Tag: suicide ideation

midnight demon post

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

I have been up since 0900. it is now 0300 as I write this. My foot started really hurting at 0200, just when I was about to really get into some sleep. I took my meds just now as it has been a while and a muscle relaxer to try and see if I can sleep. I am just miserable because I have not been able to get a good night’s sleep in two days now. I hope that when I do fall asleep I really sleep.

I emailed my psychiatrist. My therapist is on vacation and there is no way I can talk to her for a check in so I emailed my pdoc. She is good about my emails. I don’t get any responses usually. So I just write what I feel and ship it off to her. I told her my suicidal thoughts have increased because of the pain, having my menses, and lack of sleep. I am thinking of taking rat poison. It’s a good thing I don’t have any on hand. It will take me some time to get it though as I don’t think mice poison will work as well. I will have to do some calculations to get the dose right and I hate math. I used to be good in math until I met Calculus. I sucked at it until my last term in high school. Now I can’t even do basic algebra. I forgot how to do it. good thing there is Google…

I really was having a good day today. Now it is spoiled by pain. I wish I did something to cause the pain but I didn’t. I was just laying in bed for the past few hours trying to get to sleep and playing on my laptop or checking twitter on my phone. I find that I can do stuff on twitter with my phone better than using the web. The phone has features that you don’t have on the web, which is strange. But then, I don’t design these things.

On a sad note, I found out Eileen Brennan passed away and my rookie shortstop for the Sox has been traded to the Tigers. I am deeply saddened by this. I loved Eileen and Iggy. Tonight Iggy made a base running error that was comical. I wish I could post it here but it’s against WordPress and probably MLB policy rights. If you Youtube Jose Iglesias and base running, I am sure there is a clip of it. Or not. I just checked and it’s not there. 😦

I liked watching Iggy play. I think he is a superb player. He has quick hands and a good bat. I am definitely not looking forward to seeing him in a Tigers uniform.

Eileen Brennan I will always remember her in Private Benjamin. I loved watching her there. I know she has played in other shows since then but her performance in Benjamin was hysterical, to me anyways.

So my demons are out and I have to live with them tonight because I am getting not respite from my relief medication. This totally sucks donkey balls. It’s also freezing in my room because I have the AC on. I am covered with my sheet and comforter. I am too lazy to shut off the ac because I know I will have to turn it back on in a few hours when my room gets hot again. Nothing worse than being woken up because you are hot. Maybe that is why I didn’t get any good sleep. My room was too warm, even though I have the ceiling fan running at high.

So these are my thoughts when I am in a bad place. This is why I call them the midnight demons. Because they are demons. they are the dark thoughts that no one wants to hear ever. I was talking to my cousin tonight about my pain and he gave me credit for handling it. I didn’t tell him it makes me want to commit suicide. I did tell him that if my PCP ever stops giving me my pain medication, he might as well sign my death certificate. There is no way that I can live without my pain meds. I am not saying I am addicted to them, because there are days where all I will need is one pill or no pills for a day or so. Then there are days like tonight that I need 4-6 pills to control my pain. I don’t take all of the 4-6 at once. Just 2 every 4-6 hours. In my desperate hours, I have taken 3-4 at once, when I am in a FUCK it mode. I thought about taking that tonight but decided against it. I really am scared about how the new policy my doc’s office has it going to affect me. I am hoping there is no radical change. I won’t be able to handle it. According to this new policy, I will only get a 28 day supply of meds and will need to be seen every month to get it refilled. It’s a standard policy that I have come across from the pain management docs that I have seen. the thing that scares me is that there is a clause that states that if my provider doesn’t see that i am getting better or that there is no change, he might decide to discontinue the medication. I have a condition that is not likely to improve at ALL. If I don’t take this medication, I am screwed. I will be in pain and will likely commit suicide because it will be the only option I have left. I cannot go on suffering like this. I just can’t. I have exhausted all possibilities that this will get better, no amount of physical therapy or other treatments are available to me. I know losing weight is a big thing. And I am trying to work on that but it is not easy. I love to eat which is part of my problem. Even now I am fighting the urge to have a bowl of cereal. But that will mean going down stairs to my kitchen and I don’t think going down stairs will help my pain.

