The bad thing about getting drunk…

I haven’t talked about anxiety in awhile, and when I first thought about writing this post, I nixed it as a dumb idea.  Then I decided that maybe I should put on my big girl panties and get over it.  You see, I used to say that if writing about my experiences helped someone cope with their own issues, or at least let them know they were not alone, then it was worth the discomfort I felt about publishing it.  I never actually believed anyone was reading those posts though, but as it turns out, they were. If it means something to one other person out there, then it’s worth it.  So…

Since I haven’t mentioned my anxiety in awhile, you may think it went away.  I wish!  I was on prescription medication for it for about three years, but one of the side effects was it made me fat and lethargic, so I decided it was time to try to exist without it.  That was about two years ago, and since then I’ve gotten by on herbal supplements, meditation, and pure German stubbornness.  It’s not the best scenario for someone who has to deal with anxiety, but it is what it is.  At least I don’t fall asleep while eating dinner anymore, and that’s a plus in my book.

Since I stopped taking anti-anxiety medication, it has been slowly increasing with each of life’s traumatic event’s that pass my way.  John’s dad’s passing, quickly followed by Tiana’s spinal fusion, got it rolling on the tracks like a freight train, and it’s just been gaining momentum since then.

Recently, after a ton of debate and discussion, John and I made the decision to open a nail salon, and with that decision my sanity went screaming out the door.  My anxiety is now nearly completely in control of my brain function, and it’s a speeding train charging downhill.  I just hope it runs into an incline to slow it down soon; hopefully before it hits a sharp curve and completely derails my life.

So, the other day I decided to imbibe in an adult beverage.  Alcohol is a great relaxant, and if you’re familiar with the pain caused by muscle tension that comes with anxiety, you probably also know that a couple of drinks relieves it almost immediately.  It’s probably why so many people with anxiety and depression end up with alcohol addictions.  Luckily that’s not a problem for me; I hate losing control way more than I hate feeling anxious all of the time.  So getting drunk on a regular basis is never going to be the cure for my crazy.

Anyway, as I felt the tension run out of my neck, I relaxed into the sofa, and thought how nice it was to have a reminder that the pain wasn’t real. I don’t have some weird neck cancer that’s preventing me from turning my head to the right.  It’s just muscle pain that would go away if I could ever find a way to relax enough to let it.

Then, after a couple of drinks I had effectively bound and gagged my anxiety.  It was now crouched in the corner, slobbering around the big red ball gag in its mouth, whimpering like the little bitch it was.  The problem with that is my anxiety takes up a lot of space in my consciousness, and when you remove it, it leaves a vacuum.  That space must be filled with something…

“Oh, hello self-loathing, haven’t seen you around these parts in awhile.  Can’t say I missed you very much, but hey, as long as you’re here you might as well settle in and destroy my self worth for a few hours.  It’s ok, I have the time.”

Apparently I only have two modes currently, anxious or depressed.  Yay me!

So, as it turns out, the great thing about getting drunk is that it eases the physical pain caused by anxiety.  The bad thing about getting drunk is that it ushers in the self loathing often caused by anxiety.  It’s a lose-lose kind of thing…

Now, these posts always come out sounding so depressing, and that’s really not my intent.  Don’t feel sorry for me, I’ll be ok. I still get up every day, get dressed, and do what I have to do. I know this won’t last forever, at least not at this level. I constantly remind myself that I am not the sum of my crazy, and I won’t let anxiety define me. So I keep moving, keep active, and keep reminding myself that this too shall pass.  I still feel joy, I laugh with the kids and John daily, and I’m really good at making fun of my own dysfunction. 

The point is that if you struggle with anxiety, or depression, alcohol is not a cure; it only makes it worse.  Neither will drugs, illicit or prescription, ease your pain.  Those are stop gap measures, to help you cope for a single moment in time, not a cure, and if you rely on them without addressing the root of your anxiety, they will only increase the problem.

