WELL, THAT SUCKED!

 Let me preface what I'm about to say with I'm sorry if this sounds like whining. That is not my intention at all. I just want to write about an experience I had over the weekend that freaked me out a bit so that I can hopefully stop thinking about it!  It's more of a therapeutic writing down of things, if you will. It's harshing my chill.

Over the weekend, Steve was gone to visit some family. I was alone, which I have never minded being. These days, especially with, (*gestures widely at the world*) all of this that's going on, I rarely get time by myself and it's nice to do my own dos and think my own thinks. No offense to Steve, but, yeah.

So Friday was fine. Friday was great. Friday was all the things that a Friday should be and more. I stayed up fairly late so Friday wouldn't be over so fast, you know how those things go. So when I finally went to sleep, I was 100% fine. That is important to know.

I woke up exactly two hours later in a blind, complete, irrational panic. You know that feeling you get when someone jumps out at you and you scream and jump back? Imagine that, but that feeling doesn't stop. I sat up in bed, mostly asleep, and every fiber in my body is on edge telling me that something was very, very wrong. It felt like electricity was running through my body and my first clear thought was that I couldn't breathe. I sat on the edge of the bed gasping and clawing at my throat, only to only finally realize that I was breathing just fine. That didn't help, though, so I ran through the house to the bathroom and threw some cold water on myself (because that sometimes works to shock me out of an anxiety attack) but it just made it all worse. I managed to grab one of my anti-anxiety pills out of the cabinet and tossed it back, but I knew that it would take about 1/2 an hour before it would take effect.

I ran back and got into bed, with waves and waves of panic running through me. I lay there and tried to rationally figure out what was wrong, which is another thing that sometimes helps pull me out of an attack, but my brain wouldn't cooperate. I kept thinking "I'm here alone and something is wrong. I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do!" Every one of my muscles were locked up and I was shaking. It was awful. I thought about calling my mom, but I knew she would be afraid because I couldn't tell her what exactly was going on, and if she decided to drive across town (which she absolutely would) she might not be careful. I finally called Steve, even though he was hours away, because what I mainly needed was someone to talk to to keep me from feeling so alone. I hated to do it, because I knew he'd be asleep and he might get mad, but thankfully he didn't. I lay there in bed, shaking, talking to him, trying to explain what was going on, but finally just talking about anything while trying to unlock my brain from whatever was going on. He talked me into taking another of the pills, which I did - chewing it up this time to make it work faster - and after about 15 minutes, I calmed down enough to get off of the phone. It was terrifying, and I have no idea what the trigger was that caused it.  I've had one anxiety attack similar to it before, years ago, and I wound up in an emergency room because the doctor thought I was having a heart attack. This one was arguably worse. I finally managed to fall asleep again after about an hour when the meds kicked in.

I ended up sleeping until after noon, because the medicine does that to me. When I woke up, I felt like I'd been in some kind of accident. I hurt all over, and I still had remnants of the shakes. I couldn't eat, I couldn't work on the graphics stuff I needed to do, and I couldn't even take a shower. I sat in my chair and watched mindless TV until I could function like a human being again. My mom called and I told her what had happened, and I was right not to call her, I think. She would have come right away, but not in a good frame of mind. She invited me to come and stay with them, but I told her no. I had to be at church the next day, and I didn't want to admit I was too shaky to drive. I ended up taking another anti anxiety pill and calming down enough to eat and get out of the chair for a while, but I was completely drained. I was ok after that, but I made sure to have my medicine in the bedroom with me and a phone in my hand when I went to sleep, in case it happened again. Thankfully, it didn't.

Hand to God, I don't know what triggered such an awful attack. I don't sleep much anyway, so it wasn't going to bed late. I was in a great frame of mind when I was falling asleep, and I don't remember any nightmares. The main thing I remember when waking up was that something just felt wrong. Once I realized I could breathe, my main issue was that I was afraid that I'd have to call someone to come and help me, and I kept thinking "I don't want to go to the hospital again, I don't want to go to the hospital again."  I don't know why I kept thinking that, because I couldn't pinpoint anything that would make me have to go to the hospital. It was very, very weird.  Thankfully by Sunday morning, I felt more myself. I made it to church and was ok by the time Steve came home.  I still don't know what happened.

