Tag: schizoaffective disorder

ankle chronicles 4

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychosis, suicide

Woke up this morning and I am still in fricken pain. It’s so bad that I really can’t move my ankle/foot. It’s the same type of pain I felt yesterday morning that lasted all day and into the night. I slept for about six hours before it woke me up again. I just had breakfast so I am hoping I can get back to sleep. Looks like I won’t be going out today, and if I do it will be comfort food like donuts. I had a good donut at Starbucks yesterday, a raspberry/blueberry one. It was very good. I like their new line of pastries, though it is kind of expensive.

All of this psychosis that I have been having is making me think that life is not worth living. I keep thinking of the studies that show that people that are psychotic are more likely to die by suicide than non-psychotic individuals. Great. Why can’t I go through with what the voices are telling me to do? I am scared though, scared that I might start cutting again because that is what the voices want. I haven’t told anyone outside this blog how things are. My sister wants me to babysit my niece tonight. The only good thing about that is I will have a huge screen TV to watch the game. The little one will be asleep so I don’t have to worry about entertaining her. I have been meaning to tell one of my sisters I am doing poorly but I just can’t seem to bring myself to. It’s not easy telling others that you are psychotic. I told my psychiatrist I was crazy and of course she tells me I am not. OK, like normal people hear voices all the time. And without the stupid “normal” voices, I can’t read like I used to. I need the narrator voice to concentrate while I read. It’s the only way that I can retain the information.

But I am in the middle of a pain flare up. There is no way I am seeking out psychiatric care other than my therapist and psychiatrist. I know that I will be in put in the hospital and I probably won’t have access to my pain meds. That will NOT be good at all. I am so tired of being in pain all the time. I didn’t do anything to my fricken ankle so I am not sure why it’s so angry with me. It hurts all around the bone on the outside of my ankle. It’s like something is crushing the bone, or trying to. It is maddening and despite not trying to think about it, it doesn’t work. The pain is just too intense. I am really hurting and wondering why this is happening to me now. I know that is one of the things that I will be asked when I am in the damn hospital. “What set things off”? I don’t fricken know. Maybe I put too much pressure on myself to complete the book. Maybe it is because I had a dissociative episode and now I am paying the price by hearing voices. I just want it to end, to have the voices stop. I am not hearing them now because I am too tired to listen to them. And somehow when I am in great physical pain, it’s like my psychiatric symptoms are on hold except for the depression. The depression is always there no matter what. And I still feel like I am carrying around black clouds. The thing is, that while you are in the hospital, your medical care goes out the window. They really don’t care about your physical complaints, unless you are having a heart attack or something, then they care.

I am just worried sick about where I will end up and if it will be close to public transportation or not so I can get home without bothering my sister. But if I end up in a faraway hospital, I will need a ride home. I know I shouldn’t be stressing about where I will be placed but it just helps me to know. But none of that matters right now because I am in a pain flare up and until my pain levels are under control, I am not going anywhere.

I had planned on watching college football today and the Sox game but I just don’t feel like it. The Nebraska game will be on at noon today, Sox game is I think at 6, and OSU is at 8. But I just took my pain meds and soon will be seeing Morpheus. You would think that I would be used to taking two pain pills that it wouldn’t affect me now but it still does. Funny how it only seems to affect me during the day and at night, not so much, unless I take an Ativan.

I am mostly packed for my stay. I just need to put in my hormone pills. I hope this works and I don’t get my menses this month. I will really be upset if I get it. Being in a locked psych unit is one thing, but having your menses on the unit is quite another. I am bringing my stuff with me just in case I do have bleeding. I just hope I don’t have to use it.

Damn this ankle pain is so fricken bad. I should probably ice it but I am starting to feel the effects of the pain meds so I know I will be knocked out soon. I don’t want to keep the ice on my foot longer than twenty minutes because that isn’t good. I once fell asleep with the ice wrap on. My foot didn’t like it and was grateful when I woke up and took it off.

For those that are reading my blog for the first time, I have cauda equina syndrome and complex regional pain syndrome that is causing my pain in my ankle. I also have chronic tendonitis in this ankle that no one knows why and has not been helped with standard treatment (rest, elevation, ice, compression). I have nerve damage in this ankle/foot and it becomes fatigued very quickly as I have weakness also.

feeling uneasy

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression, psychosis

Been having a rough few days. Psychosis has not let up but I have so far avoided going in the hospital. I just can’t go in for material reasons. My baby (laptop) is on its way back to me and today because my mother is deaf, missed the doorbell. Now I have to wait till Monday to get it back. If I got my laptop today, I would have made a plan to go in the hospital on Monday. Now, no such luck. I really need the break. I am having command auditory hallucinations (AH) and those are really difficult to deal with in an outpatient setting. But my psychiatrist didn’t seem too concerned, though I really downplayed the severity of the AH. I still am wicked paranoid and can’t shake the feeling that I am being watched.