So what’s a serotonin imbalanced person to do?  Look beyond the easy fix.  Get off your ass and get moving.  Exercise helps tremendously, it spurs your brain to release chemicals that counteract the serotonin, and within days of starting even a light exercise regime, you will feel miles better.  Don’t give into the urge to stay in bed, no matter how much it feels like you can’t face the day.  Inactivity only compounds anxiety and depression, get up, get dressed, I promise you’ll feel better.

Additionally, look into Mindfulness Meditation Therapy.  Standard therapy practices don’t work terribly well for people with general anxiety disorders because there is no way to confront a non-specific fear, especially if that fear changes from day to day.  So traditional cognitive therapy is a complete and total bust for people like myself.  Mindfulness Meditation Therapy can help you address your anxiety instead of trying to push it into the back of your mind.  Once you confront it, and stop trying to hide it, it looses its potency and becomes much easier to manage.

Life is a freight train, barreling down the tracks, and we’re just strapped in for the ride.  Some days it feels that there are more downhill, out of control stretches than ups, but be aware that it’s impossible to fall forever, and no, that doesn’t mean you’re going to crash at the bottom.  The track will turn, and you will level out.  Today may be a bad day for you, tomorrow may be worse, but the day after that you may see a glimmer of hope. 

It gets better; I promise.

Hugs,

Six months...

**Disclaimer - This post is more than likely going to be filled with not so happy stuff dredged up from the depths of my brain. If reading about other peoples psychosis isn't your thing, then you don't have to go any further. It's ok, I don't mind, and no one will think any less of you. :)


Tiana's done with her first adjustment. It went really well, and it's nice to see her nearly straight again. There was very little pain this time around, within a few days she was mostly back to normal. She's still a little stiff, but hasn't needed so much as an Advil since the day of the surgery.

Overall a piece of cake... No sweat... Right? Yea right...

This whole thing has caused me to become very introspective, examining myself, what kind of person I am, what kind of parent I am, and more importantly, what the hell is wrong with me.

Ok, I've been sitting here staring at my screen wondering where to go from here without sounding like a whiny twit. That's really not how I want to come across. My idea isn't to try and gain sympathy, or even understanding, it's merely journaling therapy for me, getting it out of my head so that maybe I can walk down a path of normalcy for a little while. I could do a private journal I guess, but what fun would that be, and maybe there's someone out there like me (fat chance I know) who might get a little comfort in knowing that they're not the only nut job on the planet.

So onward bravely I wander, damn the torpedoes, and if I whine then so be it.

In the weeks leading up to Tiana's surgery I often wondered if I'd deal with this differently if I didn't have this lovely serotonin imbalance in my brain. The lengthening is supposed to be a pretty minor surgery, and really it is, so why doesn't that comfort me? Why do I look at my child like this may be the last time I see her whole? Why do I count the days with dread? Why do I see these vivid pictures flash through my head, pictures of my baby in a wheel chair, or the nightmare images of her in a coffin.

What the hell is wrong with me?

There's some comfort in knowing that while I may be a little father into the deep end than others, I'm not all that alone out there.

You can see it in the eyes of the other parents at Shriners, that terrible fear that no matter how minor the surgery, your child could easily become a statistic. Sure, the odds are in your favor that everything will turn out alright, but the odds were in my favor that I'd have a normal healthy baby without any muscular-skeletal defects too. The parents sitting in the waiting room, or out in the smoker's corner, have learned not to play the odds because sometimes you lose. We don't have the option of bowing out of this messed up game when we've had enough, or wagering just a little bit to play it safe. Once we're in, we have to stay until it's done, and with each hand we have to bet it all... When we lose, we lose everything.

That's what's doing me in right now, and for the last couple of weeks... I didn't want to play this game, I was forced into it. Now that I'm here, I can't stop it, can't back off, I have to see it to the end, no matter how it plays out.

I've had enough... I want to quit, I can't do this anymore. I want whatever twist of fate, nature, or God that made my kid this way to fix her with and be done with it. I don't mind that she's not the perfect healthy baby that I dreamed of; I can live with her being broken, but I can't live without her. I don't care anymore if it's character building, I don't care if we'll come out on the other side of this stronger, better people. I want to be able to take my kids health for granted, I want the fear to go away. I want to lay down in bed at night and not count the days to the next time my child will have to go under the knife. I just want it to stop... Is that too much to ask?

