Tag: suicide prevention

Cinco de Mayo 2015

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide

Cinco de Mayo 2015

I got my S’mores frappucino with a shot of espresso. I had to have a real caffeine kick. I didn’t think I was going to go out because all the stuff I took for my bowels suddenly worked, all morning, for me. But things settled down after lunch and I was able to go out.

Had therapy and my therapist doesn’t remember reading the blog I sent her last week. The part she did remember was the nest part, which to me is similar to a hope box. She didn’t call it that and said she wanted to have things remind me of how important I am to people and such. It’s hard to do that when I am still in an environment that doesn’t fully support me in my illness. Today, I told her that my mother made me feel bad because I don’t do things “useful” around the house. My mother wanted me to put her breakfast plate in the sink to be “useful” and it made me upset. I don’t get why my mother has to be mean to me. I feel that giving her half of my paycheck every month to cover the bills of the house should let me live here, too. I just don’t get it.

I got really angry today so I posted on Twitter my feelings. A fellow CES sufferer saw a doctor today for her disability claims. He discounted her having CES, Cauda Equina Syndrome, saying she HAD CES, but once you have surgery, you no longer have it. That infuriated me. Infuriate is my word today as I have used it several times. I don’t get how a doctor can say something like that. If she had a stroke, the result would be the same. I just don’t get it. I really don’t and the more this happens, the more I distrust the medical profession. To me, despite their high degree, are all bozos, unless proven otherwise. I have yet to find a doctor that helped me with my ankle. No one wants to believe that I still have nerve damage in it. That the weakness is just from tendonitis. Just pisses me off, big time. So I have to take pain medication to quiet the pain. Normally, tendonitis heals with rest and therapy. I have been resting for three years now and I still have flare ups of pain. And no one can tell me why I am in pain or why my ankle swells up and all the veins in my foot pops out when I am in severe pain. Course, a doctor has yet to see this happen because it only happens in the after hours, late at night with the pain so bad I want to kill myself. It doesn’t flare up during appointment hours or even during an appointment. I am hardly in pain during the day, usually. But after seven in the evening, almost every night, the pain will rise and if I don’t start taking pain meds it becomes out of control. I have been fortunate that lately I have stayed on top of it. I am kind of lucky that I no longer work because if Friday was any indication, I would not be able to walk and stand eight hours a day. I would be in too much pain. Friday I walked more than I should have and paid heavily for it. Only reason I walked too much was because the eyeglass place made my glasses wrong. If the idiot explained to me what he meant by distance, we wouldn’t have had this problem. I still haven’t gotten my glasses back yet. I will call tomorrow and find out when they will be ready. I need them to read Dostoevsky. The glasses I am currently wearing can only go so far and then I start straining my eyes to see with them. It sucks having bad eyesight. I have been wearing glasses since I was in first grade.

My therapist and I talked about the chat that had me upset Sunday night. It’s like, am I smarter than all these clinicians and therapists in this chat when it comes to suicide prevention? I understand they want research and evident based treatment, but the research is there. If I know about it, why don’t they? I don’t get it. I don’t even hold a bachelor’s yet I know what needs to be done for a suicidal patient. Understanding, compassion, empathy, and the client telling his story. Treatment can be DBT based or CBT. I understand not everyone is trained in these modalities. There is a “short” kind of CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, that seems to help veterans in as little as five sessions. This is from what I have gathered on the internet vines and through the research of Jobes. So why do they not trust these kind of therapies is beyond my understanding. If they are looking to predict a suicide, they will have to wait a really, really long time for that to happen. You can’t predict a suicide anymore than you can predict cancer in a patient. And if this prediction is what they mean by prevention, they don’t understand anything about suicide at all.

Psychopharm for Suicide Prevention

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, chronic physical pain, depression, suicidality, suicide, suicide attempt, transgender

Psychopharmacology for Suicide Prevention

Baldessarini and Tondo, in Suicide in Psychiatric Disorders, Tartarelli, Pompili, and Giardi, Eds 2007

I read this chapter in this book because I thought it would be interesting. Once you read that clozapine and lithium were valuable in the reduction of suicide, the rest of the article fell flat on its face. It talked about SRI’s (serotonin reuptake inhibitors) and how only fluoxetine was approved for adolescent use. The rest were “black boxed”. Maybe I was tired when I read this as I have been up most of the day and despite having two cups of caffeinated drinks, I am still tired. But the article, I felt was ridiculous. It listed more references than sentences. I hate articles like that. And the graphs made absolutely no sense. So unless you suffer from schizophrenia or Bipolar I disorder, you are fucked. I got more depressed reading this article.

I really wanted to kill myself after reading this. I don’t know why. Maybe because it said that I was in the age range that suicides happen and I am “untreated”. It did talk about how studies excludes those with suicidal thinking, which is a shame. But what was unclear was if the RCT (Random clinical trials) did anything if the subject became suicidal during the study. And what really pissed me off was they quoted “suicidality” like it wasn’t a word or something. It was really a bizarre article.

I also read today that 6 transgendered people killed themselves so far this year. I feel like I should be #7. I also read that Bruce Jenner, the athlete, is now a she. That totally blew my mind. It kind of gave me hope but I am feeling so shitty that all I can think about is killing myself because I hate myself so damn much. And that stupid article just gave me enough reasons to go ahead with it. I am going to write a will, so that my family knows what to do with my stuff. I want my books donated to my therapist in the hope it might help her. My journal articles might as well be recycled. They were of no value to anyone except me. My Suicide and Life threatening journal can be donated to the MGH library or a library that doesn’t have these important articles.

