Today's thoughts on panic attacks and working

So I had to quit work now because I've been starting to get panic attacks again at completely random times with no noticeable trigger (at least none that I can notice) and thus can't call random people selling them stuff and suddenly start hyperventilating and crying. No, that won't do it.

Also I seem to be addicted to benzos, which isn't a big surprise seeing as I have a huge tolerance for them and need a lot to stop my panic attacks. I need a lot less if  I can take a tablet profylactic but that's again not the best of ideas just constantly taking them since I do feel anxious all the time again, like seriously right now too. I can write and I can think, but I shiver and speaking isn't very easy and my breathing is always a bit whacky. I go from really slow to really fast and then I get scared that I have another panic attack, which might be a cause for a panic attack later.

I hate hospitals too btw. Like you didn't know that already, I hate them with all my heart. First you have to wait 7 hours in the emergence to know anything and at that point I've already gotten at least three panic attacks (that's my number one trigger: hospitals), and if I'm alone with the car they won't treat me because you're not allowed to drive while under benzos. I am laughing my fucking ass off, I drive with benzos all the time, it's the only way I can live my life without being stuck at home: panic disorder + need for tranquilisers = never use a car, just doesn't do it in the country side. You can't not drive a car, it's a must here, otherwise you won't people to go even just grocery shopping. So two fingers up to the *uckers at Meilahti. Besides driving while having a panic attack is a hell of a lot worse than driving while on benzos, I was freaking out the entire drive home.

Not to mention that bitch of a nurse in Porvoo hospital who gave me a bill to pay while I was panicking before they even thought of giving me diazepam. I mean seriously greedy bloody bastards and this is the public sector.
Slowly I'm wishing I had money to go private. But for me it's a matter of principle, if there's public health care - you use it. But that's my socialist attitudes running through my veins...

So today in about an hour I'll be picking up my dad at the airport, so finally won't be alone again. I have to say, I prefer sleeping in a house with someone else in it as well. Although Billie helps a lot, she even slept with me on the bed a few times that cutie. And I did have a sleepover guest twice during the weekend cause I had such a crappy weekend otherwise. It was lovely and he's really sweet.

Piercing update: septum now at 2 mm and going to probably go to 3 or 4 mm.
Health update: addicted to benzos
Private update: still single and still fat

✩ My 2013 ✩

January:
- nothing much happened in January, except for meeting lovely new friends and having a blast.
- noticed my first stomach symptoms

February:
- stomach symptoms continued
- went to Italy 

March:
- was in Italy for a week
- came back home and was admitted into hospital because of severe stomach pain
- stayed in hospital for slightly over a month

April:
- was in hospital
- got diagnosed with PTLD (post transplatic lymphoproliferative disease) or more commonly: cancer
- got out of hospital and into post-hospital care

May:
- sick leave
- started feeling better
- partying

June:
- Switzerland for two weeks
- got more diseases and spent another week and a half in hospital

July:
- started getting panic attacks from hospitals
- stayed in hospital three times for one night
- Switzerland, where I met some of the loveliest people and saw some old pals <3
- was extremely suicidal

August:
- got home again from Switzerland, because of panic attacks
- saw a shrink who helped nothing
- was depressed to the point where I told my dad to hide everything that I could use for suicide

September:
- started tutoring at my university, had something in my life to keep me going
- started feeling better about my mental health

October:
- England

November:
- came back from England
- got admitted to hospital for high fever
- spent three weeks in hospital
- got together with my ex

December:
- got anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication as well as sedatives
- had to put down my best friend, my beautiful collie Bali

Theme Day: Disney randomized and my feelings with it

I feel like smoking. I feel like I really need a fag, but I've promised not to smoke at home and I haven't smoked since I went in to hospital, so I don't really need one physically, I just feel like one. It's kinda like with food. I feel like eating, or I don't, but it has nothing to do with hunger. I may be hungry for hours and still not feel like eating. And sometimes right after eating, I'll feel like eating more. It's weird how the mind and the body are so disconnected yet connected at the same time.

I feel a bit disconnected too. I feel like sleeping but I'm awake. I'm tired but I don't want to go to bed. I am anxious, yet I'm calm. I shake all over, yet I feel fine. My lymph node is big again, but thankfully my dad's painkillers work for it for now. On Friday I need to get something for me. It's not nerve pain now. It's regular pain, just on steroids.
Yet though I know I have to see a doctor because of this, I don't feel like falling down and crying. And yet I constantly feel like falling down and crying. I feel so disconnected from myself, yet I feel like I know myself better because of this. I know what's me and what's not me. But the dreadful part is...it's all just me. I don't have anything else or anyone else in me, it's just all me, and still I don't feel like me. I feel depressed and scared. That's not me, I don't get depressed or scared. 

