Frustration
This single word sums up the last month and a half of my life. Frustration. Granted there are a dozen other words that I could throw into the mix, but this one word really takes the cake. My husband suggested that I write about this ordeal and maybe, just maybe it would help alleviate some stress. I decided to give it a shot.

I hit my breaking point in August. I’m still trying to figure out how I got there. Mental and emotional stress seemed to be driving me to drink more than normal. Of course, I couldn’t have just one a night. Sometimes I had two drinks. Sometimes I got drunk. I realized I was doing it more and more. At first it just seemed like I was drinking when we went out or when we were with friends. Then I started drinking more at home. Drinking six days a week for weeks on end tends to be a bad thing for your body and soul. At some point I realized I was using it as a coping mechanism. I was stressed out and worried about so many different issues. I was starting to get depressed. I imagine that many people get depressed from time to time. Been there done that right? Everyone deals with stress and anxiety in different ways. I chose the bottle. Why I will never know. I could escape. I could relax and I could, for just a bit, not worry.

I just had to choose the one drink that all doctors and health professionals hate: Red Bull and vodka. That was my staple drink. Vodka has always been my drink of choice. Wine is up there too. I love wine. A great wine compliments a great dinner. It got to the point where a great bottle of wine complimented my night. Now for all the liquor reps and distributors, I’m not saying alcohol put me in this horrible position. I did that all on my own. But, I will say that alcohol made my downward spiral much easier to miss.

I don’t know how many of you know just how bad caffeine is for you. If you would have told me three months ago that my caffeine intake would have helped get me here I would have laughed in your face. I love coffee. I love hot tea and iced tea or a cold glass of coke. I loved my Red Bull too. There is nothing better that a mug of hot coffee in the morning. I miss it terribly. My point is it really affects your body; not just your heart, but your whole system. After ten years of drinking Red Bull I never imagined it could help turn my world upside down.

Before I get into that I suppose I should detail my attitude and why my stress levels were so high. (This is the part where I whine a little). The past few years I have had the attitude, especially at work, that I have no need or the tolerance for drama. I’ve learned to stay away from certain situations. I don’t want to get caught in the middle of arguments or be in them for that matter. I want to be friends with everyone. I want to be the person who is on neutral ground. I wanted to be the proverbial duck that lets all the BS slide off her back like pond water. It is obvious to me now that I might have thought that way, but I still let certain circumstances get to me.

I guess I can start off with teaching. It is pretty frustrating that I have a Bachelor’s degree from Western Michigan University and a teacher’s certificate in Michigan and I cannot get a job for one reason or another. I’m not blaming here. I’m just saying I created a lot of self doubt in myself this year. I had a bad interview that scarred me. I became frustrated and angry at myself for not doing my best. I try my best in all I do. I busted my butt in school and was rewarded with excellent grades and experience. It feels like I have absolutely nothing to show for it. Talk about depressed…it is horrible. Some people deal with rejection by striving full force ahead. I wrapped myself up in a little ball and started to withdraw from myself. That is so not me. So here I am walking on the career tightrope, all dressed up and no place to go. Being the habitual pessimist I decided to try something new. I looked on the bright side. If I didn’t teach I could sleep in…if I didn’t teach I could take a vacation whenever I wanted…if I didn’t teach I could help my husband open up a restaurant. The list goes on and on. I tried to weigh the good and the bad, yet no matter what I did I was depressed. This has been an ongoing issue since I graduated in December 2008.

There is also the usual stress: work, money, car issues, and debt concerns. Again, that list goes on and on. Add a cup of health concerns, another cup of family issues, add a touch of concern for your mom going into a major surgery and top it all off with a pet death and you have the perfect recipe for an anxiety cocktail. Does it sound as lame as it looks on paper? I can handle all this stuff. Mentally I thought I could. When I tell people what got me here I get a lot of strange looks. They look at me like I’m crazy. Who can’t handle stress? Let me tell you one important thing: we all have our breaking point. I had to admit that to myself. I also had to admit that I am not super woman. My mom’s surgery coupled with the death of my new baby kitten did me in. In situations like this is it is very hard to control your thoughts and emotions. Even when you think you’re controlling your thoughts, you’re actually not. Somewhere deep in my mind those dark, depressing thoughts sat there waiting to just burst to the surface.

