An insight into panic and Anxiety

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   I wanted to share this with you as a therapeutic thing for me but also to help others understand.  I have started a diary I guess you could call it for my family and friends so that they can gain an insight into who I am and how I deal with my fight against the above.  here are some excerpts onto what I have written.  Please keep in mind I'm not an author or a good writer so it's very amateurish. Word of warning it's long.

Well this is the first entry into my log and I am more than a little nervous.  Partly because writing this down makes it more real and partly because I know at some stage I am going to read this and see confirmation that I really am a Looney Tune.  

My journey into “mental illness” (I feel like such a fraud using that term) began a long long time ago.  Knowing what I know now ie the symptoms and signs of the above I can now name specific times when I was younger, I worried a lot about illness, people leaving, the dark (Yes the dark).  I hated, hated being on my own.  Then there are the unexplained stomach aches, I remember going on a date I must have been around 18 and we went to a night club all of a sudden I felt really sick, my head felt weird and we ended up leaving.  My sister wanted to stop at McDonalds on the way home and I ended throwing up in their garden and strangely enough a few hours later felt better.  There were several other times I had unexplained violent sore stomachs and other weird symptoms which a few hours later or after I had removed myself from the situation went away, all apart from the tiredness which would last the rest of the day.  I never knew what it was and never made a connection at the time, especially because back then they were very sporadic and never stopped me doing anything.

 Before this next paragraph I should mention that in between this time we had a serious accident whilst picking up some kittens and the car was written off.  We were all ok only bumps and bruises and whip lash but only by sheer luck did we survive.  It was horrifying the next day seeing what state the car was in.  Shortly after that we suffered a miscarriage which was a pretty traumatizing time T and I had broken up at the time and I credit the miscarriage as being the saving grace fro our relationship.  At the time we watched and waited for two weeks for our little cherubs light to go out and to be frank it was pretty devasting.  On top of that T’s beloved Aunty died very suddenly shocking her family it was a very emotional time.

Things changed a lot for me I think when I had our second son J, with the miscarriage fresh in our minds it was not a relaxing pregnancy, especially when after 12 weeks I started to bleed.  Turns out I had a low lying placenta, which corrected itself in time.  The labour was incredibly fast only two hours and the birth was even faster it took 2 minutes for him to arrive once I was allowed to push.  I still feel a certain sense of shock about his birth.  It was after we arrived home the stomach cramps and nausea started along with the vomiting and strange heady feelings.  I went to the doctors and a locum said I had Irritable bowel syndrome and gave me laxitives and nausea tablets.  There were several night I was physically sick and with a 4 year old and a newborn in summer it was not a plesant time.  I started losing weight mainly because I always felt to sick to eat and dropped a dress size.  It was then that it was suggested I stopped feeding Jayden (a decision I still regret).  Things settled down for a while until I started worring even more excessively.  So back to the doctors I went, this time to my own.  Where she thought I had an anxiety disorder.  She put me on half an aropax tablet (a very small dose and nausea tablets) and referred me to the Anxiety Disorders Clinic.  After about 4 months I had my assesamant and was diagnosed with G.A.D and OCD (A condtion I didn’t feel I had and would be proved right later on) The worst part of the assessment was when I was asked if I ever felt like hurting my children or fantisied about it.  My goodness I can tell you I have never felt like hurting them but boy did I feel like hurting her!!  I started going and did not feel at all comfortable with my physociolgist, and started missing appointments.  After a while I was discharged due to my lack of interest and that suited me fine.  I know now that at the time I just wasn’t ready to deal with what was going on, and most definitely wasn’t ready to admit I had a problem. 

Things were really good for a while thanks to the medication, then one day I had the bright idea to try for number three and came off the meds, not my smartest move.  So in a flash I was pregnant this time with Miss A.  The pregnancy went well until around the 34 week mark when Miss A had not turned.  We were monitored and yes she was breech.  So off to the specialist who said I would have to have a C-section and a date was set.  I wasn’t scared not at all I was freakin terrified.  The night before I was as sick as a dog and spent all night in bed hugging a bucket, which is not how I intended to spend the night.  I wanted to be with my children.  I cried in surgery and then felt very sick and then it was over. Our little girl was here and I survived. 

