Tag: psychological pain

Shepard’s Pie and other things

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

Shepard’s pie and other things

I’ve had a long day, and it started early this morning. The bus was late so I didn’t get to the station until after 0730. I got my espresso but wasn’t in the mood for eating anything. I then high tailed to the trains because there were delays. The station platform was crowded. Wonderful. I pretty much stood the whole way to my stop.

I got to my appointment a few minutes early. I was the only person in the waiting room for this doctor so I thought I would be in and out. Wrong. The doc was 40 minutes late because she got stuck in traffic. I wanted to leave but I needed a refill for my script. We talked and went over the history. She said she sent it to Walgreens and I still don’t see it, hours later. So I am hoping the stupid system didn’t fail me yet again. I am waiting to see if she sent it to another pharmacy before I panic. I have used up my last row of hormone pills and if I don’t get the pills by Saturday, I am screwed. But I will worry about that tomorrow. I will have to hound the office until it gets called in.

I came home and had to get some lip balm because my lips were so dry they were cracking. The weather was very cold, which didn’t help. I had twenty minutes until the next bus so I had time to run to CVS for the balm. They didn’t have the one I preferred but I got the brand at least. I put it in my jacket so I would have it. I thought of going to Starbucks for a sandwich but there wasn’t time. I figure I would have a cup of tea and my cranberry cake for breakfast.

For lunch, I figure I would make the Shepard’s pie. I was starting to feel lazy while relaxing, drinking my tea. I wasn’t in pain, which I thought was odd. The train was still having delays so there were still no seats on the ride home. I had to stand until the train emptied out two stops before mine. Even while walking home, I wasn’t in pain. I thought I could make the pie without trouble. Yeah right. As I was waiting for the potatoes to brown in the oven, my toes exploded. I was sitting when this happened. I cursed and figured enough time had elapsed for the potatoes. They were crispy but not brown. But I had the same problem last time I used instant potatoes.

I ate a little of it as I had been eating the left over potatoes as the pie was supposed to be browning. I was full with the little piece that I had, which was good enough for me as I needed to rest my godforsaken foot. I cleaned up best I could and then scurried to my room to take more pain meds and rest my stupid foot. I am done for the fucking day. I am tired and in pain. My mother said she would try the pie so she has dinner. She will just have to heat it up. My niece will also have dinner so I am not expecting there to be much leftover for tomorrow. I only had about a pound of ground beef, which wasn’t much. But the craving is out of my system now.

After considering what a friend has commented on my blog the other day, I don’t think I will try and end my life this week. That doesn’t mean that I am any less suicidal. I still am. It’s just that short of jumping in front of a train or getting hit by a bus, I don’t see an alternative to ending my life. Sure there are other ways I could end it, but unless I can secure a hotel room, I doubt it will happen this month. The way that my foot is killing me right now doesn’t make me feel better about my decision. I would go to the hospital but I can’t trust them with my pain medication schedule, or even being able to take my strong pill should I need it. I will go insane if I am in serious pain and not being able to control it because some hot shot doctor thinks better than I do about what is right for me.

I don’t have to go out again until Friday, unless my prescription shows up at Walgreens before then. I know they are cutting paper waste by faxing electronically but I still wish for paper scripts. It just will make life easier sometimes than relying on a stupid new computer system that likes to fuck with everyone, indiscriminately. Until then, I can rest my damn foot.

Thanksgiving Eve 2016

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

Thanksgiving Eve 2016

I didn’t sleep well again, last night. I woke up before 0330. My check had come in so I bought my groceries and paid some bills. I had to get the groceries before 0400. That is when the computer system is shutdown for 4 hours and I wanted to get a Friday slot. If it wasn’t so early in the morning, I might have baked. I decided to wait until my mother left the house later in the morning. I went back to sleep around 0500 or so. I slept till 0800 and made coffee and breakfast.

While drinking coffee, I waited till my mother left the house before going back to the kitchen. After she left, I made the cake and cleaned up afterwards. My ankle was sore but I didn’t care. I knew I would rest a few hours as I had therapy and then I could go out to get my haircut and espresso.