I actually hope my future psychiatrist will read these, because I suppose it will be a good way of knowing me better - away from my speech, my manners and my smile. I try to smile whenever I can and wherever I am. Though these days it's not that easy and especially with hospitals, doctors, my smile can disappear quickly. And I don't want them to think I'm too positive when I want to kill myself. I don't want to now. I did before, for a long time, I don't now, but then again, I'm taking anti-depressants to keep me happy. So. That's it, I guess. I'm happy.

Behind a Lace Curtain

Today I've been feeling a lot less like myself. Again. A few days in a row. Or more like weeks. I don't feel the world the same way I did before, it feels like I'm watching everything through a curtain and only seeing parts of it. Or I'm in some way only a part of the world and not really in it. Not in any real way.

I don't know why these thoughts bother me so much, because my life hasn't really changed at all since  I got home from hospital and, yeah, life's pretty much routine around here. That should help, right? I know it should. It has before. But now, I don't feel like myself, I don't even feel the world is the same anymore, and I truly do not know why I think this.

I don't notice a difference, only that there must be one for me to feel this way, and I don't know what to do about it.
I've already gone through my panic attack pills, 'cause I keep getting them, but I can't get anymore pills so it's either panic attack and hospital (which in itself is enough to make me shiver already), or just try and suck it up or sit in my room for a day hyperventilating. Those are my options. None seems nice for me right now. I don't know what to do.

I should probably call the hospital. I know I should if I feel like this. I just don't want to. I hate hospitals, they freak the living shit out of me. And mental hospitals even more. They're like prisons. You get stripped searched while hyperventilating. It's horrible.
And I don't want to go. And I don't want to bother my dad. So this is it. Suck it up and sit in my room.

My room doesn't even have any curtains. I can't hide anywhere. All the thoughts will always follow me wherever I go. I can't save myself from them, I have to learn to live with them.

Panic attacks and doctors

I've been having panic attacks now again almost daily. My dad didn't know, I only just told him when I told him who I was calling to for so long. I called the hospital. Or two to be precise, to maybe get some help to stop these things from occuring, but it seems it's impossible to
a. get a doctor on the phone
b. because they're on holiday
c. get medicine because
d. the doctor isn't around or
e. doesn't want to give medicine without seeing  you.

Now we get back to my hospital fear. I don't want to go to a hospital if I can just for the life of me avoid it. So, as a rule, I then just refuse to come, keep getting panic attacks and nobody wins, except maybe the doctor on holiday.

I did get to to talk to two very nice nurses, one of whom I knew already from my stay at Meilahti, but it doesn't really help me stop having panic attacks, or stop one while I'm having one, that I get to talk to a nurse for half an hour of my day. I won't get a panic attack by order. I don't get them by order, I just suddenly out of nowhere get really really anxious and have a panic attack! And to get it off I need at least 15 mg of Diapam. And even then I'm just relaxed enough not to panic, not actually relaxed as in falling off my feet as a lot of people would with that dose.

My psychiatrist's appointment is on the 8th of January, I have to wait till then to get help or otherwise go to my local health centre to try and get my diapam prescription renewed. Or to Porvoo mental hospital to do the same thing. I'm pretty sure I won't last till January.

after all this time i still don't know how to end it

Day XIV: Depression can really hit you

I never thought I'd be on anti-depressants. I never even thought I was ever depressed, although to be honest, even now I'm not getting anti-depressants because of depression. I'm getting them for anxiety. I have anxiety issues, getting the panic attacks and not being able to end them. The anti-depressants are there to help me not to get that many panic attacks and keep them lighter, so I'd be able to maybe stop them. I'm also getting sedatives in the evening, so I won't wake up in the middle of the night knowing I'm in hospital and getting an immediate panic attack.

Which is what has happened a few times, I can tell you, my goodness. It's quite clear that my issue is nowhere near as bad as some people's, I'm not that depressed, not that anxious, but it's all subjective. For me, this is really difficult, because I'm used to just going through my life, which hasn't been an easy one, and just letting it flow. I've gone with the flow, if I can use a cliche here. But it's clearly taken it's toll, now I want to have these meds. Now I want to see a shrink. Yes, still going to call them shrinks.

I'm sort of afraid that when I get home now, that all this will continue. That I'll still get panic attacks, like I did in the summer. I don't want to, they're horrible and they make me really afraid of what will happen if I just keep having them. Because I've been in a panic attack for almost eight hours at the worst, and it's really really horrible hyperventilating for eight straight hours. Those were in hospitals though, thankfully, at home they never lasted that long, I got to take enough meds to keep me calm enough, but not anymore.

