daylight savings time mess

Daylight savings time mess

I slept nearly every two hours the whole night. I gave up around 6 and had something to eat then tried again and was successful. I slept the whole day! I woke up slightly a few time, but I mostly stayed asleep until 1615. I took my pain meds and then went downstairs to make something to eat.

My brother in law got me rolls instead of hamburger buns. It was okay. I made the Manwich and it came out good. Now I have a quick meal the rest of the week. I decided to shower after I ate as my pain was still pretty low but creeping up. As I was in the shower for a few minutes, there was this awful noise and the pipes were vibrating. I moved this lever thing and that stopped the noise but by the end of the shower, I was losing water pressure. My mother and brother in law heard the noise. I told my mother what had happened and she said she would call the plumber tomorrow.

My foot was not a happy camper by the time I dried off and got dressed. I filled the pill box for the week and that made it more angry. I am going to put some diclofenac gel on it to see if that helps calm it down some. I really don’t want to take the strong pain pill unless I have to. I had to take 3 yesterday to control my pain. I don’t want to get constipated again. That was awful as with my nerve injury, it is very easy to get backed up. I also can’t take senna a few nights this week because I have appts.

I read Facebook and looks like another fricken storm is coming over the next few days. That would explain why I was hurting so bad yesterday. I am going to be hurting the next few days as the snow is going to start tomorrow and end fricken Wed! I hope I can see my psychiatrist Wed but it will depend on what the roads are like and how bad the snow is. If they call for a snow emergency, I might reschedule.

Sometime during my Painsomnia, I wrote about stuff I wanted to discuss with my PCP tomorrow. I see him in the morning so I hope the snow doesn’t start then. I canceled my appt with my therapist for the afternoon. It would be too much for me to have two appts in one day at different locations.

I read some of 1984 last night to try and distract from the pain. I really hope something like that doesn’t happen to the US due to Cheeto’s stupidity and paranoia. I heard he is still trying to campaign for 2020. Idiot doesn’t realize how stupid that is. He can barely manage this presidency! I might not be around then anyways. All decisions will be made by Friday. Just hope my pain is better by then.

Pity Party

Pity Party

I rarely have pity parties. But tonight, something embarrassing happened to me that has been happening for a while and it just hit the wrong nerve. It depressed me because despite recovering from cauda equina syndrome (CES), not once but twice, I was ultimately disabled because of CRPS and chronic pain. Whether CES had a hand in it, I don’t know. It is doubtful as my last surgery was four years before my injury, a sprained ankle that was caused by intense spasms of my foot and ankle. That surgery was higher up the spine than my first surgery so I am not sure it affected my ankle and foot. There are a lot of what ifs, and I was pondering them today. Then the embarrassing incident happened and it hit me in the gut.

I can’t do much over what I have been dealt. I try to move on as best I can despite horrible pain. I am grateful my hands and upper extremities are not affected by pain. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t write anymore. I know there are speech to text things but I like the feel of pen on paper or the keys of the keyboard. I have my outlet with my blog to talk about how crappy the pain is and how it brings on my suicidality.

I was talking to my voices today, as I often do. We were discussing the use of testosterone and the effects of what they would do to me. That is if I don’t kill myself when I plan on it, which is soon. It all depends on how next week goes. I am nervous about it. I have even thought about assisted suicide, which may mean leaving the state and going to Oregon where it is legal there. It might take me a few months to save up for it, but what the hell. I can’t seem to get it right on my own. If a doc can prescribe me something to end it, that will help me. I don’t want to be in this level of pain or worse as I get older. It’s bad enough that just making my bed hurts. Making breakfast should not cause pain and I’m not talking something fancy, just making scrambled eggs and toast is a chore. I wanted to go to Starbucks today but my back was too painful because of the shitty weather, which is going to continue until tomorrow afternoon/evening. I’ll probably be in pain the rest of the week, more than my usual pain.

Right now my foot feels like it is being crushed. I’ve had to take my strong pain pill to quiet it down. That was an hour ago and I am still hurting. I am so frustrated that I have to wait for meds to work. Sometimes it’s 45 minutes. Others, up to two hours. I play with the Neurontin dose because I don’t want to be foggy the next day. I’ll take anywhere from 600 mg to 1200 mg a night. Some nights I don’t need it. It all depends. But when I flare, all the guns need firing. Pain today has been mostly in my foot. But my ankle hurt briefly. It piggybacks going up and down, from foot to ankle and back again. Sometimes it is the same pain, sometimes it’s a different pain in the different area of my foot or ankle. I never know what kind of pain I will get. The bone pain is the worse because that is harder to treat. It can be my malleolus or the metatarsals. And is always severe, like can’t move at all severe. I wish there was just one pill I could take for all of the CRPS pain. But there isn’t. And then there is an MGH resident that says opioids don’t work on pain at all. I like him to have CRPS. The meds might not take away my pain 100% but it brings it to a bearable level and that is all I need. Lately my pain has been rampant, a 7 or higher. Used to be a 6, now a 7 is my new “normal”. Before then, it was a 3. That was at least two years ago, maybe? What happens when my pain is a 10 every day? I probably won’t be alive to know. I hope so, anyway.