My husband and I took a week off of work at the end of July. We painted our living room and kitchen. We picked up some new décor for the house. We went to Shipshewana and generally enjoyed our week together. We finally finished the living room and kitchen. It was a great feeling. After that week we went back to work. Life seemed normal. I started to plan a trip up to my hometown of Manistique in Upper Michigan. I figured September would give me enough time to save up some extra money. The middle of August found us with a new pet. A small, I guess you could say runt, beautiful kitten we named Humphrey. He was a tiny little fellow that seemed to have some health issues. We had him three days; that last morning I found him dead in his kitty bed. I was devastated. Second guess me if you want, but just because we had him three days didn’t mean we didn’t love him or our grieving process would be different if we had him twenty years. I was a slobbering, red-eyed mess. Now I have some issues with death. Sometimes I can handle it, other times I just simply cannot. This was one of those times. Maybe I needed to tap into my spirituality, maybe I need to saturate myself in a religion. Honestly, I’m not going to go there with this post. That is a whole other conversation.

The morning I found Humphrey dead my mom went into hip surgery. I was such a mess I couldn’t process my anxiety over her surgery. I was just this big, sad, depressed shadow of Kate. I haven’t really felt right since. I’ve somewhat dealt with the kitten’s death. My mom is doing fantastic now, but it was a rough road for her. In the days after that dreadful Monday I just simply existed. I drank…a lot. I cried…a lot. I tried to get it all out by talking about my fears and my sadness. It didn’t seem to help. One night I noticed I would get this jumpy feeling in my throat. It seemed to happen either at work or during work. It went on for a few days. The following Saturday we went out for a friend’s birthday. It was the first time we had really been out in months. It was a great night. We had so much fun. I didn’t feel I drank a lot. I was drinking the infamous RB/V. Now as many of you fellow bar hoppers know, you can get drunk much quicker if you make them yourself. You go out to a bar you might have a shot of alcohol and the rest is mixer. Apparently, if my math is correct, I was consuming way above my average amount of Red Bull. Top that off with little sleep, a few cups of coffee in the morning and you have “the incident.”

The Incident

I woke up the next morning feeling like crap. Had some coffee and eventually some McDonald’s because a Big Mac is awesome when you have a hangover. Neither one of us wanted to cook so it sounded like a good idea. I ate my mouth watering Big Mac and fries and sat back on the couch for some vegging. Yeah…not so much. Almost instantly I felt sick. My stomach hurt, my heart started racing, my palms were sweaty, I felt hot and all I wanted to do was sleep or at the very least throw up. I decided to lie down and read thinking it might pass since this was just par for the course of a nasty hangover. The longer I sat there the worse it got. That’s when I felt it. A big BOOM in my chest. The fear that engulfed me was scorching. I was having a heart attack. Oh my God I was going to die. There must have been 10,000 thoughts racing through my mind. It was the most horrible feeling. Then it happened again…and again. I was so scared. I was crying and I knew I was working myself up even more. Eventually it calmed down and I could somewhat rest. I went to bed that night, still scared and nervous, yet I slept soundly.

Over the next week my little heart palpitation made regular appearances, most of the time in the evening. I would get that little jumpy feeling in my throat. Now the palpitations didn’t happen all the time, or every time my heart would beat. It was annoying and made me feel as if I had no control. I dealt with it for a week. I decided I would do whatever I had to do to make myself feel better. I started walking. I quit drinking alcohol and caffeine. I actually started to lose weight. That made me feel good even though I was scared shitless. The following Monday crap really hit the fan. I had another “attack” a few hours before I went to work. My heart rate was so fast and it felt like it was right in my neck. I could not get it to calm down. I went to work a weak pathetic excuse for a server and lost it as soon as I walked in the door. I was damn near hysterical with fear. I’m going to die. I’m going to have a heart attack and I caused this. Needless to say I didn’t end up working that night. My husband came and got me and took me to the emergency room. Enough was enough. If I was going to die, then at least I was going to try to stop it. I wanted to live!