The day did not bode well for me because I woke up in severe ankle pain. I was close to cancelling my appointment with my psych today but I knew that if I did, I would have a hard time getting another appointment. And if I did go in the hospital, I would have a hard time getting discharged if I don’t have an appointment. Sometimes you need to have the follow up appointment with your therapist and psychiatrist before they can consider discharge. I am not hoping to stay too long in the hospital but I can be there up to fourteen days. I also stressed to my psychiatrist that I wanted to watch the Sox game today so I couldn’t go in. She joked but she knew I was serious. She knows that if I was really feeling bad, a baseball game wouldn’t matter to me.

Other than trying to write and keep up with this blog, I am having a wicked hard time with my other writing. I have been journaling because I am watched less and don’t feel that the voices can read my thoughts as much. I feel like I am getting behind though there is no official deadline or something to do my writing. I haven’t tried editing since last Saturday when I got overwhelmed. I can’t really think straight with the additional meds and have been getting agitated easily so I have been staying away from my book. I really thought editing would be easy but it is not. I gave myself a goal of publishing it by Oct 15th but now it is looking more like the end of Oct/early November. I really need to decide the order of my chapters but I need to wait till this psychotic episode passes. I got an email from my friend in Scotland who says he will be purchasing many copies so he and his family can read it. I know that I will be successful the first month or so and that is all that I am hoping for. I figure at least fifty or so copies will be sold. But I could be wrong. It could be more. But I don’t want to really count my chickens before they hatch. And I really don’t want to think about the implications of losing my disability if I am really successful. But I will worry about that when and if things come to that.

I still am depressed. I tried to be cheerful when I saw my psychiatrist but I just didn’t have it in me. I just felt flat. It hurt to really think what I wanted to say. I really wanted to give her the low down but feared I wouldn’t leave the office without an escort to the ER. Now I am kind of scared of what the weekend might hold for me if I can’t get on top of this. I know that if I go to the local psych ER I will get admitted, even if I just want to talk with someone. I have packed a bag just in case I go in. I just feel so uneasy. I am really shocked that my pdoc didn’t really encourage me going in the hospital, but then she usually leaves it up to me to make those kind of decisions.

overwhelmed

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

Overwhelmed

I got up really early today for some reason. I had energy and I wanted some breakfast burritos from McDonalds. So I took a shower and got dressed in time to take the bus to the Square. I figured I would do some editing while I was there, drinking my coffee. It wasn’t the plan today but, oh well. If I don’t chip at it a little bit at a time it is never going to get done. I reached page 27 and had to stop. My thoughts were all over the place and so was the book. I swear it sucks. I just have all this writing and though it does make sense, I am not sure where a chapter should go, where the *** separating thoughts in the paragraph should go, none of it. I am so overwhelmed. Then I thought, well, I will go through it and see how many chapter I did actually line out (I usually did this by just saying new chapter but no name). I got to page, I don’t 40 maybe and had over 15 chapters. I don’t mind this being a long book but I was also skimming while I was turning the pages. I had a blog post that I need to take out because it has NOTHING to do with anything that is before or after it. Then I decided that blog posts would be chapter numbers too. I feel like setting a time line of mid-October is not too realistic. This editing is going to take more time than I thought. I am very overwhelmed by the process and am starting to think that this sucks, no one is going to read it, that it will just be a flop anyways so why bother. So I had to stop. I didn’t number the chapters because I am not sure where they are now, they are going to stay that way.

All the while, even though I had headphones playing different music in my head, Pearl Jam’s new song Sirens was going through my head. I can’t stop this song from playing in my head and I think it is starting to be a little of my psychosis creeping up. I am feeling stressed and when I am feel stress, instead of having anxiety, I get psychotic. The whole dissociation thing has me in a special kind of panic because I feel like I have to account for every minute so I know I am grounded or something. I just feel like I am losing it and the more I feel lost, the more I think I should be in the hospital. Trouble is that now, would not be a good time. I need to have the freedom of my cell phone in case Dell calls me about my laptop and when they send it back to me. I also need to stay on top of my emails or they will just spiral out of control. And I need to blog because I need this outlet more than anything. Writing on paper is helpful but it is a pain in the ass to type up after the fact. I just wish this song would stop playing in my head. I read the lyrics and I swear the song is telling me things. But yet, I can’t stop listening to it. I don’t know what to do. I feel that if I go to the psych ER the chances of me getting hospitalized is 85%. And getting hospitalized on the weekend sucks more than getting hospitalized during the week. I really wish there was someone I could talk to during the weekends when I am feeling this way that will calm me down. I would page my pdoc but not sure she will help other than saying to go to the hospital or take an extra PRN. I know talking with her will help me somewhat. But I hate calling her. I don’t even know if I have the right number for her as I haven’t paged her in so long. I usually have been able to do it myself as I was an employee of the hospital. It was always easier because then I could text message her with what I needed her for. Now it is just my name and callback number. No other message. I just need to talk to someone that understands but won’t tell me I need to be in the hospital.

psychosis rebound?

