Depression and Anxiety
Another attack.
I suffer from depression along with anxiety/panic attacks. When I was 21, I all of a sudden felt like I couldnt breathe, and everything around me seemed to blur and sound funny. I was at work, and was forced to leave work and drive to my parents house, since I knew that, at the time being nobody was home. Unfortunally my mom was not home from work yet, so I lay down on the living room floor and waited, still feeling really really bad. When she came home, she was ofcourse very afraid of what was wrong with me, and called my doctor immediately. Because of Danish rules, unless you call for an ambulance, you cant really goto the emergency room before being sent there by your doctor. So we took a taxi to my doctor, who was nice enough to see me right away, and he saw me and listened to my heart right away, and sent us to the hospital, which at the time was still open to heart cases, which my condition was thought to be. I was then admitted to the reception room, where they put me on an EKG machine, along with taking a blood test, my heart rate was very high, but within an hour it stabilized alot. When they were sure I was not going to die on them right there and then, I was taken to a more permanent room, where I had to stay in my bed, since they dont want heart patients running around so shortly after an attack. At about dinner time, they came to take another blood test, I was also told I could goto the smoking room if I wanted to which was a nice relief at the time. They were all very nice to me, and they all knew me because of my mom working at the hospital for a very long time. She has been making sure the hospital has always been clean as an tablespoon for as long as I can remember, and she is very well respected, and with good cause, she’s the best and most caring person you will ever meet. Alas, the next time, the doctor was making his rounds and checked me out, along with the answers to my blood tests. They revealed that I had indeed not suffered a heart attack of any kind, but his best bet was that I might have a strained chest muscle which could be why I still felt like someone was sitting on my chest. He sent me home, where I still felt like crap.
The next couple of days I stayed at home, slowly feeling a little better. When I started work again, it didnt take long before I figured out something was still very very wrong. I kept having chest pains, I kept getting the blurs and hearing everything in a sort of bubble. I spoke to my doctor about it, and for the first time he said it could be something mental. I was very open to that idea, and told him as long as we make progress im not ashamed that it might be a mental condition. He said there were pills that could help me avoid anxiety attacks, and to generally avoid being stressed, which is one of the no-go’s when you suffer anxiety attacks. A couple of days later, I took my first anti-anxiety-attack pill.. Something like prozac, I think it was called Zoloft, its basically the same thing. I was sick as a dog the first night I took it, I thought I was going to pass away right there and then. I was basically laying naked in my bed, crumpled up in a featuss position, just hoping I would get better soon. I was feeling better the next day, but not by much. It helped by every day though, but then the next problem started, a sleeping disorder. After 3 days of not sleeping at all, I was told by my doctor, that sleep deprivation was one of the side effects of the medicine. I started on sleeping pills, which basically makes me fall asleep, and have ever since.
Over the years, Ive been on some sort of pills all along, in different quantities, and Im now at a state where the original anxiety attacks are not what I combat. Fear, Depression and Obsessiveness is my enemy. My psychiatrist just started me on some experimental drugs, but even though they worked for a month, I am now stranded with another one of my “typical” paranoid scenarios: Afraid that I have cancer. I sounds like something every other person in the world is afraid of having, but this is not the first time I have had this feeling. I have had it checked by doctors telling me it was alright. Ive had one mole cut of and sent into analysis. It was nothing, it was not even a mole, but simply a vort. Now Im afraid I have mole-cancer again. My mom which are VERY supportive of my condition has assured me it is not. I am still afraid though, and like usually, its all I can think about. I ofcourse beg God in my nightly prayers that its not. But I will still wake up tomorrow thinking it is, and be completely depressed and obssessed about it.
How do you beat an enemy like this?