It’s been an hour and a half that I have had this flare up and it doesn’t seem to show any signs of calming down. How I wish I could see my doc right now and tell him how badly I hurt. But my doc is not available at this hour, except for emergency docs which will be the on call doc who might not be mine and won’t know me from Adam. And even if I do page him, there is no guarantee that he or she will provide me with adequate relief at this hour, other than telling me to go to the ER. I hate this bullshit where I am in pain and there is nothing I can do about it other than pray my pain meds work or at least knock me out.

This is what I go through on a daily basis. Why I have not attempted to kill myself is a mystery to me. I have thought about it a thousand and one times and still have not made any attempt to kill myself in the past year and a half. I want to so bad though. I think it will provide me some relief that I am seeking. But if I am successful, then I will be ok. My family might be destroyed but I will be in a better place, I hope, where there is no suffering like this.

Night blog

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, mental disorders, mood disorders, suicide attempt, writing

this is the first time that I am writing a third blog in a day. I am sorry for the posts but I am in so much pain I don’t know what else to do. I can’t say that I did too much because I didn’t. I just know that my foot is on fire and there is nothing I can do to stop it. I have taken meds to quiet things down and I am hoping with the Ativan I can get some sleep in a little while.

I actually am afraid of sleeping for fear of having that weird dream again. Or another one. I also don’t know why I had an anxiety attack on the bus again. I guess it is getting to be paranoia that I won’t be able to get off the bus at my stop because I don’t want to fall down. My balance on my right foot has been off the past several months, especially when I am turning. I seem to lose my footing because I don’t know where my foot is. It is so frustrating that when I am seen by people it looks like I am drunk.

I got so upset about my menses after my last bathroom break I needed to talk to someone. I just can’t handle this menses situation anymore. I am now bleeding more than I did last week, which technically, I should be bleeding less not more at this stage of the game. I am not a reproductive expert but I know when a period should end. and after seven fucking days, it should be OVER. I should not be continuing to bleed dammit. I am sorry if this sounds gross or disgusting but it is how I feel. I am so upset by this. I am supposed to wear boxers not pads all the time. I am supposed to be a male and because I am not in the right body, this shit happens and I am distressed about it. I was texting to a friend tonight and as I was, I was also writing to my therapist about hanging myself. that is me, I am splitting tonight. In one instant I am texting about marinara sauce and in my writing I am writing about the length of rope I should use.

I should be sleeping because I took some neurontin. But the stuff has not kicked in yet. I also just took my pain meds and some ativan but I am still fucking hyper and in pain. I bet the pain is going to go away first and then the ativan will kick in to put me to sleep. I just hope I don’t wake up at four in the morning again. that is what has caused all this bullshit. I am not sleeping at all through the night. I can’t remember a night where I slept past eight in the morning. It pisses me off. I think I should be up all night and then just sleep during the day. But then my mother thinks that I sleep too much. How can I sleep too much if I am not sleeping during “normal” sleeping hours??

I finished my Lincoln book that I was reading. I just have to read the Epilogue. but I really kind of don’t want to. I like the book because at the end it gives the same speech in the end as in the Lincoln movie. Maybe I should watch that tomorrow. I have not watched it in a while.

God this pain is unreal. It feels like someone is trying to shove a hot poker through my foot. I know it is nerve pain but I usually don’t get the hot poker feeling so I am not sure what that is about. I hope that my CRPS is not getting worse than what it is. I have been getting “hot flashes” in my foot the past several days now. My foot just feels really hot but when you touch it is cool. I don’t know what is going on. I am scared that the nerve damage is spreading or that I somehow twisted my good part of my ankle and now it is sore. I won’t know for a few weeks because that is when I see my PCP. By then, the pain could be gone and I would look like a fool. Either that or the pain will change to something else. I have had so much different types of pain in my foot I think my doc thinks I am making it up just so that I can get pain meds. I swear I am not. It’s just that the worse part of the pain happens at night and not during the day. Though this type of pain, the hot poker, seems to be happening more during the day and then gets worse at night.

