Over the past 14 years or so, I've developed an insane case of hypochondria. If you aren't familiar with what this is, it's an anxiety that you have things wrong with you medically. You are convinced you have all the awful diseases and illnesses, that you are dying from this or that. It's terrible. I'd say it's steadily gotten worse over time. It used to be that I would just feel like I was having a heart attack because I'd be having an anxiety attack and I'd feel a tightness in my chest, a shortness of breath, and my left arm would feel "weird". People would constantly tell me I was freaking out over nothing, but if you've ever felt these symptoms during a panic or anxiety attack you know just how terrifying it is. I was smoking pot all the time, and would drink many, many beers every night to try to take the edge off. Finally I realized I needed to quit smoking the pot because if was giving me worse anxiety, and then I realized I quickly needed to give up the alcohol because I was extremely dependent on it.
Now, during all of this, I'm a college student who had dealt with some pretty crazy stuff, like being robbed at gunpoint, having my house broken into, and having people try to break into my house while I was home all over a span of a year or so. I was extremely traumatized and was having a hard time dealing with life. More than once I was in the school medical center thinking there was something wrong with my heart, and having multiple EKG's done. Every time they told me something different. Maybe it's pleurisy, take a gazillion mg of ibuprofen a day, which I found out was giving me high blood pressure. Take these water pills because your blood pressure is high. A pharmacist was like, no. Stop taking them. Finally a doctor told me she thought I had anxiety, and I was prescribed Zoloft. I started taking it each day, and started to feel better in about 2 weeks. I gave up dairy and red meat, started riding my bike and exercising more, gave up caffeine and within 7 months, was pregnant.
When I found out I was pregnant, I gave up the Zoloft. I'd had 2 miscarriages previously, and didn't want to risk ANYTHING. I was still smoking cigarettes, but gave those up when I was 8 weeks and 5 days along. I've never looked back (okay, not totally true...I'd say I've smoked 3 cigarettes since then, but it was for old time sake once, and the other two times I had been drinking). All during the time I was pregnant, I felt amazing. I had no anxiety, I was so ecstatic that I was having a child! After having my first miscarriage at 16 and being devastated (and none of my family to help me through it), and having a second miscarriage at 20 years old (and being really sad)...this baby was a BLESSING!
I had my baby, I nursed for 11 months, I had no postpartum depression. I did eat. A LOT. I couldn't tell if it was the breastfeeding or if I was slowly getting anxious again, but over 6 months after giving birth, I gained like 40 pounds. Now, to put this into perspective, I only gained 26 during my pregnancy because I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. It runs in both sides of my family, and I was obese during my pregnancy, so it was destined to happen. But I followed the rules, and took care of myself. One of my proudest achievements is that I was able to put on and tie my own tennis shoes through the entire pregnancy!! Boom!
Disclaimer: I am having an insane amount of anxiety typing this... and I'm not even to where I want this to end yet. Deep breaths...deep breaths...
So I get to be about 2 years past having my baby and start feeling the anxiety creeping around me like an overwhelming dark shroud. It's like it's constantly over my shoulders and I'm trying to constantly shrug it off...
Then the anxiety started to morphed into an obsessive issue. I'm extremely terrified of losing my mind. Like going insane. That fear started about 8 years ago. I was dealing with some heavy anxiety and was prescribed a couple of medications... one for daily long-term use, and Xanax for "acute anxiety". I didn't want to take the daily medication, but thought I would try the Xanax one day when I was having some heavy anxiety. It made me super spacey, and distant. A run-in to the store one day lasted over a half hour, with my husband about to come in and find me. That worried him a bit I think. Later that night, I was watching Desperate Housewives...the episode where they show how the one lady accidentally killed her daughter when the giant closet fell on her. I said to myself, "how awful it would be to accidentally kill your child" kicked off an awful 8 years of OCD that meant I was afraid to be around my then 2 or 3 year old son and I couldn't stop checking on him in the middle of the night because I was afraid something had happened to him. I'm talking obsessively checking on him...get up, turn on the light, make sure he's breathing and tip toe back to me bed just to get right back up because I was convinced I couldn't remember seeing him breath. BAD.
I've not been able to take any form of medication since then aside from an Extra Strength Tylenol during "that time of the month" and a Zpack of antibiotics when I had pneumonia last year. It was SO hard for me to take those antibiotics...the first day I had them I literally sat there and stared at one of the pills, in my hand, for an hour trying to get up the courage to take the pills.
Oh man, the anxiety is SUPER bad right now. I have a "tic" where I rub my neck when I'm anxious, and I can't stop. My palms are clammy, and I'm wishing I could take something to relieve it. I'm convinced I'm dying...more on why coming up.
I started the pills thinking I was going to have a horrible allergic reaction to them (I don't know why, because I grew up having tonsillitis my whole childhood and had to take TONS of antibiotics and never once had a reaction to them). Each night when it was time to take the next one I would have all the anxiety all over again. Three days into them I had a follow-up with my regular doctor and she told me she had reviewed my chest x-ray and didn't think that I ever had pneumonia, but I should take the rest of the pills just as a precaution. Um, nope. Tossed those suckers like bad fish. Hell no I'm not taking pills just in case for something that I probably didn't have!
TMI alert! Skip this paragraph if you are afraid of medical issues! I've been in and out of the doctors offices, and in and out of therapy, and everything has pointed to me just having awful anxiety. I had a bad stomach issue over a year ago, and it was giving me a horrible bout of anxiety...I was convinced I had stomach cancer and was dying. I ended up in the ER one morning after a bowel movement with blood in it. My husband rushed me to the ER to find out that I had an internal bleeding hemorrhoid. I was convinced I had internal bleeding, like ruptured aneurism type bleeding. But no... they told me to eat healthier, and give up caffeine. The bleeding was most likely started by aggravating a hemorrhoid because I was dealing with a bout of IBS inflammation.
Oh my gosh on a 1-10 anxiety level I'm at about 7.5-8 right now. I started this post at a 4. Couple of breaths, check my pulse, rub my neck...okay, let's keep going...
The Next Day...
I had to leave work, so my post is picking up here. So after my trip to the ER, my doctor suggested I follow a gluten free diet (no grains, no dairy, and basically the paleo diet) to help clear up my gastritis (my assessment because she couldn't actually diagnose me with anything, and didn't want to order me tests like a endoscopy). She was on point, it did help, my anxiety and healthy improved, and I lost a bunch of weight. Something like 26 pounds from the beginning of November to the middle of March. I was totally in ketosis, burning tons of fat, eating lots of protein. It was good. Right around that time, I started having tension headaches. Of course for me, this meant I was having increased fluid on the brain, etc. Tension headaches are very weird feeling. So I started seeing a massage therapist, and had a couple sessions, which were nice but not really helpful long term. And my $25 copays in addition to my $25 counseling copays, were draining my bank account quickly. I saw a doctor about it, and felt much less worried once he assured me it wasn't a brain issue.
Once I started feeling better, of course I started eating unhealthy food again, which means the weight piled back on, and then I started feeling all the anxiety and the other drama that comes with weight. My stomach is more sensitive (have you heard of the brain-gut connection? Apparently it's been realized that your gut is like a 2nd brain, and that anything you put into your body affects your gut which can directly affect your brain!), and anxiety is back all the time. Over the last 2 years I keep telling myself I'm going to go back to that gluten-free/paleo lifestyle, but I haven't. It's so hard when you love food as much as I do. It's basically all I have. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs...so I eat. And I LOVE to eat (see previous posts).
So at the time that I'm typing this post, I'm back up 35 pounds since March 17, 2015 and my body feels every bit of it. My brain feels every bit of it. I was doing "okay" here and there, and really trying to keep my weight no higher than where I am now (I will NOT ever go back to where I was in December of 2012) but not truly
committed. I know I can do better, and have to, if I want to live a really long and healthy and active life.
So here's where anxiety starts to come back into my life to try to destroy me like the devil it is...
Over the last few years I've had some episodes where I feel like maybe I'm not breathing enough, and my heart beat slows WAY down and I have this feeling of gasping in a big chest full of air to almost get my heart pumping again...I've been told it could be due to anxiety, and I've worn a Holter monitor for 48 hours before to see if they can sense an event, but since it's only something that happens once in a while, it wasn't picked up in the monitor. Anyway, I had a really big instance of this a couple months ago, so I've been hyper sensitive about my pulse, heart rate, breathing, etc. At my last physical, my blood pressure was really high (though I'm pretty sure that was due to the way they took it and that I wasn't rested and calm...) so that has also been freaking me out. I haven't been following the diet my doctor told me to follow (completely dairy/sugar/grain free) because she says I'm pre-diabetic and I feel like I'm a hot mess. Well, with all of these little anxieties and episodes, I noticed I've developed a cough of sorts. Not an all day cough, or anything like that. But like a once an hour, single cough, but comes from deep in my lungs and makes a honking sound like I have a pneumonia. It doesn't happen while I sleep, just during the day. The air quality has been horrible here in the valley, so I partly feel like it's that, as it hasn't gotten worse like an actual cough from a virus would make it, but it's not gone away either.
So I did the worst thing anyone could ever do...I "googled" my symptoms. Now let me tell you, when you have anxiety, especially that comes with being a hypochondriac, the absolutely very last, never do it thing you can do, is go to the inter-webs and try to self-diagnose. Of course the first thing I find is that I'm having heart failure. Symptoms include: water retention, feeling of abnormal heartbeat, cough with or without phlegm, shortness of breath lying down, inability to exercise. I have all of these, thought the cough thing according to the Mayo Clinic website says it's an issue if it's pink foamy phlegm. I don't have that. It DID say, however, that symptoms can be gradual or acute.
Now I am a pretty intuitive person, especially with medical stuff I think. I am really good at solving these "medical mysteries" as I was able to figure out at 15 that I had developed shingles, and that at 16 I was having not a normal period, but a miscarriage. This was all before the advent of "googling" mind you, and was using actual medical reference books.
So over the last three weeks or so, I've been dealing with swollen feet/ankles (this always happens when I'm eating poorly as I sit all day at work and home, and don't get enough exercise) and this cough that has developed. I'm convinced I have heart failure. In the past I've probably had 6-8 EKG's all come up normal, I've had blood tests, I've had my heart listened to every time I go to the doctor and never before has anything come up abnormal...but my anxiety is telling me...
"...it can be gradual or acute..."
"...it can happen to anyone..."
"...there are no guarantees in life..."
"...you are incredibly overweight and it would only be your own fault..."
"...your family has heart issues..."
...and on, and on, and on. I'm scared that my son will find me dead one day. That my husband won't realize I died in my sleep and my son will wonder why nobody woke him up from school. Last weekend, my son went to a friends house for a sleepover, and when my husband went to bed, I called out to him, "check and see if I'm alive when you wake up!" Now, he's fully aware of my top-level anxiety and crazy, but even this sounded absolutely insane to me. Why would I care? If I die, I won't be around to care I died, now will I? Like, let's be real.
One would think all of this is enough to convince anyone to stop eating junk food and baked goods, and eating out all the time. You would think this was ALL enough to start walking every day, eating healthy, exercising, going to the gym...anything to lose this weight, to get healthy and to have a great long life with my family...
But it hasn't. I keep waiting for the day it will 'click' like you read about in those weight loss success stories. I've considered surgery. I've tried pills. I've tried all the gimmicky stuff to the point where that stuff makes me feel so awful if I use it (the medication fear is part of that, I know), and I just feel like it's not working for me. Why can't I make the changes? I honestly believe that if I can lose this weight, a lot of my anxiety will go away. So why not kill 2 birds with 1 stone? Because that stone weighs more than the world to me right now. I have to figure out how to get the strength to make the long-term changes. I have to get the bravery to see the doctor again to make sure my heart isn't really failing. I have to have the guts to change parts of my life that are probably holding me down.