I do have one theory, and it may be very stupid, but it's the only one I have.

As I have mentioned before, I have degenerative disk disease and that causes constant, relentless back pain. It isn't debilitating, thankfully, but it keeps me from doing a lot of physical activities because one wrong move and my arms go numb and my spine sends signals to my shoulder and rib cage telling me that I could be dying. I already have a phobia of sudden heart attacks because that is how my dad died and apparently I was traumatized by that, so when my arms go numb and my chest hurts, well, that's just where my brain goes. It sucks donkey balls, because even when I can rationally think "that is not how a heart attack works" the lizard part of my brain says "Well, yeah, but what if you're wrong this time?" Also, the nerve shocks that I get through my back feel exactly the same as when I get startled. You know that creepy feeling like someone is looking at you from behind? It's like that, so I have a constant feeling of being stalked, which just adds on to the scary feeling. I think maybe I slept weird and pinched a nerve that set off a bunch of pain that my body didn't know how to handle all at once. I put an ice pack on my back, and it helped me calm down, so maybe it's all just nerve impulses that are triggering a fear response. It's all very stupid, I can say that with authority.

Oh, but the best part? Since then, it's like I have PTSD and anytime I've been alone (which even goes to being alone in a room) I start having mini panic attacks. I had a panic attack so massive that being by myself now scares me. It's so much fun. I can't live like that, though, because Steve has to travel for work and I sometimes have to be in room by myself, and I am a grown ass woman who shouldn't have to have a babysitter. I can't be afraid all of the time. That is not how I want to live my life.

SIGH. I'm hoping this goes away very soon, because I have a life to live and fun stuff to do in it. If there is one part of this that I can appreciate, it's that I am trying to fight against it instead of submitting to it. I cannot stress enough about how stupid I feel this all is. It makes me MAD. I hope I can get the source of whatever is causing this corrected.

So (for those of you still here reading this) I'm asking you to pray or send good vibes, or whatever you might do, that I can get this weird situation under control. I don't have time for this!!

I DIDN'T QUITE CONQUER THE CAVE

Oooh, y'all.  I'm so embarrassed. 

About two months ago, Steve told me that he had signed us up for a local-ish 5K race. That isn't a thing that we normally do, of course, but this race was special because a mile and a half of it was inside a cave. Neat, huh?  

Since it had been nearly a year since I'd done a 5K I decided I needed to practice, and although it was tough to begin with, I was getting better. I wasn't great, by any means, and I was slower than last year, but not by a lot. I was much lighter and in better shape last year too, but I didn't think it would be difficult to get to a point where I could run/walk it in a decent enough time. I've done 5K races before, and I even did a practice one to check my timing to make sure I could finish it in the time allotted for the actual race, and I did in plenty of time.  That probably doesn't sound like much, but since I don't employ a coach, I did the best I could on my own.

We set out to Cathedral Caverns state park, where we were in the 4th wave of a race called Conquer the Cave 5K. It started on a half mile stretch of road, which you had to run down and back, then go up a monster hill which would lead you into the cave and then you would go to into the very back of that, and then back out of the cave to finish. 

Because so many people signed up, we couldn't all go at once, and since we had signed up so late in the game, our wave wasn't set to start until 3:30 P.M.  I started getting ready the day before to prepare, making sure I was drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, and that sort of thing. Well, I did what I thought I needed to, anyways, which had never steered me wrong before, but I think I did something wrong because it didn't take long before I knew I was in trouble.

First thing was that it was hot. I mean, it was middle of summer hot, and I don't think anyone was expecting that. I want to say it was 97 degrees?  Maybe not that hot, but it was miserably hot and bright, and the first leg of the trip was flat and unshaded. I actually started out pretty good, and had a moment of thinking "hey! I think I can run further than I ever have, today!" but right after that, I started to feel like I was in a furnace. It felt like all moisture in my body was suddenly gone, and I actually had a moment where I thought about asking someone to pour their water over me. I didn't do that, figured it was just because it was hot, and I trudged on.  I had to switch to walking, because I felt like I couldn't breathe. Even my breath felt too hot. I made it to the turn around, began to walk back and it all got worse. I was genuinely afraid that I was going to throw up, or pass out, and I desperately didn't want that.  I made it to the first water station and got some water and poured it on my shirt, which helped a little, but it didn't last long.  The hill was what got me. It's not easy to go up a steep hill anytime, but it was so damn hot and I was getting dizzy and I was panting too hard.

