today’s activities

MY pdoc today said that she is a fan of mine. I found it amazing that she would say something so sweet. We also talked about our anniversary and I said that we should go out for dinner but that would be over stepping a boundary.

I did tell her about my pseudo attempt and she understands why I get that way. I told her all my plans went out the window and it’s so hard to reach out when you are in so much pain. She didn’t say much but she understood that when pain hits, I become a suicidal maniac until the pain eases up.  If I did call her that night, I am sure she probably would have wanted me to call my PCP and tell him I needed more pain meds to get it under control. Probably but its not like they can call in for a narc over the phone or without being seen.

I am not in a good mood after today. I am hurting physically and am angry about it. No matter what I do I always seem to be in more pain for doing things I want to do, like walking to my doctor’s appt. Doesn’t seem like I am doing much but it takes so much out of me. Plus not sleeping has been annoying me and making me cranky. I am so cranky right now that I could dope slap anyone right now if they pissed me off in any way.

 

I saw my PCP’s colleague today because he wasn’t available. I wish I had waited until he was. I have to get another head MRI to rule out something on it and had a blood test for Myasthenia Gravis to rule out that. I am so tired about this and still can’t see that I am typing without my glasses because my eyes hurt. I am going to take a migraine med tonight to see if that helps. The doc thinks it is an atypical or ocular migraine that I am experiencing. I don’t care what it is I just want to be able to read and write again without agony. It’s almost 6 pm EST so I am going to take a nap and then the heavy drugs to go to sleep. I need to rest my head before it explodes so maybe I do indeed have a migraine going on.

a painful night

Right now my left foot is on fire and there is no calming it down. I think I did too much when I made my chicken wings today. God forbid I should make a meal. It really sucks when you want to make something other than a bologna sandwich for dinner. That is why I eat out so much. It’s so I don’t have to cook.

A friend has told me to write when I am in pain so that is what I am doing…not to say it is helping me with the pain any but it is making me tired that I want to sleep…

I am to see my psychiatrist in twelve hours from now. I am afraid to see her because I have not told her about my pseudo suicide attempt last week. I keep thinking it was months ago but in actually, it was only ten days ago.  I am afraid that if I tell her I might get put into the hospital for it. The crisis has passed. I have not felt suicidal since that night, well, not really felt like acting on it since that night. It is a curious thing. I will share things with my therapist more than I will my psychiatrist. I know it is because I talk with my therapist more than my psych. Don’t get me wrong, the relationship I have with my psych is longer than my therapist. I have seen the same psychiatrist since I was seventeen. I am coming up on our twenty year anniversary. I can’t believe how far I have come and that I am still alive. I know it is because of her care that I am still here. I think most psychiatrists would have dumped me a long time ago but for whatever reason she stuck by me and I by her.

I have not processed my feelings about this last suicide attempt. I cannot believe I threw out the window all my safety plans. It is easier said than done to call someone when you want to down a bottle of pills. I think that there is no telling what might have happened that night had I been able to walk the three feet, 3, stinking feet to my bureau to get more pills. Not being able to walk three feet is what saved my life. Three feet. That is how close I was to taking a whole bottle of pills. My therapist is grateful for this. I am sure my friends are. I have been in a weird state since this has happened. I have been neither depressed nor euphoric nor anything since that night. I have become numb. And I am not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. This is the first time I really want to document what I am going through because I know there might be someone in similar circumstances. Pain is awful but that night I was so full of despair and hopelessness, my mood changed on a dime and the demons came out rearing their ugly heads. I remember just this feeling of panic since that night. This overwhelming desire to get away from myself, the overwhelming pain knocking whatever senses I had out of commission and wanting to just die. Both of my feet were useless. Both of my feet were in agony. I couldn’t straighten out my legs. I couldn’t let the sheet touch my feet. It was awful, so truly awful not being able to do a damn thing but lie in agony and knowing that my meds were just a few feet away and my misery could have ended once and for all. But no, I could barely stand long enough to gulp down two of my night pills. So I skipped my dose of some of my other meds. What did that matter when all I could think about was death. After I took my meds I waited an eternity to pass out. Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen, then twenty. I felt like nothing was going to work that night. My feet seized in spasms again and all I saw was blackness filling me way deep inside such that I have never felt before. I had to do something. I had to get this demon out. I had to end my life. But I could not get up and walk the three stinking feet to do so. Moving my legs was agony. If I really tried I could have but then I would be in big trouble. I might not be here today writing this.

A Thank You and a Recipe

I made my chicken wings tonight. They came out so good. The recipe is simple, a bottle of Catalina salad dressing, jar of smuckers apricot preserves, and a packet of Lipton’s dry onion soup. Mix together on low heat. Cook the chicken at 350 degree oven for an hour and a half, covered. Then pour the sauce mixture on it for another hour and half and broil for the last 15 mins. They are delectable. I make them for special occasion but today I wanted something good.

I just wrote a goodbye letter to my ex who is finally my ex-ex. I have wrestled with what I would tell her. So decided to just write a long run off sentence or two about everything that was wrong with the relationship. I couldn’t come up with anything that was right. I have been there done that and this time it was finally over. It hurts like hell, but I am better off without her.

I also worked on my comparison paper and now I can say that it finally looks like a paper. Tomorrow I will wrestle with the printer or maybe I will just print it off so I can read it and proof it. I still have lots to do with it, such as the comparison part!!

Today I also started a page for Facebook for this blog. www.facebook.com/midnightdemons  I am excited about this as I can now be truly anonymous with my posting online. It took some figuring out but I was finally able to do it. I am not a web designer so it was kind of tricky to figure out. I hope that I am able to get more viewers this way and hopefully save a life with what I write on here. That is my only goal with this blog and I truly have some wonderful fans out there that read. So Thank You so much for supporting me

a phone call

One crazy day at work I received a phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail as I figured it was some bill collector. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Not only did this person leave me a message for me to call him back but he said that it was urgent to do so. This man was Dr. Edwin Shneidman, the father of suicidology. He was a man I deeply respected because of his work in trying to understand psychache and suicide. He was the first pioneer to create a suicide prevention center in the United States. He has spent his life trying to develop a scale for psychache and psychological pain assessment. Psychache is the unbearable psychological pain (despair, grief, guilt, hopelessness, frustration, perturbation, and pain all rolled into one). It is this pain that he and I believe causes people to think about taking their life. I sent him my paper “Is suicide caused by psychological pain?” and he wanted to talk to me about the pain scales I had mentioned. He was fascinated that there was a scale to measure physical pain but (as I argued) not for psychache. He was always thinking about how to have a psychometric assessment to gauge a person’s psychache.

Dr. Shneidman began his career by interpreting suicide notes. He began collecting them after he was sent to the morgue for confirmation of suicide autopsy. He and his colleague Farberow lead the early work of this important tool in forensic suicidology. In addition to this, he also co-founded the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, the first in the United States to have one.

His message to me was for me to return his call and quickly (he wasn’t in the best of health). I didn’t know what to say to him or what he wanted of me. I was extremely nervous. Looking back I don’t remember too much of what we talked about. I know that we were on the phone what seemed like a half hour or so. I was too stunned to really remember anything but I know that he talked about his ill health and that he wanted to know what the physical pain scale was so I printed some off for him and sent them post haste to his house in LA. He died about a month afterwards.
After our conversation, my therapist was convinced I was going to be the next Shneidman. I would continue to follow in his work and in a way I have in my own way. I have book or downloaded/printed every article he ever wrote on the subject. I have scores of files on him. I also have the same on David Jobes but that is another matter.