You may be sitting there thinking that in the grand scheme of things I have it easy. Life could have been a lot worse for me and my kid. She could have been born with a thousand other problems that would make things a lot harder, a lot scarier. Trust me, you don't need to tell me this. I've met the kids that are worse off, seen their parents chain smoking while they're in surgery, talked to them in an effort to figure out how they get through it all. I hold them in awe for their strength, but this isn't a road they chose either. Most, just like me, are hiding in a locked bathroom every once in awhile, crying while the shower's running, and railing against this long hard path they have to walk and the fates that put them there. We keep ourselves together because it's what our kids need us to do, but that doesn't mean we like it. They don't begrudge me my feelings, they understand it, and as we sit together watching the clock, we all know that fear cannot be contained by how minor a doctor ranks a procedure. When you've already lost to good odds, you know that something as simple as a tonsillectomy can go terribly, horribly wrong.

So I live a diet of avoidance and repression... Tamp it down, don't let it control you, don't let your twisted imagination gain the upper hand. As life moves inevitably forward, and the surgeries get closer I push everything into the back of my mind, emotion, deadlines, anything that may cause me the tiniest amount of stress. Because one little crack will cause the dam to break, and then I'm in the bathroom with the shower running again.

Some people in my life are finding they're having a hard time dealing with the month or so that I'm completely unavailable to them in any way. They may talk to me, but I'm emotionally distant, unresponsive, and pretty much in a comatose state. My body may be moving, but the mind is in another place. To these people that I love dearly, and who I know love me back, I can only say I'm sorry. If I could be any different, if I could walk away from this, if I could be a normal person dealing with life in a normal way I would do it in a heart beat.

I can say this now, share these feelings, because Tiana's a week out of surgery and I have six months until the fear and anxiety grip my life. Three weeks or so before her next surgery I'll be repressing again and you'll be lucky to get anything more than "I'm fine" out of me. No amount of Lexapro is probably gonna change that. Sorry...

Anyway... I wanted to say more today, but it's almost time for me to run. Maybe tomorrow I'll share the rest. There is more to this story, this unsolicited glimpse into my psyche, but this is probably enough for anyone to digest in one day.

Hugs,
Anne

MRI

John and Tiana are down in Chicago right now. Tiana has been in an MRI tube for the last 45 minutes or so. They sedated her but not with an IV this time (can you say thank God for small favors?), instead she got a cocktail and some gas to knock her out. It should take about 2 hours to do the full spinal MRI... John said he'll call once she's out and awake.

I'd kill for a cigarette right about now...

They're looking for lesions on her spine. I guess that occasionally, rarely, scoliosis is caused by spinal lesions. If she has lesions she'll still need surgery, but a different kind of surgery instead of the rod insertion.

Who's bright idea was it to quit smoking a month and a half before her surgery anyway...

The only way to see for sure if she has lesions or not is with an MRI, and getting the MRI has been a long drawn out process... The first scheduled MRI the administration of the hospital gave us incorrect NPO instructions, which resulted in Tiana becoming dehydrated. Because she was dehydrated they couldn't sedate her, and we had to reschedule. That one was a blessing in disguise though, we got so upset with the hospital and her orthopedic doctor that we asked her primary physician to refer her to Shriners. That has turned out to be a very good thing.

Just one...

The second MRI was scheduled at a different hospital, we had the correct NPO instructions, and the day of the appointment Tiana had a chest and head cold along with a 102 degree fever. Mission aborted we rescheduled again.

Not even a whole one...

On the date of the next MRI appointment we received 15 inches of snow. Not a good day for a drive to Chicago. Once again we made another appointment.

This time it's gone off with only a small hitch or two. Hopefully it will be over soon and we can add another notch to our belts. One more milestone that we made it though, one more step to all of this being over and done with.

March can't some soon enough for me...

Anxious Thoughts...

I really shouldn't be posting to my blog. I have so many other things that I should be doing instead. I'm way behind, and truthfully I feel pretty guilty that I'm sitting here typing instead of doing real work. I have some junk in my head that I need to get rid of though, and this is as good a place as any to dump it.

