Anxiety in My Own Words

Anxiety is not how it looks in the movies!

Sometime in early December, 2015:

I woke up one morning and the left side of my chest, right above my heart, was hurting.

Like my mother, I’ve always been abit of a worrier, in fact I diagnosed myself with depression at age 12.

2015 was a terrible year for me. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and my stress levels went through the roof. The year kicked off with a breakup and an ensuing heartbreak that lasted longer than 12 months. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have an address and was shuffling from one friend to the next. I uprooted my life on purpose in an effort to go chase a dream. It was the first time I’d actively tried to take a few life chances, not one of those chances worked out and the year was ending with me being suicidal.

The chest pain was dull and annoying at first, but I tried to ignore it. I realized I really wasn’t myself when I became out of breath just doing simple chores; like washing dishes or sweeping the floor. I grew up in rural Jamaica, we walked everywhere and most of us are physically strong and athletic. Now all of a sudden I was weak, nauseous and just feeling horrible overall.

Then Christmas Eve came. I cooked dinner. I was excited to do it but then my appetite suddenly disappeared and I could barely eat anything.

There was an old African soap opera I’d been obsessed with for years and I watched it religiously every Sunday. Lots of people get sick and die on TV all the time and in real life, and it never affected me. But then a character on the show suddenly got pancreatic cancer, around that same time my weird feelings started getting worse. A lady I’d known since childhood had also just died and it was suspected that cancer was the cause. On the news a local 18 year old soccer player was also diagnosed with cancer in his leg and later died.

That Sunday while watching my beloved soap opera I suddenly had to turn the TV off. Just like that. My dad was pleasantly surprised as I’d been taking over the TV from 2-4 PM for years. I couldn’t tell him that suddenly seeing death all around me was doing something to me. I couldn’t say that all that death struck a sudden fear in my heart and now I was terrified, weak, and nauseous. I also didn’t know what Hypochondria was at the time.

By December 28th, I couldn’t eat at all! My chest felt like someone was sitting on it, I became cold in a hot house, my legs felt like jelly, and I couldn’t breathe properly! I also couldn’t sleep. I had horrible nightmares and would jolt awake within an hour of falling asleep. I was shaking constantly. I clenched my teeth so tight my jaws hurt, and I could feel my teeth move.

December 29th. It got bad. Real bad. All the feelings I described got way worse; the world suddenly felt big and scary and I felt like I was free falling into a black hole. I felt sure I was dying. I could no longer hide it, so I told my mother, who reminded me it was the one year anniversary of my great aunt’s death. She reminded me just how stressful those final few months had been and that she wasn’t up for planning another funeral. Thanks mom, that really helped. It actually did. I took my ass to hospital and told myself it was better to die there than in front my mother.

I arrived at hospital around 4 PM, December 29th, and I suppose the fact that I walked in and registered meant I wasn’t in immediate danger. So they made me wait with like a million other people who weren’t emergencies, just asthma attacks, psychotic episodes and unimportant maladies like that.

I curled up on a chair in a corner listening to people compete with each other by telling stories of someone they knew who died right where we were, because nobody came to attend to them. You’d think things couldn’t possibly get worse for me, but they did. I didn’t see a doctor until around 3:30 the next morning. He was a young, bleary eyed Asian kid who looked not much better than I did. I tried to explain what was happening to me but he cut me off, saying it was either stress or gas. He scribbled a prescription on a piece of paper, got up, walked into the hall, and yelled for the next patient.

Him asking for the next patient was how I realized he was done with me. I wasn’t in there five minutes! Of course in order to get the pills for free, I had to get them from the hospital pharmacy. Let’s just say I waited in a super long line around six more hours. By the time I left the Cornwall Regional Hospital in Western Jamaica, it was around 4 PM, December 30th. I’d tried to register for an EKG but was told I could be there as long as I was the day before, so I left and went to a private facility.

The doctor said my heart was fine but he’d never seen someone my age (28) with stress levels that high. He told me that my prolonged period of extreme stress had culminated in acute anxiety, and that it wasn’t going to get better unless I figured out a way to eliminate the stressors. He even suggested that I leave whatever environment I was in when it all started. As it turned out, I had made plans to leave the country in another week. Little did I know that even though my appetite was back and I could eat a whole meal that day, my issues were by no means over. In fact they were just begging.

January 2016:

I was now in America, but I wasn’t better. That’s when I became addicted to Dr. Google and WebMD. I dated someone for roughly two months and the only good thing that came from that was me dating a nurse. That’s how I heard about Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, as well as several other mental health disorders.

Turned out I had GAD as well as extreme levels of Hypochondria. Let’s just say you don’t just experience a symptom or two then it’s back to normal. Below are a list of symptoms I experienced over a six month period. That’s right, it took half a year before I was physically, mentally and emotionally ok again.

SYMPTOMS:

• Headaches
• Dizziness
• Vertigo
• Sore spots on the back of my head, like I got hit with a blunt object
• Burning skin
• Red spots on my skin
• Feeling hot in a cold room
• Incessantly worrying
• Preoccupation with illnesses and death
• Extreme fear of a specific disease such as Cancer, AIDS, Tuberculosis etc.
• Feeling convinced I had at least 5 different types of cancers
• Doctor shopping
• Inability to watch medical shows or cancer-related advertisements
• Somatoform Disorder
• Being terrified of giving blood
• Extreme obsession with WebMD
• Crawling sensation in my legs
• Intense pain all over my body
• The worst being back, elbow, and leg pain
• Temporary tunnel vision
• Loss of appetite
• Rapid weight loss
• Checking entire body daily for lumps/moles
• Weighing myself at least two dozen times per day
• Gag reflex when eating
• Persistent nightmares
• Inability to sleep without medication
• Non-stop yawning
• Startle easily
• Terrified of loud noises
• Talking about illness nonstop
• Inability to make future plans for fear of sudden death
• I know many of these symptoms sound made up, they’re not. I’m taking the time to write this because if it could happen to me, it can happen to anybody. It also helps to not feel like you’re the only one going through that much craziness.

Many thanks to the complete strangers online (those from PatientInfo.UK, especially) who helped me cope. I don’t know you guys, you don’t know me, and we’ll probably never meet each other in any lifetime, but you made sure to listen to me as I did you. Together, a bunch of Nervous Nellies helped each other out. Guess what, you guys? I got over it! I freaking got over it! All my symptoms disappeared after several horrible months. I’m still here and I don’t curl up in a ball every day, thinking I have nine different types of terminal cancer. Hypochondria is the biggest bitch! So are the people on TV who make mental illness sound simple.

P.S. I am still a person with a specific anxiety disorder and Hypochondria that flares up from time to time. But I’m ok-ish.