I didn't want to stop, but I felt so sick I didn't have a choice. I finally had to wave down one of the hay ride trucks that were taking people from the earlier waves back down to the parking area and get in. The people on the truck were very kind, and they gave me water and got me to the paramedics. I don't know if I needed the paramedics, but they checked me out, said I was ok, and told me they thought I could finish. I didn't go far before I had to admit to myself that I wouldn't make it and I had to quit. I felt like I was on fire from the inside out. I was the last person in the race by far by that time, and I was so shaky that I had a hard time holding my water bottle. I had to flag down the paramedics again and ask to be taken back down the hill. I was done. It was humiliating.

Once I had a few minutes to wallow in my shame, I decided to catch a ride on one of the hay trucks up to the cave so that Steve wouldn't have to look for me when he was done and I realized when I got there that I was the only person who didn't finish. Old people, kids, people much more overweight than me, they all made it and I didn't. I wanted to cry, but I didn't. Well, at least not until I got back to the car. I was much better once I had a chance to cool off, but I hadn't been able to make it up the hill. I'd been working hard to make it to this stupid race and literally, all I wanted to do was finish it. It was only a 5K, and I couldn't do it. I was so mad at myself and embarrassed that I didn't talk much on the way home. All I wanted to do was lie down and forget the whole day.

I don't know why I feel like such a failure. My body, for whatever reason, just wouldn't do the thing. I know, intellectually, that not pushing myself harder than I could handle was smart, but I had been so convinced that I was going to do this dumb race and finish it that not doing so was a mental blow.

Anyway, so I boofed it. I couldn't even do a dumb 5K. I still don't feel well this morning, so who knows what was going on inside of my body, but it doesn't make me feel like less of a failure. I was the only person out of hundreds not to finish the race. Hehe, well, at least there's that!

At any rate, I have another race set for next month, so hopefully I'll do better then. I hope so, at least!  Gotta keep trying, right?

HEART TO HEART

I was sick for a month and a half, but didn't know it!

Well, actually, I knew I didn't feel well, but I didn't know just how sick I was for weeks.  I'd gone to the doctor two days before Christmas and had to get shots and antibiotics because of my lungs.  The doctor never told me what was wrong.  I assumed it was a respiratory infection, but it wasn't terrible so I wasn't worried.  We went on our short vacation and I felt ok, so I figured I was over it, but apparently I wasn't.  In my posts about the Nutrisystem program we did, I talked a lot about how tired and weak I felt.  I still believe it's not a great program to be on, and I still believe the lack of food caused some of it, but I believe now that one of my main problems was that I had walking pneumonia again. I honestly had no idea because I wasn't coughing or anything.  I'm almost embarrassed to tell you how I found out I had pneumonia, but since we're friends here, I'll explain.

Let me preface my story with this: I'm not a hypochondriac. I hate going to the doctor and being on medication isn't fun.  I may complain about not feeling well, and I might whine if something hurts, but I don't spend a whole lot of time believing I've got some kind of incurable disease.  The only thing, health wise, that scares me stupid is that something might be wrong with my heart.  We all know I'm paranoid about my heart just...fritzing out.  After what happened to my dad, I worry about that sort of thing.  He'd never had heart problems until the day he had his heart attack and died, and my heart frequently does strange things, so I'm pretty sure my fears aren't unfounded.

Anyway.

