I wanted to start a blog on things I have been dealing with, and who knows it may end up helping other people. This blog is about dealing with anxiety.
I think I have had anxiety for most of my life. I just never knew what it was. During the scoliosis tests in middle school I was always certain that I had it. I just “knew” something was wrong with me. I would be up all night the night before these exams worrying about it. I never really expected to make it to the age I have. Dr’s appointments were another anxiety inducing incident. I always knew they were going to find something wrong. Of course they never did. But I went on and just hoped that I would make it to the next big day, whether it was my next birthday or Christmas, I counted that as a win.
As I grew older those feelings faded and I seemed to be going on as normal. Until about eight years ago. I was driving home and felt a pain in my chest. I thought I was dying. I pulled off of the road and parked in a parking lot for a few minutes. It seemed to calm down. I was still very anxious. Everything seemed to be ok for the next couple of days until we went to my wife’s grandfather’s house for a Christmas party. The chest pain hit again. The next day it happened again and I was admitted to the hospital. They ran all of the heart tests, stress tests, echo the whole nine yards. They said that it was a reaction to cold medicine that I was taking. I did not know at the time that I had an abnormal EKG, and that was what prompted all of the tests. So I was released from the hospital after spending the night in there.
It seemed to go ok for about a week and I ended up going to my primary care physician with a resting heart rate of 150 BPM. Anxiety meter was pinned to the max then. After all of this it turned out that I was having gall bladder attacks on top of anxiety attacks. So I ended up getting my gall bladder removed. The anxiety did not stop. I would make daily stops to the ambulatory place by the house thinking something was wrong. I did not leave the house for three months. Thank God I had a job that kept me on even when I was going through this. It did not stop until my sister in law suggested I meet with a psychiatrist. It never occurred to me that it would be something with my mind. But I went and saw him and he prescribed me some meds. I will be forever grateful that I finally got the right diagnosis. I still deal with this daily but I am back at work and have moved to Kentucky
I will write more about the effects this has had on my personal and professional life. But the main thing if anyone reads this, you are not alone, you are not crazy, and there is help for you. You can contact me through the site or comment if you want.
