Tuesday 29 May 2012

Lightbulbs. Psychological lightbulbs. And suddenly it all makes sense.

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Wednesday 16 May 2012

I actually got a proper night's sleep - the first time in over a year!

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Tuesday 15 May 2012

I think I made an important connection today. I need to test it more before I put it up here, but it could be pivotal.

That's the up-side. The down-side is that I couldn't remember whether I'd taken my bedtime dose of quick release morphine. I wasted half an hour convincing myself I must have taken it, worrying that I couldn't feel anything then counting every pill to find out (luckily I did an inventory last nite, so I could easily work it out).

By the time I was certain I hadn't taken it, I was 40 minutes late with it. Which meant the pain had had an extra 40 minutes to build up, which meant it now isn't doing much. And so I've just had to take a bigger top-up dose than I would've liked. And since my levels are already too high, I'm not happy.

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Sunday 13 May 2012

The therapist says she didn't mean to suggest that she thinks there's nothing more she can do. I felt her saying last week that when we started, there used to be a slight uptick in how I felt straight after a session, then it would get worse again, and now it just constantly getting worse, meant she felt we were out of options.

She said that's not what she meant; she put some positive spin on it that I didn't understand. She said she still thinks therapy could help and as long as I'm willing to keep going - which must therefore mean I'm still hopeful - so is she. I said I'm not hopeful, I just have no other choice.

This session didn't reduce me to tears, only a bit of crying, and set me off thinking about some more useful stuff. But whether it will ever help the pain - whether I even have that much time - remains to be seen.

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Tuesday 8 May 2012

I've just realised something. I've recognised for a long time that my ex-long-term boyfriend, R, raped me. I woke up in the middle of the night to find him having sex with me (literally, he was already half way through).

I didn't see it as rape at the time because I thought rape only happened when you said 'no'. But my friend made me realise last year that 'rape' is the absence of saying yes. And I definitely didn't say yes. Just like I didn't say yes to the date rape (which was what I was actually talking to my friend about).

But I've just remembered - that wasn't the first time R did that to me. There was another, very early on. I didn't want to have sex and I'd said no several times, but he took no notice. I gave up saying no, because it wasn't getting me anywhere. And he carried on and did it anyway. I didn't keep fighting, but I didn't say yes. I never thought of it as rape before, because I'd stopped saying no, but really it was, I realise that now.

So that makes three - R twice, plus the date rape. They say that abuse victims are more likely to suffer subsequent sexual assaults. They're already conditioned to not be able to fight back, they feel they have no right to say no and that they deserve that kind of treatment. I case I'm a textbook case

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Monday 7 May 2012

Driving

Well, it looks like the government is setting a deadline for my suicide.

The new drug driving laws announced today and due in force at the end of the year, will mark the end for me. They're going to arbitrarily set a limit of controlled drugs that you can have in your system, just like they do with drink.

Morphine is a controlled drug, so this will apply to me. I'm alone, I have noone to drive me around. And if there's no flexibility for chemical tolerance - ie if you take something everyday for years, it will take far more of it to have any effect on cognition or coordination - then I will be unable to drive. I'll be trapped at home, unable to get food, medication, unable to get to the doctor.

The current rules are that you can't drive if you feel impaired by the medication, and I never do. I do the sobriety tests every time before I get in the car, to be sure I'm as safe as possible. But that's not going to apply any more. Now it's going to be a flat how-much-have-you-taken.

With how badly the therapy has been going and how much worse everything has become, I've wondered just how long I should wait before taking the final step. Someone recently asked if I'd put a deadline on it, but I haven't. Hadn't.

It looks like the government now has. So if the pain is still so bad that I'm on shedloads of morphine when these rules come in, that's it. I'd have been doing this therapy for a year by then, and if it hasn't worked, it's probably not going to.

So. Seven months, give or take.

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Friday 4 May 2012

I just had to have my therapy session in the car because the pain exploded and I couldn't move. Never mind getting upstairs to her consulting room, I couldn't get out of the car. it's taken me hours to get home and still I can't move for the pain.

I think the therapist is about ready to give up on me. She was talking about how things used to seem to improve a bit after each appointment and now they're just getting worse. I think she's going to tell me she can't help me any more.

I can't start with anyone else. If she couldn't help me, I don't believe anyone can. I think this is it. I don't want to die but I really think this is it.

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