Therapy was fun. We had transference and counter-transference going on throughout the session. I told her about the blog I wrote yesterday and she wanted to read it. I tried to get out of next week and that wasn’t going to happen. She wanted to do the SSF and I was against it. I told her the only way I would allow it is if she got trained, which she refuses to do. So fuck you to it. She has a brilliant suicide prevention tool at her fingertips that is so damn easy to use and yet refuses to learn how to. I don’t have the patience to teach her. She only cares about two points of the assessment and the rest is laid to waste. No, sorry, I can’t and won’t fill out the damn forms if you aren’t going to use the tool correctly. It’s a waste of paper. I won’t even give her the new forms because it’s just going to sit in a file to collect dust.

It really pisses me off that I go about finding this stuff to help ME out of the darkness and yet it’s all for nothing. I give up trying to bring in new material to her because she is so stubborn in her damn ways to see another avenue that might help not only me, but her other clients as well. I can’t be the only person in her practice who has thought of suicide. Maybe it will take my death for her to learn these things. I don’t know. I’m out of straws and I didn’t draw the short one or the long one.

I really wanted to tell her that I am struggling with my plan and that the bottle of pills I plan on using is getting dangerously close to me using whenever the fuckits hit. I keep picturing myself taking the bottle, not caring that tomorrow is a holiday. I keep telling myself just a few more days but then I think of my psychiatrist and the trust she has in me. It wouldn’t be right to end it and not call her first. But then if I call her, I am scared she will say hospital, whether I want to go or not. I had ample time to tell my therapist these things but I just felt it wasn’t worth talking about because of HER anxiety issues. I swear she needs some Xanax or Ativan but it’s hard to slip her one through the phone. It’s even harder to have these conversations when she just becomes a rambling lunatic after I say the words suicidal plan. So once again, I am left to deal with this shit on my own, like I always have for the past 30 some odd years. I have to laugh when they say “you’re not alone” with depression or when you are suicidal. But the fact of the matter is you truly are, in the heat of the moment, no matter where you are or what time it hits you.

After therapy, I struggled with the damn cover to cover my cake. I bought a disposable pan with a lid. I thought the lid would fit, isn’t that why they sent the damn lid? I tried this way and that and it wouldn’t fucking fit. My mother finally was able to get it to go on. By the time I was finished finagling the sucker, it was time to get dressed and catch the bus. I decided to get my haircut first. There was one person ahead of me so I had to wait. I didn’t mind waiting. This was a good barber that I feel comfortable with. We were talking while he was cutting and next thing I know it’s close to 1600. I was there for more than an hour and I still didn’t get my espresso. I had some time before the next bus so decided to get it. There was hardly any seats so I just got my drink and left to wait for the next bus. I was waiting for my mother to call me any minute asking what was for dinner but she didn’t call until I was close to home. She didn’t say anything about dinner and just asked if I could help her clean the kitchen. I knew I should have gone to the pizza place for two slices. Now I had to order food.

I ordered a burrito and something else. What that something was I have no idea. It was a fried chicken finger in a fried something and didn’t taste good. The burrito was good except it didn’t have sour cream and guacamole like I ordered. After I ate, I helped my mother with the kitchen. I washed stuff and dried them. Then my ankle was really starting to act up so I took a shower before it exploded. I didn’t finish washing the pans. I need to take another pain pill and relax a bit before doing that. By the sounds of the kitchen, it looks like my mother is doing the last three pans I left. So I can just relax now while my ankle explodes.

Editing nightmare, writing, and other things

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

Editing nightmare, writing, and other things

Earlier this week when I was editing, I noticed that one story had given each paragraph its own page. I fixed it and thought that would be it. Tonight, I went to the next story and there was a similar error. I went to the next and found the same error. I panicked. I knew what I had to do to fix it but it was a lengthy process and would take some time and effort to sort through. It was more than 50 pages of work to sort. I had nothing better to do so cut and pasted I did. I fixed the book and in doing so, “lost” 20 pages. I am up to 125, without edits as I still haven’t inputted them but at least there are no formatting errors, least none that I can see right now.