Sunday morning, about a week after the diet debacle, I was sitting in church listening to a woman talk about her husband, who had just survived a massive, damaging heart attack.  Like, the kind of heart attack that killed some of the muscle in his heart.  It was scary, and the story spooked me.  It probably wouldn't have bothered me so much if I hadn't been having chest pains all morning and my left arm hadn't gone numb.  I'm not kidding.  I'd been sitting there trying to convince myself that I was fine, that I'd be in a lot more pain and distress if it was my heart (as I've learned to do), but it didn't work.  Against all attempts to keep calm, I went into one of the most insanely intense anxiety attacks I've had up to that point.  If you don't get anxiety attacks, let me explain something: This isn't just being nervous about something.  It isn't having a "bad feeling" that won't go away, this is an all over, absolute conviction something is wrong and it doesn't matter if you try and think rationally, it doesn't work.  I can only assume that it's some kind of out-of-whack chemical thing in your brain that does it, but it's very real and completely terrifying.  I didn't say anything, though.  Well, at least not until after lunch.  I couldn't calm down or breathe, my chest was still hurting and my arm was still numb.  I just jumped into the car and went to the doc-in-the-box.  I think I still had a bit of rationality left in me because a) I didn't ask Steve to come with me, b) I didn't go straight to the emergency room, and c) I managed to calm myself down enough to sit quietly in the waiting room until I was called back. Once I got into the exam room, though, I was so scared that I started to cry. I told them my chest hurt and my arm was numb (it totally was) and that my dad had died of heart problems and that I was scared, which got me fast tracked into all kinds of tests and being hooked up to things.  I happened to mention that I was pretty sure I was having a panic attack - mainly to explain the crying - and that's where things got confusing.  The doctor said "yes, I believe you've been here complaining about chest pains before." I have, but I never thought it was my heart. I'd been there 3 times over a period of five years, maybe, and only a couple of times it was some kind of upper respiratory thing, so I'm not sure what she was talking about. Then the doctor asked if I was stressed and told me that being stressed would damage my heart, even if nothing was currently wrong with it.  The EKG was fine, thank heavens, but the other tests showed I had pneumonia, which explained the pain in my chest. Still have no idea about my arm, though.  Also, because I'd been sick and hadn't been slowing down or getting treatment, it apparently affected me mentally, which happened the last time I'd gotten pneumonia; panic attacks and all. It's all very strange and tangled up, but I understand it better now than I did.  At any rate, she gave me prescriptions for the usual stuff and told me she was also going to give me something to help keep me calm that I needed to take every day. Here is where I am still really confused.  As I said, she seemed to remember, or at least think she remembered, me coming into the clinic a lot about chest pains, but she also seemed to think I'd been in a constant state of panic every time I'd been there.  I thought that was strange, but who knows? Maybe she remembered me and thought I was over-reacting every time.  So she gives me a prescription for something that I thought was like Xanax, or at least some kind of tranquilizer, because she was so worried about my anxiety levels.  Once I found out my heart was fine, I felt so much better. I was shaken, but no where near as afraid as I'd been before, so I didn't take one of those mystery pills until the next day.  I figured that I needed to try it out and make sure it didn't put me to sleep, but it really didn't seem to do anything at all. In fact, it wasn't until I woke up in the middle of the night thinking I was dying that I even thought to look at what I'd taken.

Imagine being dead asleep and suddenly bolting up, fully awake and in such a state of panic that you literally jump out of bed running.  That's what happened to me.  It made the panic attack I'd had the day before look like a case of the hiccups.  I'd asked Steve to sleep in the living room because I knew I was contagious, but I ran in there and shook him awake and told him I needed to go to the ER, that something was wrong and I didn't feel right.  My skin was crawling and my heart was beating so hard that my hair shook.  This wasn't just Crazy Town stuff, this was full on terror.  It's hard to explain, but I thought my chest was going to explode.  If you've ever been startled, imagine that feeling of being startled not going away and only getting stronger.  I grabbed the BP cuff we have and put it on, (that might have been some Crazy Town stuff) and my blood pressure was up higher than it had ever been before in my life.  Steve was trying to calm me down (bless him, his brain was on straighter than my own) he told me I needed to be still and figure out what was wrong.  I wasn't in the mood to be rational, though, and I probably would have jumped into the car and taken myself to the ER (sans pants) had I not woken up enough to realize that I wasn't in pain and I could breathe. I also remembered that I had taken a pill I knew nothing about, which I immediately looked up online.  It hadn't been a tranquilizer at all.  That doctor had given me a prescription for an antidepressant!  What?!