I don't really know what medication and in what doses I'm going to get home. I know I'm getting Cipralex, the anti-depressant, and Zyprexa, the sedative, but in what doses and what times and whatwhowherewhathow? Also I'm getting Neurontin in some doses to take at home, but I don't know yet about that either. It's too early to tell. I also don't know what kind of a shrink I'll see after this and that scares the living shit out of me, because I hate shrinks. I hate the look I usually get, that really condescending look, that makes you want to just yell you're better than they are and storm out. I've been lucky here in hospital, the shrink and the nurse are both lovely, just wonderful people, and I feel comfortable talking to them. I hope I'll get someone like that afterwards too. Someone I can talk to. Otherwise I'll have to ask for another, and there may be no other and what will I do then?
Scared I am, as Yoda might put it. Anxious. I'll get on Saturday if all goes well. Completely discharged. It's a fantastic thing, I've been in hospitals for three weeks now, it's getting really tiresome. I miss home. I really relaly want to go home. But at the same time - scared. Because of what if I get pains, what if I get panics, I don't know what to do.

I hope I will find out. And I will have my dad there all the time, so that will help me a lot. It will really keep me going more than this sitting around alone for most of the day in a room trying to write essays for teachers.

Day VII: Feeling like I could give up - but I never will

Every once in a while, especially during these sorts of times, I just feel like I can't take it anymore. I'm always in pain, life's a misery, my loved ones suffer, there's nothing good anywhere.

All there is

is illness

and pain

and suffering

and torture

and depression

and anxiety

and panic attacks

and sadness

 and crying

and walls crumbling down

and the sky falling on all of us

but in the end, I never manage to give up. I go to the hospital feeling like I can't stand straight, I'm so ill, but I still say I'm okay to sit, no I don't need a bed. I do need a bed, I can barely sit, but I refuse to let go and give in and say "I need help".

Today, for the first time in my life, I actually spoke to a psychiatrist about my problems. I have seen psychiatrists before, but have either had no issues to deal with as I was so young and still had an easier life, or I refused to be honest because I thought the doctor was being so condescending. I don't tell the truth to people I don't feel deserve it. I don't give respect to people who don't deserve it. I don't consider authority figures authority figures before they show me, that they are worth it. She showed me. She let me speak my mind without glaring at me, without any judgment in her eyes or in her voice, and she really helped me. 

She even agreed that she has some bad collagues when I told her about my latest contact with a shrink, and apologised (which she didn't need to, it wasn't her fault).

Half the time I feel loved and supported and like there's nothing I can't handle, and the rest I feel like all the Gauls in Asterix: "Je craque! J-j.j-e cr-cr-craque!", the sky is falling apart and on top of us. She helped me notice this about me and that is why I am writing now. 

I may be sad here and there, I may be depressed even, but never, ever am I truly alone. All I need to do is go out and ask for help. 

(And yes, I know it is like looking for a job, it isn't always easy, you might not get support or any other sort of help, but you are still not alone, you will find someone at some point, just as long as you stick by it and don't give in).

(And no, it doesn't take strength to just sit on a chair when you really need a bed, it takes more strength to admit that you cannot manage anymore and need a bed to lie on). 

It takes a strong heart and mind to take life in all it's gruesomeness, but it takes much more strength to admit that you cannot go through all that misery alone and you need help. 

I learned that today and will never forget it.

Day III: Midnight panic attack

This was the first night in a while when I actually slept thoroughly and saw a dream that didn't involve hospitals or being sick in any way.
Actually it was about a neighbour who came to show us a dead white rat (which looked more like a mix between a mouse and a moth) and told us that they'd a few years back found a small white kitten as well, and just knew it came from us since we had cats at that time.

Of course in the dream none of this seemed odd to me, not the fact that my neighbours weren't my neighbours, were talking of a kitten they'd got rid off and the fact that both our cats had been castrated males, so no kittens possible.
Anyway in the dream I was just plain saddened by the fact that we'd lost a cat we'd never even known about, but it all sort of felt okay and drank a cup of coffee with my neighbours.

Dreams, right? Never any logic.

Then I woke up, to pee I assume, but the second I woke up I remember I was in hospital and just started panicking. Crying and hyperventilating, and then all the pain in my jaw just hit me like a hammer, and all I could do was wait for the nurse to come and help me. I've never been able to stop a panic attack once they start without tranquillisers (thankfully today is Monday so I can talk about that breathing therapy the psychiatrist mentioned to me), so I just waited for painkillers for the jaw and knock outs for the panic.

And this is me now writing this completely relaxed and painfree after 6 mg Oxanest IM and a pill of Zyprexa. It's not really a tranquilliser at such, but it is against panic disorder and together with the strong opiates it worked rather well.
Why I'm still awake is a mystery, but oh well. Might as well be now, it's a hospital, I sleep when I want to.