Tag: psychological pain

espresso, exhaustion, and pain

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

Espresso, exhaustion, and pain

I woke up several times during the night and early morning. I kept having weird dreams. I finally got up around 11. I wanted espresso, though I really didn’t feel like going out to get it. I had to return the thing I bought from Amazon so I figure I might as well get something to eat and my favorite drink.

Allergies were bad today. I keep sniffling and my nose keeps running. Didn’t help that they were cutting the grass. I love the smell of fresh cut grass but sometimes it makes my allergies worse. The bus was late and I was contemplating going back home. But I stuck it out and did my errand.

I think the soy milk was bad because there was residue at the bottom of the cup and the drink didn’t taste right. I drank some of it and wanted a nap. I didn’t feel like writing. I just wanted to go home. The next bus wasn’t for another hour so I played with my phone. A friend that I had met in the hospital sent me a pic of my book. She was reading it and liked it a lot. That made me feel good. I was feeling pretty depressed most of the day, suicidal at times. I am having a hard time because pain is making me crazy.

The bus came and I wasn’t even half way done with my espresso. I tried to drink more of it while on the ride home but it was so bitter it was hard to do. I dumped it when I got off the bus. I went to Walgreens to get a Dew Kickstarter. It’s like an energy drink. Maybe that will keep me from going to sleep. I don’t know. I got to my street and my ankle exploded. FUCK. Going up the stairs was torture. Then my bladder told me it needed to be relieved so I had to go back down the stairs. It was really muggy in the house so I was sweating. I hate the heat so bad. I am glad I brought the cane with me when I went downstairs. My ankle didn’t want to work at all.

I am really tired but I don’t want to sleep for fear of screwing up my sleep cycle, whatever the hell that is at the moment. I have a lot of things going on in Oct. I talked to my friend last night and we coordinated a dinner date south of Boston with my friend’s family. They wanted to do it on a Monday but because I have therapy, I can’t go. I also have the meeting with the pain group coordinator the following day. Then every Thursday there is an appt. I meet with the new neuro and then I have my physical. I hope somewhere in between to get my name changed. I was hoping the 1st week in Oct but I don’t think that will happen. I still need to call the courthouse to find out what kind of payment they accept for name changes. I’ll call after I finish this blog as it will be before closing time.

My Sox lost last night. It was a crappy night. They had a rain delay around 9 or 10 and I took that time to go to sleep. I wasn’t sure if the game was going to be postponed or continued and I wasn’t staying up to find out.

This weekend, I am going to try and buy some more zucchini so I can make the zucchini bread I made a few weeks ago. I want to bring it in to my psychiatrist. She loved the cookies I made. I somehow got to figure out a day and time to get my fasting blood work done. I’d say morning but I am never up in the morning anymore. Very rare that I am up before 9 these days because I have such an erratic sleep pattern.

I think my not sleeping is really fucking with my mood. Since I have been sleeping more and have no energy, my depression has deepened and I’m thinking a lot about suicide. I keep imagining my death and how I would do it. I got no plans to act on my thoughts but keep wondering if I could act. I just feel so miserable. Being in pain all the time is not fun and you can’t get used to it because it changes all the time. I tried to push through today and it exhausted me more than if I stayed home. I haven’t showered all week and I don’t care. Just feel really hopeless that things are never going to get better, that I am stuck with my ankle and foot acting up whenever they feel like it, regardless of whether or not I have done anything. I just want to crawl under a rock and stay there.

Is it pain or depression making you tired?

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

Is it pain or depression making you tired?

Past two days, I have been sleeping a lot. Yesterday was hard after my PCP’s appt because I was in so much pain, I couldn’t sleep. But after the pain settled down, I was able to sleep, least until 0530 when pain woke me up again. I stayed up till 0700 so I could shut off the medication alarms that would go off in a few hours. Since that time, I have been sleeping on and off most of the day. I feel so lifeless. I don’t have motivation to do anything. One of my cousin’s invited my sisters and I to her house Friday night. I don’t think we are going to go. I just feel so shitty and I’m sure my sisters would be able to come up with some excuse. It would be nice to see them again, though. I just don’t have a car to see them even if I wanted to. She is not on a bus line.