I am just so tired of living this way. My foot is throbbing big time and I didn’t even do anything to it the last few hours. It just exploded about an hour or two ago and the pain meds hasn’t even touched it. I think I am becoming psychotic again. I keep hearing my father’s voice and he isn’t here. And my regular voices have been really quiet, which is unusual. I know once I go to sleep, I probably will feel better when I wake up. I just feel so wired yet tired. Damn, it’s 0200. I don’t know how the hell time keeps escaping me. Maybe that is why I feel so disoriented. I know I have been playing on my laptop for the last few hours. I know because I have had to log out of one account and then log onto another back and forth to get the items I need for the one account I am working on. All for this stupid game I am playing. Maybe I should take my antipsychotic tonight. I usually take it every other night because otherwise I get nasty side effects. I hate them because they are so uncomfortable and I can’t do anything but SPAZ out. My arms and legs become very spastic. I hate it. But the drug keeps the bad voices away. I don’t know why I am hearing my father’s voice. He isn’t commanding. It’s just like remnants of a conversation more than talking to him like he is there. I don’t know if that explains it very well. Maybe I will take a trilafon and see if that helps.

Suicide Crisis Response Plan

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide

I hope I am not plagiarizing when I post this plan here on my blog. This is from the Air Force Guide to Managing Suicidal Behavior found here

Crisis response plan:
When thinking about suicide, I agree to do the following:

Step 1: Try to identify my thoughts and specifically what’s upsetting me
Step 2: Write out and review more reasonable responses to my suicidal thoughts
Step 3: Do things that help you feel better for at least 30 mins (examples can include, trying to sleep, play internet games, brush hair 100 times, write in a journal, listen to music, etc)
Step 4: Repeat all of the above
Step 5: if thoughts continue, get specific and I find myself preparing to do something, I will call XXX @ 555-555-5555 or suicide hotline
Step 6: if I cannot reach above I will call my therapist or psychiatrist
Step 7: if I am still feeling suicidal and I don’t feel like I can control my behavior, I go to the ER or call 911 (or whatever the local emergency line is for your country)
I have found having this in my journal useful when I have been hospitalized because it provides a plan of something that they need for discharge. I don’t always carry the paper with me but I do carry my journal.

Midnight Demons Are Back…and it sucks

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression

I did my what has now become my daily routine. I took a shower and then headed to Starbucks for my coffee. Because I earned so many stars (rewards), I earned a free drink so today took advantage of it. I also got another banana coffee cake as I was in the mood for something sweet. I then sat and journaled about my therapy session.

Last night I sent her a pretty nasty text message because I was in so much pain. I told her “fuck you, I am still keeping my date. Ankle has exploded so fuck you.” I didn’t get much sleep last night because I was hyper and because I was in pain. I have had a few hours sleep and the coffee helped. I am getting scared though. I am feeling like I am separating into two people. During the day I am Dr. Jekyll and during the night, I become Mr. Hyde. My moods are drastically different. If given the opportunity last night, I know I would have tried to take my life last night. I was that crazy that much. Now, because I am not struggling to sleep and not in crazy about of pain, it’s like a night and day experience. I have to ask myself, did I really think those things? I know the text message meant what I said and I know I wanted to talk to some one but who do you call at 3 in the morning?? I wrote a letter to Dr. Jobes, telling him of my demise and thanking him all the same time. I don’t know why I did that. I just thought he should know that I was struggling and used his works and it still failed me somehow. Maybe I wasn’t using it right. Maybe I am just a failure and can’t be helped. Maybe I am just too hopeless a case. I don’t know if I will send off the email. He doesn’t know me, not in a personal way anyway. I doubt that he remembers who I am other than the crazy guy that keeps asking him for his autograph in his works. I adore him. I admire his brilliancy in the field of suicidology. Yet why do I feel I should tell him I am committing suicide? Maybe I am hoping he will send me a reply that will give some affirmation that my life is not a total failure and loss. But if I don’t get a reply, how then will I feel? What if he takes my threat seriously and tries to hunt me down to get me help? I don’t know if I can take that chance.

Last night I wanted to chat so went to the twitter boards to see if there were any suicide chats going on. I know twitter isn’t a chat forum but there might be something under trends and such. No such luck but I found a ton of people writing their suicide notes or just making fun of being suicidal. Not my cup of tea. And NO WHERE did I see a prevention tweet. Usually I see one from the National Suicide prevention, Lifeline but there was zippo. Pretty sad to see all these tweets and no one really helping. I asked one person why she was writing a suicide note but didn’t get a response. It was four in the morning. I couldn’t believe the stupid tweets about suicide, such as my math book has so many problems it committed suicide. What is funny about that?? I just don’t get it. I did go to one forum for a text chat but it’s only from 2 pm to 2 am. I guess you can’t be suicidal outside those hours. I guess you could always go to the emergency room but by the time you are seen over the “real” serious cases, you are exhausted and just want to go home and sleep. I know I probably could have called my psychiatrist but I also know that she would be worried as I NEVER have called her that early in the morning unless it was a true emergency. I’m not saying I was not in bad space last night, I was, but I knew she would try and talk me into going to the ER to be admitted or at least evaluated. To me those things are one and the same and I wasn’t going to get near either of those places.

So hear it is day light and I am feeling better than I was 10 hrs ago. I didn’t do anything different. I just go a little sleep and went about my day like nothing happened. Guess the midnight demons are really back.