Because of this I am constantly thinking of ways to end my life. The problem is that I don’t want my nieces to find my body. And so I can’t kill myself at home. I wish I could just chop my foot off right now. It is so killing me. I know I am not alone with my thinking of killing myself because I am depressed and in pain. That some how comforts me but at the same time it doesn’t. I know that I can’t beat this diagnosis. the pain changes too much for anyone to really believe me. how can they when one day I say that it is a hot poker and another time I say that it is like a barbed wire going though my ankle? or that my foot explodes in pain and I can’t move my last three toes. This doesn’t happen during the day. it only happens at night so when my doc examines me, I am not hurting. I don’t get the exploding pain, the hot poker, the barbed wire. It is SOOOOOO frustrating!!!! I don’t know if my doc believes me. I know my psychiatrist does and my physiatrist does. but I don’t know if my PCP does.

This is what I think about at night, when I can’t sleep. This is why my blog is called the midnight demons because that is truly when the demons come out, either mentally or physically. it truly sucks!

another depressing day, sort of

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, depression

Not having a great day. I had a crappy session with my therapist. We talked about the violations issue and she apologized. She had no idea that her nosiness was hurting me. We talked about having to set boundaries now where I only show her what I want her to read. I just hope that she can stick to them. I am so used to people trampling on me that you would think I am used to it by now. But when it is someone you trust, like a therapist, it kind of throws you out of whack. I still feel down about it and I hope that I get over it. But it’s so hard because I feel so hurt. I cried today for whatever reason, like sobbing hard. I can believe that my therapist would do this, it is just her nature to be nosey. But I told her we have to put a damper on what she reads. I know what I write can be seen by anyone on the internet and she should have the same rights as anyone else. But sometimes I just don’t want her to read what I write. If it something that she needs to read, I always send it to her via text message. Seeing as I no longer see her in person, I think this method has worked pretty well until now. I really think that just her excitement over finding my blog really is what caused her to go over the boundaries without her thinking through about what she was doing. Hell, one time she called me a fucker without thinking about it. We joked about it and she apologized about it. I could tell she felt bad about it. But this time I am not getting that same sense. Maybe I am just too hurt this time to feel her apology. And she knows what my life was like with intrusions left and right. As she put it, it was like she just charged her way into my room without knocking first, which essentially is what she did.

I think I am just down because I have not been able to leave my house since the Bon Jovi concert on Saturday. I did way too much standing and dancing but I had to because there were these two goons in front of me standing for most of the concert so when I sat down, all I saw were their backs. Then I had a marshal standing next to me who stood the whole time with his hand on his hip. It was so annoying. So when I did sit down, I had an elbow in my face. I had a good time. The music was awesome as usual but the sound sucked. I couldn’t make out the words to some songs, especially his new music, which I don’t have yet. I plan on getting it soon.

I have been in bed mostly all weekend and today and still my ankle/foot is acting up. I made it to my sister’s apartment on the first floor to make myself a cup of coffee. My first cup since Saturday. I hope I am able to go out tomorrow. I need to borrow my sister’s car to do some shopping before she goes away for camping. I was invited but I can’t do anything but sit and if I try to do a hike or something I am going to be laid up anyways. It just wouldn’t work for me.

I know I try to write every day so I am sorry for the few days I have not been able to write. I have been hit with the flare up and between sleeping off the pain meds and just being wonky from the meds, I had no inclination to write. Then I got hit with depression and it just killed my writing muse. But hopefully I am back now and won’t miss anymore days. I might make up some with posting twice a day with another paper or two. I have been thinking about it for a while now. I just published the one on therapists who panic when they hear suicide. My muse friend wants me to write one on relationships and suicide but I don’t think it would work. I have always told myself that I wouldn’t kill myself over someone. It just seems silly to me but people feel that they can’t go on unless someone is in their life and I get that. What they don’t know is that they can go on without them. Sure it hurts as hell in the beginning but as the song by Sara Evans says “you get a little but stronger” every day without them.

Today I got an email from a person that runs a Master’s degree in counseling program and she wanted to use my site as a resource for the program’s students. I feel so honored to have her choose my website. I hope that it helps future clinicians.

Today is my second day on my 4th week with the patch and guess what, I got my fucking menses. Though I don’t know how bad it is. I just had some bleeding. I needed this like a hole in the head. Now I know why I have been so down and listless the past few days. I also been getting wicked suicidal urges on and off the past day or so, which the damn menses causes. I don’t know why the bleeding always messes with me but I swear if I ever do attempt to kill myself it will be while bleeding. Just when I thought I could wear my boxers with confidence, this shit happens. I am beyond devastated but I told my doc I would stick it out for three months and at the end of the three months I will try something else. I can’t be having my menses while trying to transition. It just sets me back and makes me wish I was dead.

