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gogmagogWell, here I am, facing the first week of classes (which starts tomorrow). Again, I haven't posted for a few days, but I guess I do have a reason.
So I basically didn't go to sleep Tuesday night (as witness my last LJ post, not long after midnight), since I had reading and annotation-writing and such to do to catch up before the semester started, and popped a No-Doz about midnight to help me do it. Then a little before noon the next day, I popped another one.
Wednesday afternoon I got home to my apartment, put some cookies in the oven, and suddenly started having chest pains, chest tightness and difficulty breathing. Now, my dad died at 56 of a heart attack, and my mom had two while still in her 30s, so of course my immediate thought was "OMGWTFBBQ HOLY SHIT AM I HAVING A HEART ATTACK"
While the chest pains stopped after a couple of minutes, the tightness and breathing problems continued, so within a few minutes I'd called 911 and was waiting for an ambulance (I took my cookies out of the oven and turned it off first, which looking back I'm actually quite proud I had the presence of mind to do). I had my first ever ambulance ride, ended up at the emergency room, and discovered that apparently those 2 No-Doz (equivalent to about 4 cups of coffee over, like, twelve hours) had apparently resulted in a bad medication reaction and I was not having a heart attack, but an anxiety attack. Just in case, they did chest X-rays and blood work and EKGs and all that junk, but after that they just put me on Ativan and left me in a bed to watch TV (Scrubs, Daily Show and Colbert Report) for a few hours until the attack stopped.
So of course I felt really stupid and like I'd wasted the ER folks' time and money (I know an ER visit is not cheap, but fortunately my insurance covers all but a $25 copay - thank you grad student union, because that's better than my parents get through my stepdad, who is full-time staff at my undergrad university), but I figured, hey, at least it's over, I'll lay off the No-Doz from now on - I figured it'd had a bad reaction with the dehydration and Versed from my colonoscopy - and it's back to business as usual, right?
Well, it mostly worked that way, except NOT. I'm still having sporadic anxiety attacks - been averaging one to two a day, every day, since that first one happened (today is the first day I haven't had a full-blown one, just a few twinges). The one thing they all, or almost all, have had in common is the consumption of caffeine, but not just No-Doz levels of caffeine (remember, I DID lay off that)...no, I apparently can't even have a Diet Coke without getting the screaming mimis twenty minutes later. This probably isn't the only trigger - I did have one attack on a day where I had no caffeine whatsoever - but avoiding caffeine seems to help, a LOT. (Even if it TOTALLY SUCKS going to the Airliner and getting water, which those of you who have eaten with me at Stumpy's and know how I can hoover down the Diet Coke will understand.)
However, I'm still having mini-attacks regularly, and understandably this is making it very difficult to, well, get things done. And it's frustrating, because I'm really NOT an anxious kind of person - in fact, most people who know me find me preternaturally laid-back about a lot of stuff, even things I SHOULD probably be worried about - so I don't really KNOW how to deal with this kind of unreasoning anxiety. In fact, I'm discovering I'm not really good at dealing with mental health issues period; physical problems I've had plenty of, I know I can handle pretty much anything that doesn't kill me instantly (like, say, a heart attack), but I'm not used to having to fight MY OWN MIND (at least not outside of weeaboo videogame final bosses where it's all making a big metaphysical statement about struggling with the darker aspects of oneself, usually in the form of a robot angel demon evil twin).
So tomorrow I'm gonna have to call Student Health and make an appointment for the physical side, and then try to get an appointment with the counseling peeps over there, and then go for my follow-up to the gut doctor (which should hopefully be all clear)...and meanwhile I have to have my comps portfolio finished in two months, and I'm still making the final changes on my syllabus for the class I start teaching Wednesday, and I DID NOT NEED THIS RIGHT NOW, ARGH.