 It only took one week for the anxiety and nausea to return and then things went downhill from there.  The specifics are a little foggy and I still don’t know how I let it get so bad without realizing what was happening.  I hated going out and avoided if I could,  I hated the shops and school and felt very uncomfortable whenever I left the house.  If I had to go I would most of the time but it was extremely hard and now that I think about it horrifying.  If I had to wait in a queue I would panic everywhere I went I would look for a way out or a bin for when I felt sick.  I have an overwhelming fear of being sick in public and when you have constant nausea that can be quite stressful.  So I went on the waiting list for the Anxiety clinic again The turning point for me was the night I though I was going to die.  There were some pretty bad things going on with my brother and it had been a very stressful day.  That night I felt sick and my head went fuzzy as it has done in the past but this time my heart wasn’t just pounding it was thumping, my hands were going numb and I had an even odder sensation in my head, I felt so hot one minutes and was then freezing the next and the choking sensation I have had mildly in the past was so severe I was terrified.  I honestly thought I was dying, I was telling myself off for not writing letters to the kids and T.  After about an hour I threw up and slowly but surely things started to settle down.  The next day it was onto the computer and I googled GAD then it was off to the docs.  We tried Aropax again but this time I reacted to it. Then there was citopram which turned into a disaster it increased my anxiety tenfold, I only wish I had known it was a simple as stopping it as at the time we went to Levin and I felt horrible the whole time, I feel slightly ripped off.  After that I was a bit wary of medication and had a rest. Meanwhile I had my assessment at the clinic with a very pleasant man and women.  I was then diagnosed with GAD and Panic disorder with agoraphobia and mild depression.  Which as it turns out does not always mean fear of open spaces and mild depression. They gave me some sheets to read about my condition and that was the start one of the bbest things to happen to me.  Over the Christmas period there was a break and a doctor tried me on fluroatine which is the biggest mistakes I have made.  Three days after I took it I could barely move.  I felt sick and tired I felt like I had been hit by a truck.  Unlike the others you have to wait for this to leave your system which as I found out took three weeks.  Even then I didn’t feel right.  I lost 5 kilos during that time and dropped another dress size.  In the space of a few years I went from a size 10 to a six which I am now.  I went from 55kg to 45kg which I am also still now.  A problem I am working on.  As it stands I am about to go back onto Aropax as I feel I am not coping at the moment under my own steam.  

I felt ready, that’s what the difference was this time, I felt ready to admit I couldn’t cope, I felt ready to admit that I needed help and it makes a huge difference.  I was seeing C and then had group therapy with S which although terrifying believe me it took every ounce of strength to go and even then I would sit in the car trying to think of reasons why I couldn’t go was great.  I’m glad I fought so ahrd, group was the fantastic.  To sit with other people who have the same and in some cases worse problems that you do was enlightening. For the first time in years to feel normal was euphoric.  I understood these people and better still they understood me, they had battled with the same demons, I was normal. 

Group finished and I feel I got a lot of very useful tools from it.  The biggest thing I think was a little confidence.  I have had some victories and I have had some failures.  Some days as you will see are great and others make me want to crawl into bed and never get up.  But the most important thing in all this is I have hope.  Hope is such a strong, strong word.  I now have hope that I will get better, that I can survive the bad days and that life goes on.  That even if I take two steps forward and one step back I have still taken that one step further than I had the day before.  I owe this to myself to my children to T.  I am not an easy person to live with I can tell you that.  Constantly being anxious and random panic attacks can make you very tired and with tiredness comes crankiness, I am a very cranky person.  I’m up and down like a yo- yo and like all good men T has no idea how to read how I am feeling an quite frequently unfairly gets into trouble for that.  To my long suffering Husband honey I’m sorry. 

An insight into my problems what do I fear, to put it simply everything, I fear anything I can’t control, car accidents, murder, home invasions, something happening to my children or to T or family for that matter, something happening to me so I can’t be here for my children.  I fear death, blood clots aneurysms, cancer, heights, the dark driving (what if I’m driving and kill my children of someone else).  I can’t change something at the last minute because in my mind that’s when bad things happen, like accidents etc.  I hate forgetting something and having to go back to the house because that’s unexpected and someone might be in there.  If I have to change my driving route that’s when we’ll have an accident. And that my firend is just the tip of the iceberg.  I can’t have windows open when I’m on my own.  I check the house every time I get home (I’m working on this at the moment) the funny thing about that is we have an alarm that I always set so go figure.  Panic, I panic about a lot a little change and unexpected visitor, as I have said queues, shops, being out in public, movie theaters.  I still scan places for escape routes and bins etc, it’s a hard habit to break.  And sometimes just for some variation I panic for no obvious reason at all.  Well there’s a little background for you if you are asleep glad I could help especially if you suffer from insomnia, if you are still reading congratulations. 