surviving depression 23 June 2006

June 23, 2006

I know what you are going through. Sometimes I think that everyone would be better off without me. The only thing that is keeping me alive these days is my word to my therapist that I won’t go through with my thoughts. The pain of living is just too much to bare right now. My therapist often asks me how I get through this. There is a quote that I keep telling her that I got from one of Kay Redfield Jamison’s book, “Only one option left, to suffer”. She is my inspiration as she has bipolar disorder, tried to die by suicide, and is one of the leading researchers/teachers of the disorder. I know it doesn’t make sense to suffer all the time but millions of people out there do it everyday. We few that are in this group do it every day, though it is most difficult and we come from different backgrounds and sections of the world. I know it sucks, but the trick is to realize when we feel this way, it is NOT our true selves, it is the disorder that is talking. I know we all feel like scum of the earth for no reason other than for being allowed to breathe, to be something called alive that we wish we didn’t have to be. One reason why I have read so much about depression and there are a lot of good books out there, is that you have to know the disorder, understand it, then you can know what to do, sometimes when it isn’t hitting you on the head with a 60 lb hammer. Sometimes knowing the demons is better than not knowing them. I know that it isn’t always easy when our physical bodies wreck our lives and we are no longer feel apart of the human race because our b&b are not functioning and we have physical pain that is driving us insane. But things aren’t always going to be this way. One of the books that I had read said that suicide is complete in 10 minutes and if you wait out those ten mins, you will survive. The same thing goes for depression. Though instead of 10 mins, it’s more like 10 days or more. But it doesn’t last. Eventually it lifts, and we return to “normal” functioning until the next episode. The HARDEST part of this fucking disorder is that we forget that we have survived the worse of it. Every time we are stuck in an episode, we think it is for the first time, that we are NEVER going to feel better, ever. I am telling you that you are. No matter how hopeless you feel right now, tomorrow might be a better day and if it is not, least you survived today. Worry about tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be here for you. Count on it.

About the mood stabilizers, I suffer from bipolar depression, which is a little different than major depression. I sometimes have periods where I am really hyper, don’t sleep, eat, think I am on top of the world, talk excessively, and can’t stand still. These periods don’t last too long, maybe a week or two, then I either have a period of being normal and/or crash big time. I take Trileptal for it and it has helped some with the Cymbalta. Trileptal is an anti-convulsant that is used a “mood stabilizer”. There are other drugs that are used, but you should be seen by a psychiatrist for evaluation. Most GP’s don’t have a clue about psychotropic meds and it isn’t a good idea for them to play around with it if you don’t have the diagnosis.

warm day in February

Warm day in February

A very unusual day today as temps reached 70 degrees. I don’t ever remember the temps being that high this time of year for Boston. Despite the nice weather, my pain didn’t decrease. Standing was difficult all day and the bones in my ankle joint hurt really bad. I woke up in pain and just stayed in bed though my phone kept on ringing after 10 am. I was getting annoyed. My mother wanted me to turn down the heat and I said yeah, if I went downstairs, which wasn’t happening soon. She came home a little while later with my loud mouth cousin in tow. Fuck. I was hungry so I went downstairs as I had to use the bathroom. As I was making something, my cousin said I was always eating. Fuck, really? It was noon time so excuse me for wanting some food. Just because he doesn’t eat, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t. It made me so mad. I had to suffer with him and my mother call me she/her and my birth name. I kept my mouth shut because he is a judgmental fuck and doesn’t like anything to do with LGBT. I just ate and wanted to make coffee but couldn’t stand being around him. I went back to my room and of course he had something to say to that, too. I waited for him to leave before going back down to make coffee. I made it a little strong but it was good.

I read Harry Potter for most of the day. The pain in my ankle did not drown out at all. I took some ibuprofen as it was bone pain and I just ate so I could take the max dose. When I was done with reading an hour or two later, I was still in the same level of pain. I was tempted to call my PCP as the pain is getting worse than my “normal” pain. I haven’t done anything that I recall. Only thing that stopped me was that I knew he wouldn’t do anything about it. It wasn’t like he was going to change my meds or anything. I am so tired of living with this pain and just going on this existence. Like what the fuck is the point?

I’m going back to the Wizard World. I really want to finish this book this week.