ANYWAY THAT'S ENOUGH MAUNDERING ON ABOUT MY PROBLEMS, HOW ABOUT SOME FUNNY YOUTUBE VIDEOS
A hilarious Durex ad (NSFW text):
A claymation sequence involving desserts and set to Verdi's La Traviata, which is totally awesome:
So I basically didn't go to sleep Tuesday night (as witness my last LJ post, not long after midnight), since I had reading and annotation-writing and such to do to catch up before the semester started, and popped a No-Doz about midnight to help me do it. Then a little before noon the next day, I popped another one.
Wednesday afternoon I got home to my apartment, put some cookies in the oven, and suddenly started having chest pains, chest tightness and difficulty breathing. Now, my dad died at 56 of a heart attack, and my mom had two while still in her 30s, so of course my immediate thought was "OMGWTFBBQ HOLY SHIT AM I HAVING A HEART ATTACK"
While the chest pains stopped after a couple of minutes, the tightness and breathing problems continued, so within a few minutes I'd called 911 and was waiting for an ambulance (I took my cookies out of the oven and turned it off first, which looking back I'm actually quite proud I had the presence of mind to do). I had my first ever ambulance ride, ended up at the emergency room, and discovered that apparently those 2 No-Doz (equivalent to about 4 cups of coffee over, like, twelve hours) had apparently resulted in a bad medication reaction and I was not having a heart attack, but an anxiety attack. Just in case, they did chest X-rays and blood work and EKGs and all that junk, but after that they just put me on Ativan and left me in a bed to watch TV (Scrubs, Daily Show and Colbert Report) for a few hours until the attack stopped.
So of course I felt really stupid and like I'd wasted the ER folks' time and money (I know an ER visit is not cheap, but fortunately my insurance covers all but a $25 copay - thank you grad student union, because that's better than my parents get through my stepdad, who is full-time staff at my undergrad university), but I figured, hey, at least it's over, I'll lay off the No-Doz from now on - I figured it'd had a bad reaction with the dehydration and Versed from my colonoscopy - and it's back to business as usual, right?
Well, it mostly worked that way, except NOT. I'm still having sporadic anxiety attacks - been averaging one to two a day, every day, since that first one happened (today is the first day I haven't had a full-blown one, just a few twinges). The one thing they all, or almost all, have had in common is the consumption of caffeine, but not just No-Doz levels of caffeine (remember, I DID lay off that)...no, I apparently can't even have a Diet Coke without getting the screaming mimis twenty minutes later. This probably isn't the only trigger - I did have one attack on a day where I had no caffeine whatsoever - but avoiding caffeine seems to help, a LOT. (Even if it TOTALLY SUCKS going to the Airliner and getting water, which those of you who have eaten with me at Stumpy's and know how I can hoover down the Diet Coke will understand.)
However, I'm still having mini-attacks regularly, and understandably this is making it very difficult to, well, get things done. And it's frustrating, because I'm really NOT an anxious kind of person - in fact, most people who know me find me preternaturally laid-back about a lot of stuff, even things I SHOULD probably be worried about - so I don't really KNOW how to deal with this kind of unreasoning anxiety. In fact, I'm discovering I'm not really good at dealing with mental health issues period; physical problems I've had plenty of, I know I can handle pretty much anything that doesn't kill me instantly (like, say, a heart attack), but I'm not used to having to fight MY OWN MIND (at least not outside of weeaboo videogame final bosses where it's all making a big metaphysical statement about struggling with the darker aspects of oneself, usually in the form of a robot angel demon evil twin).
So tomorrow I'm gonna have to call Student Health and make an appointment for the physical side, and then try to get an appointment with the counseling peeps over there, and then go for my follow-up to the gut doctor (which should hopefully be all clear)...and meanwhile I have to have my comps portfolio finished in two months, and I'm still making the final changes on my syllabus for the class I start teaching Wednesday, and I DID NOT NEED THIS RIGHT NOW, ARGH.
ANYWAY THAT'S ENOUGH MAUNDERING ON ABOUT MY PROBLEMS, HOW ABOUT SOME FUNNY YOUTUBE VIDEOS
A hilarious Durex ad (NSFW text):
A claymation sequence involving desserts and set to Verdi's La Traviata, which is totally awesome:
