A Track to Tranquility is Tablets

Late afternoon on a Monday in September 2008 I feel a dull ache in my chest. I phone a friend, a nurse, who tells me to get it checked out because it could indicate a bigger problem. Not wanting to go to the ER for a trivial reason, I hesitate. After an hour of playing should or shouldn’t, I hyperventilate. That answers that question. Off to Northwestern Memorial Hospital I go where, within 15 minutes of arriving, my blood pressure is so high I am put in a bed and informed I will be enjoying the accommodations for the night. The first nurse enters, somehow my charts is missing did I happen to know exactly what my blood pressure was? High, that is all I know. The second nurse inserts an I.V. She inserts the needle and then cannot find the thing to close it. It somehow got lost. I sit/ lay with a needle in my arm and we cannot complete the IV while blood is getting all over the place and my nurse, who must keep pressure to avoid a geyser, calls to the nursing stand for what she needs. Finally it is successfully in my arm and given the comedy of it all I do not feel pain. Luckily blood does not make me squeamish. The first nurse comes back and hands me a cup filled with pills for the blood pressure as well as something to calm me down and take off the anxiety of being in an ER. “I didn’t have any tension or anxiety until I got here,” I thought.

Oh, great to top it all off my phone just died.

The drug cocktail of beta-blockers, Xanax, and Ambien made the rest of the night not only bearable but quite Zen.

After a few tests, my General Practitioner declares I did not have anything wrong with my heart; rather, I had a full-blown panic attack. He prescribes Xanax for when it happens again. I have experienced anxiety attacks previously but this was different. I had ended up in the hospital, which, in my mind, crossed the line from neurotic to perhaps unstable. I exit the doctors’ office humiliated, mortified and certain there was something very very wrong with me. I must be careful whom I tell. People then divided to safe people and unsafe people.

Never mind the fact that a few weeks prior I had been offered a promotion and was relocating at some time TBD to California where I knew no one for what I knew was a very stressful job. Forget that I was moving out of the apartment I had lived in for 4 years and had no time to pack. Ignore that I am leaving everything and everyone I know including my family and my boyfriend. I must be crazy.

So my anxiety continues and from time to time, when I am tense or upset, I have a Panic Attack. I tell very few people. The longer it continues on the more isolated I feel which worsens my worry.

Finally this January I realize I am tired of pretending to be perfect while hiding that I always experiencing low-grade anxiety. I desire to be peaceful. So I made an appointment with my primary care physician and get some medicine. As someone very close to me said, “If it was a heart condition you would take something for it.” A track to tranquility is tablets.

I begin to educate myself. I speak with a psychologist friend who assures me that Anxiety and Panic are chemical responses induced by stress and given all the life changes and the demands of my job could be expected. She recommends, THE ANXIETY CURE by Dr. Archibald D. Hart. This book alters my outlook. First of all, Panic Anxiety is the number one mental health problem for women. He states:

Many hardworking, driven people (like you and me) don’t realize just how close they walk on the precipice of anxiety one day, out of the blue, a panic attack strikes. Herein lies the greatest danger: Because adrenaline overuse feels so exhilarating and invigorating, we don’t consider some of the things that give us an adrenaline rush to be stressful. The purpose of adrenaline is to make us feel excited during a state of emergency, so it is easy to misread that excitement as safe. We don’t realize how close we are to the edge of anxiety until we lose our footing and tumble down into the abyss of Panic.

In this sense, one’s first panic attack is really a blessing in disguise. It warns the sufferer that he or she is living to fast, too hassled, and too stressed out. Loosing tranquility happened because a person’s happy messengers are being invaded by stress hormones. While they are normally allies, these hormones become enemies in the face of danger and stress.

The problem is most people who suffer panic attacks are frequently frightened of having another one that it invokes another incident. For example, yesterday afternoon I am relaxing in my apartment when a 7.3 earthquake rolls through my living room lasting 30 seconds. I freeze, unsure of what to do and terrified it will get worse. The telltale signs including tremors, racing heartbeat, and dizziness commence. The shaking subsides. Just breath. Breath. The symptoms will settle down. They never last long. Engage in something to divert attention. Facebook. Ok, at least find out what I should do in the event of an aftershock. Conflicting information. Do I stand in a doorway or find a triangle…or it depends on where you live and building codes. The doorway is fine in California. Still shaking, dizzy and pulse racing I turn on the TV and eat something. Enough, I cannot listen to anymore about are we ready if the big one hits. Oh, now I think I might throw up. Then everything seems to go away; until later, when inadvertently thinking about the 5% chance that there will be another 7.3 in the next three days my chest tightens. Ok, breathe again and redirect concentration to a movie. I go to bed and wake up well. I could take a Xanax but I think those should be saved for super stressful situations like flying when babies are present.