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Monday, March 17, 2008 

We always suspected she was a bit off, and now this.

Normally I take crazy pills. I only take a small dose of it, but it makes me feel....better. My moods are more consistent and I have less anxiety. I sleep better, think better, and manage to do my venting about stupid people I encounter from day to day only here on the blog instead of letting it fly then and there. (That's REALLY bad for your relationships and your career, by the way.)

I am told that my need for this medication is due to the hormonal fluctuations caused by PCOS, not by some inherent craziness in my head. I tend to think that's true not only because I don't want to think I'm mentally unbalanced, but because once upon a time when I weighed 135 pounds my PCOS was very well controlled, and I had almost zero anxiety or anger then. But then I had to go back to my mashed potato eating ways, didn't I? There is good news, though. I have read that PCOS symptoms tend to decrease dramatically once you have had a baby. Sweeeeeeet!

Well, I can't take the medication right now for obvious reasons. The doctor told me that I COULD take it if I felt the benefits outweighed the risks. The risk? A 3 in 10,000 chance of my baby being born with a heart defect. No thank you. Three in 10,000 sounds miniscule---- unless you turn out to be one of the three. If it was only my health at risk, I'd take the pills. But I don't think I have the right to gamble with my kid's health just so I can sleep better at night and be more pleasant to stupid fuckers people during the day, no matter how good the odds are that it'll be fine. I think part of a parent's job is to suffer so your kid doesn't have to. This is probably the first of a million times I will find it necessary to endure some discomfort for this still unknown person's sake.

anxiety

Anyway, last night I couldn't fall asleep. My arms and legs felt like they needed to GO. If you've ever had an anxiety/panic attack, you know the feeling I'm talking about. It's impossible to explain without sounding like a total cuckoo for cocoa puffs nutwad. The thing I want to emphasize is that it's a physical experience and not just a mental thing. Some know-nothings will tell you that you can take control of it mentally, that you can overcome it with your mind. While it does help to take deep breaths and think good thoughts and tell yourself it will pass, that doesn't fix it. Unless you've got some kind of sweet sweet Xanax or Valium on hand, you really can't do anything but endure it. It SUCKS!

I have only had this experience a handful of times in my lifetime. During the last 5 years there have been maybe 10 or 15 occurrences. When it does happen to me, it is always during a stressful time. I had an especially intense experience when I was packing up to move down to Yazoo Shitty for my first teaching job, for example. I was worried and stressed and had been through more than my fair share of recent changes in a short period. That was the one and only full blown "panic attack" I've ever had.

I have heard people talk about having "panic attacks" and it sounded like such bullshit to me that I probably openly laughed at a few of them. In fact, I'll still venture to guess that 90% of those people are attention seeking losers who need to buck up and get the hell over the fact that their kitten is sick or their mean mother-in-law is coming to spend the week. I think some people use the label "panic attack" to describe something they choose to do when they are desperate to avoid dealing with a situation.

But I now know that this is a real experience that does happen. And it's a physical thing, not just a mental one. (Any bets on how many consecutive sentences I can start with conjunctions?)

During the last two days I have had the go-go please make it stop feeling very frequently. Night before last I laid here in bed wide awake for some time dealing with it. The same thing happened again last night. Last night I actually tried to overcome it with my mind. Waste of time. When it finally went away I was able to fall asleep--- after 1:00 a.m. Now I am dealing with it again as I type this. That's a lot of it in a short time considering that it's only happened a dozen or so times in the last five years.

The scary thing about the sudden resurgence of crazy symptoms is the fact that I have been on Spring Break for over a week and my stress level has been at a low. What's it going to be like when I go back to work? I'm supposed to go back today, but I'm going to the doctor instead because everything in my head is inflamed and I'm coughing up gunk. (God's way of forcing me to overcome my aversion to snot and boogers before I have to deal with someone else's?)

School's out May 23. It's gonna be a long two months. Who am I kidding? There's no end to this ride I'm on.

You suck.

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