Dorothy and Kansas had nothing on me........I could have taught them a thing or two. Outside tornadoes don't scare me, it was the ones in my head that I couldn't run from. I had two beautiful sons, but home life wasn't good. It was my fault, it always was. Couldn't have been his drinking and drugs, being a single working mom while living with my husband....nahhhhhhh, I'm the problem.
That tornado whirling around in my head became fiercer and fiercer. Then the chest started tightening along with it, was that a heart pain, am I having a heart attack at 27 years old? Oh no, I can't breath and my pulse is 130....am I dying?
Day after day, this scenario grew stronger. Trip after trip to the hospital, doctors holding me on the table due to uncontrollable shaking (note I said doctors as in plural), nitro under the tongue.....massive headaches. Then it would start all over again.
I found a cure......sleep......and more sleep and more sleep.
All of this was cutting in on hubby's life.....and I got the ultimatum.....get fixed or it's over. Fix what??? I think I'm dying and no one can tell me what's wrong!!!! And we have the bills to prove that.
Finally, one morn, after walking my sons to school.....I broke......a meltdown and I called hubby to take me to the hospital.....he was angry.
No words spoken on the way, the hospital recommended me to a psychologist. I remember he told me when I walked through the door he knew exactly what I was there for.
I was admitted to a hospital for us crazy people....well, actually I was given a choice, a regular hospital or the psyciatric hospital on the river with a swimming pool, gym, chapel, private room and fireplace in the lobby......and I could go shopping, and visit home too!
I spent two months there......first, there was a problem in medicating me......they found a heart condition, my heart beats toooooo fast. Also, I had quit eating.....except to survive. Every med they put me on raced my heart. At one point, my heart rate went to 173.
My counseling there went actually very well. Until they came in and told me I couldn't go home until hubby was counseled......and either I could tell him or they would.
He counseled until I got out, then quit.
My diagnosis was panic disorder.....but it brought on clinical depression.
I didn't know it at the time, but God placed me in the right place at the right time. My doctor was a christian. I was on the meds for depression for only one year. The anxiety meds are part of my life. He didn't feel that this just happened.....so we had to get family history on me.......it's hereditary from my mom's side! I had no clue that I had five first cousins going through the same thing and my grandmother's symptoms that he was given were it too! He loved my boys and taught me what to watch for in them.....and they both have had panic attacks, not to the extent of mine, but still had them.
They counseled hubby also on what I was feeling......it's like sitting down and eating 10 candy bars and getting 100 times the adrenalin that a normal person needed, no wonder I felt I needed to run or move.......and yes, sleep was an escape....it seems to shut down during sleep.
Two years after finding a med that would work on me, my doctor released me and asked me to pray for him! I have to laugh at that.....two years after he asked me to pray for him, I became a christian!