I Want to Succeed!

I’m not sure how I’m feeling this morning, is that weird? Have you ever just felt like you’re feelings are in a sort of limbo? I’m not sad nor happy but neither am I anxious or afraid. This might just be a blah day of sorts.

With all the tensions of trying to move, my anxiety had truly reared its’ head this past month. With a few trips to the doctor, I’m starting to get it under control. I’ve had to stop thinking of moving for a little bit in order to take care of myself but it’s not completely on the back burner. I want it more and more each day but I have to take a little bit and get to feeling better and know that I’m better.

I have an appointment for my cardiologist in a couple of weeks, I was just there the other day and he scheduled me for a test. It’s not a stress test but where they do a sonogram of sorts on your heart and for the life of me I can’t remember the correct name so I dare not say it for fear of putting the wrong name. He said it’s just precaution and that too will help to give my mind something to argue my panic attacks with. As long as insurance pays for it, I’m all in.

I had to let my mammogram appointment go because they were going to charge me. I have two benign tumors that were discovered about 18 years ago I want to say. I do truly forget what year they were found but I remember what I went through. Since then I’m supposed to have them monitored but with the changes in insurance, I haven’t been able to afford what they charge for it. It’s not a normal mammogram, they call it diagnostic so that makes it cost more. I’ll just have to wait and see if I can afford it at another time or if the insurance decides to pay for it.

With all of this health thing being taken care of in order to help me with my attacks, I’ve decided to try and get some walking in. I can’t walk in our neighborhood but I do have an old treadmill in the back room. I put an old tv up on a stand so I can see it and I’m going to try and get some walking in. I haven’t started it up yet but I’m hoping it still works. So far my two cats are excited over the commotion and being allowed in the back room that I use for storage. It’s weird but that room seems to calm me down, that’s weird, right? It used to be used for bedrooms and a dining room when I was growing up. My father had put up a partition wall to make it into two rooms so one was a bedroom for years and when I was old enough (years after he passed), I too used it as a bedroom. I remember at one point using it as my bedroom and the other half as my living room. So now, it just has a calming effect on me and it’s just weird to me that it does that.

I have some more moving around to do before it’s ready but hopefully by tomorrow after work, it will be ready to use. I have high hopes but am nervous about it too. How does someone do these things all by themselves? Do they do it alone so that if they stop then it’s only them that knows? I don’t want to be that person, I want to succeed. Do you hear me Universe? I want to succeed!

Medication

When you start taking a new medication, do you ever wonder if you’ll know when it’s working or not? It might just be my mind doing it’s overthinking but that’s what’s on my mind today.

After seeing my doctor the other day because my panic attacks were getting worse, he gave me a new medication. We’ve always been clear that I want no medications that can be addictive so it’s been a delicate balance of what I can take. But this medication is a “mood enhancer”, I’m to take half a pill for the first six days and then on to a full pill once a day. Today is my third day taking the half pill and I feel the same as before. With taking just a half pill at first, I’m thinking it’s one that has to build up in your system before you feel anything?

I don’t know what it would be like anymore to feel happy for a day. Have you ever seen the commercial where people walk around frowning but put a smiley face in front of them? That is actually how it can feel sometimes like you’re being fake to the people around you. You feel one day but you let the complete opposite show on your face! It’s completely what I do sometimes.

I remember being younger and driving in my truck with the windows down and music turned up. Singing to the songs and not truly worrying about anything. Yes, I still had things to worry about but I was able to, for that moment, let them go and relax before having to tune back into life. I think I’ve forgotten how to do that, I don’t know how to put things on hold or pause in order to relax and recharge. My mind is always at a constant 100 mph but with all the negative things that are happening. If my mind would put the positive things in there then I think it would balance out but it’s very stubborn.

Maybe this medicine will be a bridge for me to learn how to relax again. Maybe I can start to see the good things happening around me again. I love my family and they are my guiding light in this world. A hug from my granddaughter makes me feel like I can do anything, at least in her eyes.  The birds that come up to the window sill just to taunt my cats. These are the fun and positive things that should be swirling in my head, not the condition of the house, not when I’ll have another attack and not worrying about when the next gunshot will go off and where we’ll be when it happens. I need to learn how to change my brain. Are you out there Universe? Can you help me change?

Attacks

The last few days have been really hard health wise. My panic attacks have been coming in strong and plenty. They’ve been feeling like when I first started to get them and that has been a while. With me, it’s not so much as a feeling of death but of straight doom and not knowing what the doom is.

With these attacks, my brain with all its capabilities, will pick on other parts of my body and make me think that a little twinge is something life threatening and it doesn’t let go. I went to my regular physician the other day and he said I’m healthy, except for being overweight. Even knowing what he said, my brain is still telling me that I have something that is going to kill me.

If anything good is going to come of this, it’s the fact that I’m scheduling doctor appointments that I’ve been putting off for a while. When I started having panic attacks, they gave me a full cardiac workup and I’m supposed to follow up with the doctor every six months since my mother had a heart condition. I haven’t seen him in about a year and a half, and now I have an appointment. Now I’m trying to get my mammogram scheduled too. I have two benign tumors in my breasts that are supposed to be monitored but it’s also been a really long time since I’ve had a checkup. The tumors can hurt so that’s probably what is triggering me. So, I’m taking the car into the shop so to say.

Maybe if I can get multiple specialists to tell me that I’m okay, I can at least put those words into my brain. I hope then, I will be able to get these attacks under control again and keep moving forward.

Damp Towel

Drink an entire pot of full caffeine coffee, place a damp towel that is just thin enough for you to be in the dark but yet see what is going on around you. This is as close as I can get to describing my panic attacks. It is much worse in my head, as when it’s happening, to me, my world is ending. Sometimes it’s a feeling of ending health and other times it’s just a severely strong feeling of doom. There are no triggers as people say “avoid your triggers”.  If I knew what they were then I wouldn’t still be having attacks.

Stress can be a factor, but who doesn’t have stress? Even during times of relaxation, I can find myself feeling an attack coming on or not feel the warning sign and it hits. Sometimes I don’t get a warning sign and it comes on so fast that I have to leave wherever I am if I’m not at home. This could be why I don’t tend to go many places like others do. Yes, I have a lot of responsibilities that keep me home but don’t others and they still have that time to take a long weekend or a three-day cruise. What would that be like? To be able to go somewhere and not worry about what you left behind.

The last long trip I can think of that I went on was back in 2006 when we drove to my mothers’ hometown to lay her to rest. We took about a week and this was before my granddaughter came home. My nephew was 16 at the time and we didn’t have the cats yet so we were able to do this. Honestly, it was something I needed to do and didn’t think much of the house when we left although we have truly wonderful neighbors next door and they said they would watch the house for us. I had the chance to show my nephew and my brother, the places that my mother had shown me when we took a trip there about 10 years earlier. Some places she had only told me about when she talked about growing up so the adventure to find these places was extremely memorable. We rented a huge van with plenty of seats but when driving straight through for 16 hours, there’s going to be some squirming and getting on each other’s nerves. It was fun in the long run and sad also. But I was able to do what I knew needed to be done and that was to bring her home and lay her next to her mother.

My panic attacks didn’t actually start until almost 5 years later. I found myself working in my job at the time and just started to feel weird. I don’t know how to describe it but maybe I can say it was like the feeling you when you step into the cold water and a kind of electric chill passes through your body all the way up to your head. I remember sitting at my desk and a fear came over me. I told my boss I needed to walk around for a minute, thinking it would pass but it didn’t. When I realized it wasn’t going away, I told my boss that I needed to go to the hospital because something was wrong. They never offered to help, they just said okay and let me drive myself to the hospital.

I was completely terrified by the time I reached the hospital. When they took me to the room in the back, I broke down into heart-pounding sobs. They took tests as I couldn’t describe much but knew I felt it in my chest area. So they were thinking heart attack, but after all the tests, they had no signs showing of that. This was when I was told I had a panic attack all while doing my ugly cry in the emergency room. They kept me overnight just to make sure but of course that adds to more stress, especially when the other person in the room has to use the bathroom multiple times during the night. But this was just the beginning.

After being in the hospital I followed up with my doctor, as every good patient should do. He suggested therapy, boy was that something. I had never been to anything like that and on the very first day of me trying it, I cried my entire way home. I cried so much during this time, I think I dropped 5 pounds just from tears! Insurance only covered 8 sessions so it was short but it was okay. They said that I never actually grieved the passing of my mother and honestly I don’t know that I ever have, even now.

So I learn to live with my attacks and how to deal with them, sometimes I feel them coming and other times they surprise me. One day I will probably learn how to grieve but I don’t know how someone goes about doing that. What I can say is that it constricts you and changes you into someone that you weren’t before. It’s like being held hostage in your own body and mind. You see others doing things that you want to do but you fear that you can’t do it or your mind tells you that you’re not healthy enough due to the attacks. It’s an evil game it plays on you, one side of your mind is positive while the other is very negative. Sometimes one is more powerful than the other and it’s a struggle to keep positive in control.

One day at a time, some days are hour by hour and minute by minute with ups and downs. But I don’t have the luxury of being allowed to stay in bed during those times and that’s a good thing. I’m not allowed to give into the fear because I know that the bills will not get paid and my family will not survive. I feel like a walking, talking panic fuse just waiting to go off at any moment.

I’m not sure where I’m going with all of this, I guess just trying to see if I write it down and share it with someone that doesn’t know me in person, if that might help a little. There is still hope no matter how bad the day is I can still dream and I do. So with this, I hope it helps and I can work on making those dreams come true without fear.