My suicidality is also up. The intense pain that I was feeling this morning really triggered me. I am counting up the days. I don’t care. I should pick a date and then go through with it but I don’t want to do that. I really don’t want to exist.

I wanted a hug from my sister last night so asked her to come up as I wasn’t able to go down. She had an asthma attack soon as she entered my room. I felt really bad. I am going to get an air purifier. I need to vacuum my rug. That is the hard part. I don’t have the energy or the stamina to do it. I’ve been meaning to do it for weeks now. There is no way it is happening today. I don’t have enough energy for anything. I feel like a lump on a log. I was able to brush my teeth today. Yesterday, I didn’t at all. I just couldn’t bring myself to.

I sent multiple emails to my psych yesterday and I think this morning. I have not had any replies. Probably too busy. I told her I got my lab orders in the computer so I just need to fast to get my blood drawn. I’ll probably get it done next week when I see her next. I almost felt like paging her last night as I felt so shitty and overwhelmed with pain. I don’t know how I am going to deal with this if my foot doesn’t get better. It’s been gnawing me all day.

My mother made supper, pasta with oil and garlic. My stomach is probably going to be in knots as garlic has been bothering my stomach lately. I like the flavor ok but not the cloves. Afterwards, my ankle and foot started bothering me and it was really hot in the kitchen so I left for my room. It’s really warm today so I have the AC on. Hopefully when the temps drop, I won’t freeze my butt off.

Chronic Pain Patients and Suicide

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

Chronic Pain Patients and Suicide

I was reading my tweets on Twitter. One of the chronic pain people that I follow retweeted something from a pain doctor. It was about suicides and the CDC guidelines that want to cut opioid prescriptions or limited them to only certain doctors. The article was badly editing as there were plenty of typos and I did not like the use of the word “committed” for every suicide he listed. It is sad and I know that more suicides are going to happen as the government tries to control doctors due to basically peer pressure. They have no idea what kind of havoc they are doing to those suffering from chronic pain and lead good lives because their pain is controlled.

Most of you all know I suffer from chronic pain and suicidal thoughts. My only saving grace at times is that I know after taking my meds, even though it takes a while to work, my pain will go away and be better in the morning. My suicidal thoughts will also be better when I wake up. If I no longer have my meds, I am as good as dead. There will be no point in living. I can see what all those people mentioned in the article go through. They died within weeks of being either taken off their meds or having them reduced. Some docs just stopped prescribing out of fear of losing their medical license. Some pain clinics closed their doors, leaving the patients to find other docs to just turn them down and having no where to go. This isn’t right. Taking away pain meds from patients who are not addicted and have adequate control is doing harm and causing deaths by suicide. Here is the article if you want to read it: https://medium.com/@ThomasKlineMD/here-is-a-list-of-suicides-as-of-9-9-17-caused-by-governmental-recommendations-to-educe-opioid-903c460abbc

Sometimes I think I need to end my life before my meds are taken away from me. I don’t know if my state will pressure docs to reduce their opioid prescribing privileges or number of scripts they write a year. I’m not on a lot of pain meds and I don’t abuse what I take. I take my meds in the manner they are prescribed to the letter. The sad thing is, even though my pain is somewhat managed, I still am disabled because I can’t walk that far or stand for any length of time. Just waiting for the bus or standing on the train is enough to cause me wicked bad pain at night. I remember what my pain was like when I was working. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night and then would only have a few hours to start my next shift. It would be a really long day and then half way through my shift, I would start feeling excruciating pain that would sometimes land me in the ED. It was terrible. I know now that I will never be able to work again because my pain is just becoming unpredictable and too severe. There are some nights where all I can think about is ending my life because the pain is so severe I don’t think it’s ever going to go away or lessen. I am lucky, in a sense, that I can’t walk to where I want to die in these moments. Hell, sometimes I can’t even go to the bathroom.