An odd thing happens when you don’t have health insurance. You just don’t go to the doctor unless you absolutely have too. And yes…not having insurance also stressed me out. We are at the point where we need it; it is just too expensive to carry. The big insurance companies can take a long walk off a short pier for all I care! So I really didn’t want to go. I didn’t have a regular doctor. I never needed one. If I was sick I would go to the walk-in clinic. I was not looking forward to a giant ER bill. After a few days I just didn’t care anymore. At least I could hopefully find out what was going on. So away we went to the ER. After a thyroid test, EKG and a nice little pill the called lorazepam I was sent on my merry way. My heart was fine. My blood pressure was high 147/something. I was feeling these premature heart beats that would be the BOOM feeling. I was able to even see them on the EKG. I was under mass anxiety. He wrote me a script for blood pressure medicine and the so-called happy pill lorazepam. I felt better but I was still not convinced it was my heart. I followed up with a doctor in town and he has taken great care of me.

I’m almost 34 years old. Why the heck am I on blood pressure meds? Talk about feeling old and regretful about not taking care of myself. These pills take some time to go into effect. After a few weeks I started to feel better. My new doctor put me on Zoloft to help with the anxiety and depression. The blood pressure pills helped. I wasn’t feeling the premature beats. I thought I could beat it. One night I decided to have a drink. One drink. I don’t even think I put that much alcohol in it. About two o clock in the morning I found my heart racing uncontrollably in my chest and up into my throat. I could not calm down. I was scared all over again. AGAIN!!! I fought it until about six in the morning. Now we are talking about a heart rate over 100 bpm for at least four hours. Draining is not the word. I managed to sleep for maybe an hour. I woke up, took a BP pill on schedule and called the on-call number for my doctor. He actually called me back and walked me through this attack. I finally calmed down and could sleep. It was at this moment that I realized I was suffering from anxiety. It was not my heart and I wasn’t going to die from this. It took me three weeks to realize that. You can’t overcome anxiety if you don’t believe you suffer from it. Everyone deals with it differently. For me, I get heart palpitations and a racing heart beat out of the blue. Other people get sick to their stomach. Still others have multiple symptoms.

The problem is it is incredibly confusing. I don’t feel stressed. I am not worrying about anything. I’m not drinking the triggers: caffeine and alcohol. I’m losing quite a bit of weight. Why am I getting these panic attacks? It is BEYOND FRUSTRATING. I was doing well on the meds for a few weeks when I started to notice my heart rate was gradually going down and staying way down. Last week, in fact, I charted several days of having a heart rate around 39-51 beats per minute. Ask yourself what the “normal” heart rate is…

60-100 beats per minute.

Well, something isn’t right! I was relaxed, calm, and generally feeling good. I was tired. I decided to go in and see my doctor again. I also bought and at home blood pressure monitor. I measured it every day for a week: 116/67, 111/65, 123/70…normal range here people. Why am I on blood pressure pills? I was pretty concerned with my low heart rate. I couldn’t even really get it up if I walked. At my appointment the doctor pulled me off those bad boys. Now after a few days and a few racing heart beat incidents later my pulse seems to be back up in the normal range. They still have me on Zoloft, even though I can’t tell it is doing anything. Tonight I felt that premature beat again. Of course, it was during and after work. Sometimes I feel I just can’t win.

My whole point is this can happen to anyone. I wanted to share my story because I know many of you that have dealt with anxiety. I am not a pill person. I hate taking medicine. Somehow, someway I will find a way to deal with this. I want to beat this. I have immersed myself in literature about anxiety, the heart, stress and panic attacks. I’ve become quite the little expert on what is troubling me. The bad part is I know how I got here; I just don’t know how to stop it inside. A pill cannot fix that. Only I can. I’m looking into meditation and some other options. I will try anything.

I don’t think I could’ve gotten this far without my husband, my family and my friends being so patient and loving to me. They might not understand what is happening to me, but they are still there for me. So XOXO to all of you. Why blog about it? Why not? People blog about stupid crap all the time. This is me and what is happening in my life right now. I’m not ashamed to tell my story or confess on paper my fears about all of this. I needed to get it out. It feels damn good to get it all out too. Thanks baby for suggesting writing about it!

Until next time…