Because I thought I was up to at least 150 pages of work after putting in some dedication and acknowledgement pages, I figured I could publish the book. Now I can’t because it’s too short for my taste. I really would like to get it up to 200 pages, minimum. It’s probably going to take me another six months or so to get another 75 pages written. I am so disappointed. So close yet no cigar.

My mother annoyed me tonight. I told her I was in pain and she said “well you are going up and down the stairs alright”. WTF She doesn’t fucking get it. The other day when my sister was here she was telling her that I go down the stairs “carefully”. But she said it in a mocking voice. I just can’t win with her. Tomorrow she wants me to clean the stairs, both flights. I will clean the bottom stairs first as those haven’t been done in quite a while. Then we’ll see about the other flight.

I just took a strong pain pill because I couldn’t stand the throbbing in my ankle anymore and the regular pain pills aren’t working. I hope I am not up every fricken two hours. I am really tired. It’s funny, when I want to sleep I can’t and when I need sleep, I do. There is no medium. I know part of it is my fault because I am on my bed most of the time so when I feel the need to lie down, I do and usually sleep, no matter what time of day it is. A sleep doc would have a complete fit if he knew my sleeping habits or lack there of.

It’s extremely windy and it is shaking the house. It kind of scares me because I fear the house will fall in. I know it won’t, sort of, but it still scares me when the house shakes. I hope the wind dies down by the end of the night. I don’t need anxiety on top of pain to keep me up. That just isn’t a good combination.

I talked with my aunt tonight. It didn’t go well. She didn’t know who I was and then started crying. It broke my heart. She wanted me to visit her. I wish I had a car to see her but I don’t. I would have to go by public transportation and it’s a pain because I would have to take two trains and a bus to get to her house. It would be worth it to see her though. I miss her terribly. She is the last surviving sibling in the US on my father’s side. I have one uncle in France but he has dementia and is not doing too well. I don’t talk to him because of the language barrier. He doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak French or Italian.

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

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

ASAD: Acute Suicidal Affective Disturbance

http://www.mdedge.com/clinicalpsychiatrynews/article/100017/depression/aas-acute-suicidal-affective-disturbance-proposed

I read the above article with interest. One of my Twitter buddies shared it with me and wanted my opinion on it. I think that it is right on queue and I hope that Dr. Joiner eventually sees this as a diagnosis. But I worry that if the stigma of suicide is not dealt with, it might just be an admitting diagnosis and thus cause more harm than good.

According to the criteria lined out, I meet this diagnosis, though at this time, I am unable to rule out whether a medical condition or conditions exclude the diagnosis. There have been many a times that while I am in excruciating pain, this condition is activated and I am acutely suicidal. The only thing that has saved me from actually making an attempt on my life is that I physically cannot walk and have refused to kill myself in my own home. Then in the morning (most of these attacks have occurred in the midnight hours), I no longer feel so suicidal.

It used to be that what I would call a “switch” would be activated and I would be suicidal until I fell asleep. Now I know that it’s this disturbance that occurs and it makes sense to me. But in every suicidal occurrence that has happened over the past two years, it has been because of physical pain or some kind of dissociative state brought on by physical pain. Very rarely has it occurred solely with psychache or psychological pain. Granted not every episode is psychache free and physical pain free. I will have what Shneidman calls the three Ps, Psychache, Perturbation, and Press as well as physical pain that causes me to be severely suicidal. These nights, I swear to myself I will end my life the next day when I can walk again. Fortunately, I don’t feel as suicidal the next day because I had a few hours or more of respite from these kinds of pain and perturbation. That isn’t to say that I won’t be activated the next night or come up with a suicidal plan to end my life the following day. These plans are usually a few weeks away to give me time to think things over and essentially put off today what can be done tomorrow. These plans have also given me time to work through my feelings and usually by the time that date comes, I no longer feel suicidal enough to go ahead with the plan.

Suicidality is a tricky business and not everyone’s suicidality is the same. What triggers my suicidality might not trigger someone else’s. There are mitigating factors that might be similar in nature like the criteria states but I would love to see the data in the context of ruling this a diagnosis. Just because I find this disturbance fits my suicidality, doesn’t mean that it will someone else’s and that is the difficulty with the nomenclature I think Joiner talks about in his article.