I had a small anxiety attack last night, but considering the haze of medication it had to work its way through, it must have actually been a pretty major one. I've only had a couple since I started the meds, they feel different than they used to now, but they're no more pleasant then they were before. However, before the medication I never quite knew what I was really panicking about, I was nervous all of the time, so it all kind of blended together. Now I have to be pretty upset to have an actual anxiety attack, so I usually know what's causing it.

So what's on my mind? What has me feeling like the world is out to get me? I keep looking at the calendar. In two days it will be December 15th. On January 15th my baby girl will check into the hospital, and in 34 days they'll cut her open from the base of her neck to the small of her back in an attempt to realign her screwed up spine.

I'm so very frightened, I can't even begin to tell you...

I once said that I would tell Tiana's story from the beginning. I tried; I started writing it, but found that it was nearly impossible to do. There's so much pain, sadness, joy and love packed into the first few years of her life, that it's too much for an amateur like me to be able to express with the written word.

Suffice it to say that I was once told (by several people) that Tiana was my punishment for a very public sin (I won't call it a mistake) I committed. They said that God made her imperfect to punish me for the wrongs that I had done.

I thank God every day for his beautiful punishment.

Tiana is a ray of sunshine on a cloudy day. She's hope for the future in a world gone terribly wrong. She happiness, compassion, and love all bundled up into one little package. I don't know how I've managed to raise a child the likes of her. Honestly, I don't really think it's any super parenting skills on my part. I think she was born like that, a beautiful spirit that for some reason God trusted me to take care of.

I'm getting ahead of myself though... What makes her so special? It's kind of hard to describe, you'd have to meet her to really understand. I have four children, I love them all equally, and they are all beautiful and special in their own way. Tiana is no different than her brother or sisters, yet she is also very different...

Tiana has never met anyone in her life who didn't become an instant friend. She has a beautiful smile that engulfs her whole face, and a sparkling giggle that's always ready to bubble up to her lips. She's not happy all of the time, but she's never down for very long. She's very empathetic, and is filled with compassion for others. Even as a small child she always thought of others before herself. When most kids are going through the awful selfish period of the terrible twos, Tiana was giving away her toys to strangers just to make them smile. I think part of her compassion stems from the problems she's faced in her own life, but I also think that part of it is just who she is.

Having Tiana in my life has made me grow up, become a responsible person, and open my eyes to the world around me. The joy she's brought to our family has been immeasurable, especially because the joy came out of a particularly difficult time in our lives. She is a precious gift, and her physical problems have only made her more special.

She's not my punishment from God, but perhaps imagining my life without her is...

Because that's what this all comes down to... Fear... Fear that the unmentionable will happen; fear that a cruel twist of fate will take away the precious gift I never deserved to have in the first place.

I don't deserve her, I know that... I've done terrible things in my life, I've hurt countless people, I'm selfish, and just an overall crappy person. Yet somehow I managed to catch a hold of a rainbow. My terrible crappy life is filled with an indescribable beauty, and I live in fear that the powers that be are going to realize I have it and take it away because it's not meant to be mine. Then what will my life be like when all of the color is gone?

That's my punishment. That's my anxiety.

Where to start...

Like I said... So much stuff has been going on in my life that I've barely been able to keep up with it. I haven't really kept up with it to be completely honest. I'm behind... Way behind... So what am I doing here blogging instead of doing productive work? Why, procrastinating of course.

So I'll start with Tiana, and I'll give you the brief version since you must be living under a rock if you haven't already heard me whine about it.

Tiana went to Shriners, they found that the curve in her back had progressed an additional 7 degrees since her x-ray a month and a half before. Not good! The only answer left to halt the progression of her scoliosis, and correct her spine, is surgery.

In January she'll have two rods inserted into her back, one on each side of her spine. The rods are called "grow rods." Tiana is still really small in the upper half of her body, and so these rods will allow her to keep growing for a few more years. Every six months or so she'll have to go in for minor surgery to have the rods adjusted to compensate for her growth. Then, in two to three years they will fuse her spine and the correction will be permanent.