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

Mentioning of suicide, therapist panics

I had been seeing an interim therapist while waiting to go to college after I graduated high school. I was seeing someone in the local mental health center and I was supposed to see her for the summer as my current therapist got laid off due to budget cuts.

Some where in the middle of that summer, I reach the lowest point in my life, about three weeks away from when I was going to leave for college up in Maine. Like anyone else would do, I told my therapist that I was having suicidal feelings. She then did something totally unexpected. She took a deep breath, held it, let it go, and then sat there stunned like I shot her with a taser or something. She didn’t know what to do. She asked if I needed to be seen by someone in the emergency room and I forget if I did or not. I think I did because I got to the local hospital and was admitted for two weeks. I was glad my summer job had come to a close so I didn’t have to worry about work.

What I didn’t realize was that suicide is a big deal in the mental health field. The therapist didn’t want to take me back after my admission so I was stuck seeing a resident who basically said it was her or the hospital. I didn’t have a choice of people to talk about my feelings of being suicidal. Sure they were fine in the confined settings of a hospital stay but were taboo on an outpatient setting. I always knew I was high risk and it wasn’t until I entered into the field of suicidology did I really understand what it meant to be suicidal not just as a patient but as a clinician as well. I am not a clinician but I do have a clinical way of thinking about things. I might not be trained (yet) but I have more experience in therapy than a new graduate or even someone who has spent their lifetime doing this. I like to think of myself as an expert but then all people who have attempted suicide feel that they are.

What strikes me is the legality of the dreaded no-suicide contracts, the risk for malpractice, the ethical responsibility of the patient in the course of therapy, and the risk of losing the patient. Those are some pretty big reasons NOT to take on a client but what if you were in the situation that I was in. I already had an “established” therapist and she got cold feet when I told her I was thinking about killing myself. And in the age of the internet, I find that I am not the only one who has had this experience. I also have had trouble finding another therapist. My current therapist, though she still gets anxious when I talk about suicide, is thirty miles from me and I don’t have a car. We communicate solely by phone unless I can take my sister’s car every so often to drive out the forty-five minute to hour drive both ways. I have tried to find a therapist within a five mile radius of my house and have failed, not once, not twice, not three time, but ten fucking times!!! That is right, I called ten different therapists and they all turned me down because I had a history of being suicidal. It hurts and sucks. They just asked the question, I answered honestly, and got either referred to another therapist or was turned down outright. So I was stuck with the far away therapist. I then got hospitalized during the course of trying to find a therapist I could see face to face and when I did, he was scared of me. I mean beads of sweat were coming down his face and he had a high pitched, nervous laugh. I could tell he did not want to treat me. He didn’t want to lose me because I was such a high risk person. What makes you high risk? Having a significant history of suicide attempts, history of being abused either physically, emotionally or sexually or all three, constant suicide thoughts, and feeling hopeless. There are other criteria but those jump out at me as the most significant. I once went to a suicidology conference where I listed the prominent symptoms of my condition and had it reviewed by one of the suicidologists at the conference. He didn’t want to touch this person with a ten foot pole. I never felt so hopeless before in my life. I knew at that point that there was no hope for me, that I was destined to always be suicidal, or at least have suicidal thoughts. But it shocked me that this expert had no advice for me other than good luck.

To be a suicidal patient and have no where to go is a tough situation. You depend on the therapist to be there for you and to talk openly about any topic you want to talk about, including suicide. But what do you do when the therapist has no clue? You would think that the therapist would know how to handle the situation. You are after all trusting this person to give you advice about your life. It seems kind of too late to start the training now while you are in crisis on what to do. It’s not like you can put your life on hold while the therapist gets a clue. All I can say is to be patient. Don’t buy into a no suicide contract, they don’t work. Go to the American Association of Suicidology’s website to help both you and your therapist. There are not too many therapists that know how to handle suicidal crises every where and each state has their own rules regarding suicidal safety. The best advice I can offer is to both be honest with one another and to listen to each to whether out the storm of the suicidal feelings. Have a safety plan in place. Use a crisis response plan. Pick up a book on Managing Suicidal Risk by David Jobes and give it to your therapist. If the therapist says she or he cannot work with you anymore, find someone who can. That might take some doing and some time but you can find someone that is not afraid of suicide.