax me enough to sleep but it hasn’t yet. I feel a crash coming on but felt the need to write. I need to “listen” when the writing comes on.

I’ve been thinking about therapy a lot. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I contemplating discontinuing it for now. I don’t want to sway people away from therapy. Therapy can and is useful to people, whether you have a mental disorder or not. Sometimes just talking to a nonjudgmental ear is what people need to help them through a difficult spot. I have been going to therapy since I was 15 because there was something “wrong” with me. I didn’t know any different and now I am questioning whether I really need to see someone for something I don’t see as “wrong”. The therapist I am seeing doesn’t recommend that I stop going. Quite the opposite as I am suicidal. But it is my decision to make whether or not I go and if I continue, what do I want from it. I have been thinking about dealing with the trauma of my past, to move past it because I haven’t talked about it other than in a mentioning tone. I never explored how it makes me feel. I mostly have been invalidating myself for things and then this fucking neuro condition entered my life and all fucking hell broke loose. Things don’t matter to me much anymore. I am not going to get better medically. I could get worse. I could lose feeling in my legs and the ability to walk, again. Having surgery for the cord won’t stop the progression of the discs but at least we know the nerves are free and won’t be damaged as much should another massive herniation happen.

My gut says that I should be in therapy because I am depressed and suicidal. Maybe dealing with the trauma issues like I talked about will help me be less suicidal. I also think that continuing to go might help me better control my suicidality in a way that doesn’t always mean acting on it when I feel it or plan to act on it. That is a slippery slope because that would mean I would want to live and I don’t. Right now I feel like I am being forced to live. I feel like I should die because I need to. I am in too much pain to bear and no one really understands it except another person with chronic pain, specifically, CRPS. There are different kinds of chronic pain but most of it can be dealt with (except arachnoiditis and other nerve pain like Trigeminal neuralgia). If you are reading this and suffer from chronic pain, I do not mean to minimize your pain. It could be worse than mine or someone else’s. But I know the drain it takes on you. The exhaustion, the sleepless nights. The wanting it to stop so you can just brush your teeth or even make something to eat. That is the problem I have. I have to make myself something to eat when I don’t want to or am in too much pain just to stand for a minute and thirty seconds for a chicken patty sandwich. I bought loads of them with hamburger rolls so I will have them when I can make them. Thing also is, there is no one to make me food. Sure I could ask my mother but half the time, I don’t know what I want or I just don’t have the energy to go downstairs to eat because I am not hungry. Food doesn’t appeal to me sometimes.

I am not sure going to therapy is going to give me my life back. I am never going to be able to work again. I was deemed permanently disabled at the age of 36. I still have not dealt with that and I am not sure this therapist I see can help me with it. She doesn’t understand chronic pain or disability. I got to find her age though. It is killing me because she said she was around my age but she didn’t say what it was so now it is bugging me. I don’t know if she will tell me but I can try. But knowing this comes with the cost that I don’t have my degree because of my mental illness and that hurts more than CRPS ever could. I never became the doctor my family wanted, that I wanted to be. Sure it has changed since 8th grade but I still held out hope that I would earn my medical and philosophical degrees. I wanted to me an MD just for the sake of it and practice being a psychologist. I didn’t want to be a licensed doctor because of my suicidality but I did want to have my MD because that was my dream, even if I never practiced medicine. I still hope one day I can get my medical degree. That is if I don’t kill myself by year end or some other year.

Pain is getting worse and I am losing my patience with it. I am also hungry. I wish I had an egg burrito. I need to make some and store them so when I am hungry all it takes is two minutes to have something to eat. But I really don’t want to go downstairs because I am hurting too much right now. Maybe if the pain meds knock it down a bit, I will. I put on a compression sock as sometimes that helps with the pain. I just can’t get ahead of the pain no matter what I try and it is making me feel hopeless and angry. Paingry.

Therapy could still be useful. I’ve been with the same therapist for the past five months. Hard to believe it has been that long. There are some stuff I want to work on in therapy and I think I have the right therapist to do this work. I just don’t think that me being forced to still be here is helping a lot. I think with my suicidality being so high the past few months I’ve really just seen suicide as my way out and no one has really asked me why. Instead I feel I am being forced to live. I have the right to die. If I was an animal, I would have been euthanized already. I am tired of being tired, being in pain, struggling with depression and insomnia that goes with it. Now my bladder function is no longer working right and this is my new life. Having to cath to urinate. All because I can’t do it on my own as much anymore.

I have a date in mind but I don’t think the weather is going to be favorable for me. I need to try and end my life. That is all I want to do but I know that if I am in therapy, I can’t talk about it without problems. I need suicide to be an option. I am not ready to give it up, now or ever.