Living with chronic pain is terrible and if people without a medical degree continue to dictate what a person with a medical degree does with their patients, the suicide rate is going to go up. There is no way it can go down, even with the best suicide prevention out there. There will be no stopping someone from taking their life because of untreated chronic pain. I am not talking about psychache, but I know those with chronic pain also have that too and can contribute to their suicidal thinking. I also know that if a chronic pain patient starts thinking about suicide, they should be referred to a mental health counselor or treatment center. Their pain meds should not be reduced or played with because of suicide risk. I know in my situation I was fortunate to have doctors that knew me well enough and knew that I would get help should my depression or suicidal thoughts got worse. Some patients don’t have that luxury. Always take suicidal thinking seriously. If that person owns a firearm, ask to hold it for them until their suicidal crisis is over. Make sure they get the mental health help they need. Also makes sure their pain is being properly treated or it’s not going to matter if they get that mental health help or not.

If you or someone you know is thinking of suicide please call the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text START to 741741, if in the US. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to other countries hotlines but they are available. I know Austrailia has a bunch and the UK has Samaritans 116 123 is their number off the top of my head. You matter and are important and enough, always!

Shneidman’s greatest questions: Where do you hurt and How can I help?

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

Shneidman’s greatest questions: Where do you hurt and How can I help?

After I had a meltdown in late 2005 and was slowly recovering in 2006, I was taking a psychometrics class at college to earn my psychology degree. Psychometrics is a fancy name for psychological testing and validating tests and assessments on various things. As I was recovering from a deep suicidal depression, I was curious to see if there were any measures on psychological pain in suicide. I wrote my first draft of the term paper with 20 some odd articles all doing various risk assessments and testing of suicide ideation but none of them dealt with psychological pain, which was what I was aiming for.

The professor tore my first draft apart and even, however vaguely, accused me of plagiarism. I wanted to get a good grade in this class because it would help my further advancement in psychology. I went back to the drawing board. I searched for pain and psychological pain in the library databank. About only 5 articles showed up, at the time. I am sure I was doing it wrong. I looked up the articles and found Shneidman and Holden. Dr. Holden was based out of Queen’s University in Canada. He came up with a psychache assessment that I found useful in my therapy. I kept that article and shared it with my therapist. Then I queried everything on Shneidman and hit the jackpot. His work was in psychache, psychological pain. I read everything I could on him and his followers. I saw my idol David Jobes’s early work on the Suicide Status Form. It wasn’t appealing to me at that time. I was more interested in the psychache of the matter.

I read Dr. Shneidman’s book, The Suicidal Mind. Holy crap! This was about “me”. I knew I had to read everything this guy wrote but it measured in the hundreds so I focused on what was available now. I tried to read his books that were solely written by him but they were few and outdated. He wrote many chapters. The two questions that I kept coming across were “where do you hurt” and “How can I help?” No one had ever asked me those questions all my years in therapy. Not even my current therapist at the time asked until I brought it up to her.

These questions were the basis of how he helped suicidal people over his career. He brought them other options for suicide by learning things about their predicament. Then he ranked them in order of importance. As he slowly worked with them, suicide became less of an option on the list, which was good. It didn’t mean their risk of attempting was any lower but they could see that it wasn’t something that had to do right then and there as there were other options. That is what suicide prevention is, finding other solutions to the problems someone is facing other than suicide. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There was a case in which Shneidman talked to a Hispanic male who attempted suicide by gun shot. He blew off half his face and needed multiple surgeries and was in intense pain from his injuries. Dr. Shneidman counseled this man until he was well enough to leave the hospital. They kept in touch but as time went on, the contact got fewer and fewer. The young man died by suicide by that method a few years later. It was a sad case. The importance of the story is that contact is useful even after the initial attempt has passed, be it with postcard or phone calls or text messages. This isn’t an entire protective factor but it can be. Some people who think of suicide and even go to plan it, get through their circumstances never to think about it again. Others make an attempt and it is a kind of “wake up” call and they never think about doing something like that again. Then you have the people that are chronically suicidal, who make multiple attempts. These are the people most at risk of ending their lives by their own hand. It is these people that need the most help and patience. This is where the framework CAMS (Collaborating, Assessment, and Managing Suicidality) comes in handy. Check out their website https://cams-care.com/?pgnc=1