How am I dealing with all of this? Much better now that I'm on anti-anxiety medication, thanks. LOL

It was pretty bad at first... The risks of surgery are paralysis and life threatening infections, among other things. It's terrifying to have to expose your child to that. The flip side is worse though, if her back isn't corrected she'll have early onset heart disease, and breathing problems all of her life, which will be shortened considerably because of the medical conditions brought on by her scoliosis. So we really don't have much of a choice at all.

Contemplate it for awhile for your own child though, and I assure you that you'll go a little bit insane. I felt like I was sending my baby out to go play in traffic. It didn't matter that they assured me that "all things considered," the surgical risks were very low. This is major surgery people... On her spine! You know, where all of those important nerves are!

Fortunately, I began taking the anti-anxiety medication before Tiana went to Shriners, so after a week or so of mental torture, the meds kicked in and I'm feeling a little more optimistic now.


So why am I taking anti-anxiety meds I hear you asking? Because I'm dying.

No, not really...

Its hard to explain to someone who's never dealt with anxiety, but I'll try...

Either I'm going to die, or someone whom I love very much is going to die. I know this with all of my heart and soul. It may not be today, it may not be tomorrow, but it will be soon, and when it happens, I'm going to go crazy because I won't be able to deal with it. How do I know that I'm going to be struck with some fatal form of cancer, or that one of my lovely children is going to be hit by a car, or fall down the stairs at school? Because I'm me. My luck has been really good lately, so I know that there's something just waiting and lurking around the corner. When I least expect it, it's going to jump out and slam me. So if I think about it all of the time, if I worry and obsess, it can never catch me unaware.

So I think about it all of the time, I prepare myself for every bad thing that could happen, imagining the worst things that could possibly happen so that I can prepare myself. Having a very fertile imagination that's a torment in and of itself, let me tell you. Thinking about it all of the time is stressing me out though, my body is very tense and soon starts to rebel at all of the stress... My throat feels like it's closing in on itself, I have chest pain, all of my joints hurt, and I'm tired all of the time but I can't sleep because I'm too busy obsessing to rest.

Do these aches and pains serve as a wake up call for your poor insane friend? NO! Instead I'm sure that the chest pain is lung cancer, my tight throat is some form of throat cancer, and my anxiety intensifies.

Do you have a picture in your head yet?

"Why don't you go to a doctor and have your fears put to rest?" I'm sure I hear you asking... Because if I go to a doctor he's going to tell me how very sick I am, and then I'd more than likely have a breakdown (I know you're seeing the irony LOL).

I knew I was having problems with anxiety, but knowing wasn't making my problems go away unfortunately. Fortunately I do have a wonderful doctor. When I finally went in (for an allergy; you didn't really think I'd make an appointment for my anxiety did you? lol) and mentioned I was having some problems dealing with life, he was very kind, and didn't call me a nut , nor did he send me to see a shrink (which I wouldn't have done anyway). He just let me know that I was not all that abnormal, and that in some people a traumatic (have I mentioned that John almost died a year ago this week?) event can trigger a serotonin imbalance. In some people it manifests as depression, in others, anxiety. So I just need to reset the serotonin processors in my brain, and then I'll be back to my normal, lovable, unmedicated self (no comments John) in about a year.

Now those of you who have dealt with anxiety are all nodding your heads. Your anxiety may not have manifested in the same way mine did, but you know those feelings of terror and helplessness as you watch your world spin out of control. Those of you who are lucky enough not to have ever dealt with this in your life, just think I'm crazy. LOL That's ok, I'm dealing with this now, and I don't mind if people think I'm crazy. The important thing is that if you're dealing with this, or something similar. Get help! I can't stress that enough. I don't know why I waited so long. There's no shame in asking for help so that you can learn to control it on your own. You'll feel so much better when all is said and done.

So those are the big things that have been going on in my life the last couple of months. Nothing too entertaining or amusing (though as I look back I'm beginning to see the humor in the anxiety), but just real life junk.

You know how it is...
*Hugs*