I'm not a doctor, but I do know that you need to know a little bit more about a patient than "Has Occasional Anxiety Attacks" before you put them on antidepressants.  Don't get me wrong, the doctor I see in the Walk-In clinic is a great doctor, but I don't see her on a regular basis. I might go there once a year, if even that, and it's for things like sprained ankles that don't heal on their own, or sinus infections or whatever. Antidepressants are no joke. I've been on them before and they did bad things to me, but I have no idea what made her think that was the right thing to put me on. I am convinced she had me confused with another patient. So I spent the rest of the day trying to keep calm and not scratch my skin off.  My blood pressure eventually went down and in the process of reading about the pills, I found out I'm not the only one that they affected that way. Apparently, you're supposed to keep taking them and just deal with the violent panic attacks until the medicine itself eventually drains you of feeling.  I'm paraphrasing WebMD, of course, but still. Screw that noise.

At any rate, I took my medicine and got over the pneumonia, only to have it replaced by another respiratory infection, and folks, let me tell you, I can't wait to be able to breathe normally again. Sucking on a inhaler is no fun.   So that's the story about how I thought my heart was killing me, when in fact, it was my lungs.  I'd really like it if we had indicator lights on our bodies that tell us exactly which organ groups are giving us trouble.  It'd save me a lot of anxiety.

PS: This took me a long time to write and I can't remember why I went into such a lot of detail.  Sorry about that. 

A DAY OF FAIL

Yesterday was one of those days where I seemed to just be half a beat out of step with everything I tried to do!  Nothing that happened was terrible, or even remotely serious, just frustratingly annoying because I couldn't seem to get my act together at all.

It was one of those days where I had a lot of little projects planned.  You know, just a series of hurdles that I had to jump over to get ready for something else, and I just...I don't know, managed to screw up one tiny thing or another on each project.

A lot of time was spent baking for our church's fall festival.  Things started out, OK, but  I managed to under cook the first thing I baked (thankfully fixed), I had to actually leave the house and buy special boxes for the second thing (which I wasn't anticipating, and putting the darn boxes together took longer than baking and assembling the cakes and I cut up my fingers on the edges of them AND which still managed not to contain them correctly.) Those cakes turned out lumpy and weird, and I tore the heck out of them when I was trimming them.  I ran out of icing, but didn't want to go back out and buy more, so I thinly stretched what I had and it looked weird.  I thought the third and fourth cakes I made were going to be perfect, and the cake parts were fine, but I was making buttercream icing for them that I was going to tint red. Apparently, tinting a whole mixer of icing red is a darn near impossible feat if you still want to be able to eat it.  I never got it red, only pink, even after adding a ton of red coloring, and when I tasted it, I remembered that red food coloring is horribly bitter if you put too much in. More like bittercream icing, am I right? Ha!  I don't like pink, so I thought I'd just add some blue and make lavender icing, but it just turned out a weird puce color.  It was also overmixed and stiff, so I could barely pipe it on the cake.  The last cake I made, I just figured that I'd forgo the icing and bake some beautiful silver sugar sprinkles on top of it.  When I pulled it from the oven, it looked perfect.  I sat it aside and covered it with foil.  I guess I should have let it cool all the way off first, because when I went back to look at the cake, the silver (actually blue I found out) coloring in the sprinkles had melted into the cake and tuned it green in spots, and I swear it looked like moldy bread.  There was no way I could take that to church, so it just stayed home.  Oy.

I also made some chili for a chili cook off and things were fine at first.  I added some harina masa to thicken it up, but it sucked up a lot of the flavor.  So I grabbed what I thought was chili powder and poured it in.  I stirred it in, and realized it smelled weird, but I didn't think anything of it.  After a while I went back in and realized I needed more chili powder, and I grabbed the same container, only to realize it wasn't chili powder, it was cloves.  Yick.  Luckily I hadn't put in too much, but you could smell it.  So, chili fail.

I also managed to have trouble communicating with everyone. With every email and phone call I made, I managed to offend, irritate, and say the absolute wrong thing to everyone.  So, if you were one of the people I called or emailed, I'm sorry. I was just having a weird day.

None of the stuff I did was bad in and of itself, but by the end of the day, the cumulative effect just made me feel so dumb and inept, I figured anyone could be mean to me at that point, and I couldn't feel worse about myself.  I was just glad when the day was over. 

I did manage to get into bed without hurting myself, so in the end, the day wasn't a complete loss! Silver lining!