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression, psychosis

My writing partner and I came to an agreement today about writing. I am glad she meant five days and not five pages a day! I would really struggle writing if I had to spew out five pages a day. It would be a worthwhile effort for both of us, but neither of us would be able to keep at it all the time. We can sometimes barely put together two page, let alone five.

I had time before my mock interview today and wrote like three pages. My fricken phone kept going off with email and text notifications so it was hard to write consistently. I wasn’t writing emotionally charged stuff, just my experience but the distractions were enough for me to feel like it was incoherent. I was writing on a legal pad so I am hoping that while I am typing it into a document, it makes sense and that I can add to it.

I almost made it home in one piece. I went to Walgreens for some snacks and while I was walking down the inclined walkway to go home, my foot exploded. It felt like it wanted to flex into a ball like your hand does. It was so painful and I still had a block and half to go before I was home. It was the slowest walk I ever walked. What normally would take me ten minutes took me twenty. It was so bad that normally I have no problem taking off my pants but I couldn’t. I lost mobility in my foot to kick the pants off me. Just glad I didn’t fall because I don’t have good balance on my right foot when I need it.

Got a call from Dell today. My baby has been shipped home and I should get it tomorrow. I didn’t get any calls about the hard drive (not that I thought it was a drive issue) so I am hoping that all my files are intact. It will be so good to be back on the new one, though I know it will be weird at first. I just got used to the old laptop’s keyboard, which is slightly different than the new one. I will be happy when I know she is safely in my hands again. I can’t wait to take her out to Starbucks sometime this week to finish typing my manuscript. I am almost at the 150 mark. By the end of the week, I should be close to 170 and that is where I plan on ending it for a while. My writing partner just advised me to save it six different places and let it stew for a while before working on it. Trouble is that I have a hard time editing a paper on a computer screen. I might have to go to FedEx and print it out to have it safe or go to staples. It might be cheaper there to print out than FedEx. I will have to do some shopping around as I don’t have a working printer at home. I think my sister does so maybe I can save some $$ there.

The mock interview went fast. I was “seen” for about twenty-five minutes, the shortest time I ever had an interview for. The lady was an older woman, probably in her late fifties, early sixties, and every time she asked a question, I would answer and then lose track of what I was saying so I stopped talking. My pdoc kept calling me a lifesaver, whatever that meant. I did bring up my neurological issues and pain issues. At the end she just recommended that I get compression stockings. The weirdest session I ever had! Even my pdoc was like taken aback. She never worked with her before and I felt bad for her. The guy I had last year, even though he kind of sucked was a better interviewer. He only sucked because he wanted things done on a time limited basis so I felt rushed in answering his questions. Plus we got off on a bad start as I didn’t have an ailment on the top of my head, which seemed to annoy him. This time I was prepared but I am glad I just stuck with ankle pain/inflammation rather than body part dissociation. I don’t think that would have gone over well. She didn’t even seem interested when I brought up my depression. I wanted to bring up suicidal thinking but caught myself. I knew this lady was not going to handle THAT at all. If I was a ball buster, I probably should have but I am not. I think it would have been great but my psych was there and I didn’t want to cause myself to go to the ER with just mentioning it. I so wish I talked about the out of body experience. I could have had so much fun with it. But this lady was so damn dry. I talked about it with my pdoc and she agreed. I hope her day got better. I see her Friday for my regular appointment.

I don’t know why I had such anxiety after this experience or if what I was trying to write stirred some stuff up. I just was really panicky and the voices went berserk on me. They ALL came in on me soon as I was alone, nitpicking everything I did and said during the interview. I didn’t take my antipsychotic last night. I don’t fricken care about side effects but I am taking the full 10 mg tonight. I might even take some trilafon if the stupid door chime I hear before a voice enters doesn’t stop. I know I am exhausted and that just makes it worse but I need to feel like I am in control again.

I’m going to go make myself a cup of Chamomile tea. I need it for its calming effects and to try and get the stupid post nasal drip out of the back of my throat!