Psycho-therapy

This week I got to go see my psychiatrist to see how my medication is working. And yes, I too am part of the prozac generation although I resisted that designation for a very long time. Finally, when the panic attacks became too much and I got awfully tired of battling depression on a regular basis, I had to call in the calvary for some help.

The psychiatrist asked me how things were going (as if he could really tell a whole lot from 15 minutes of time with me every three months, but ah well!), and I told him that I was happy with my current medication. What with the complete lack of stability in my world these days, I know that without the pills, I'd be a nutcase. In fact, as I told him, I can feel the depression and anxiety, but thankfully it's over here floating in a cloud just beyond the barrier of Prestiq and Clonozepam. I don't like the weight that anti-depressants seem to adhere to my butt, but I do like being non-suicidal. And these days, with the stabilizing help of drugs, my GI system is not the happiest in the world. the little bundle of nerves governing that section of my body is in all kinds of an uproar about the amount of stress I'm carrying around with me.

Will I get the job, or not? If so, can I get to Alabama and be ready for school before it starts? If not, will things go ok here in Texas? Can I get my book ready, can I get that non-profit working? What does the future hold for me? And would it hurry up and just let me know already?? That person that I may have let past my walls and guards - why is he screwing with me now? Seriously, it's enough to make a sane person go crazy. And a crazy, IBS-living person might stray farther from the path of sanity. But then again, sanity just might be overrated.

In the meantime, I'm doing all sorts of relaxation techniques I've learned over the years. Yoga and I are becoming very very good friends this week, and running in the hot Texas nights is becoming a norm. Exercise, yoga, and a bit of too many cookies will help me get through this period of instability, both in life and in the body. I'm also going to start another blog here on quotes I find in books I read. I read far more than the average person, and I'm always stumbling across quotes that I would like to work with someday or that at the very least, should be shared with others.

Saga continuation

Last week, while I was on my way to Austin to visit folks, I nearly died in my car. I was on the service road of I-35, and wasn't paying attention to the road. To be so incredibly middle-class, I was looking for a Starbucks that the sign on the highway told me was off this exit. I was so concerned with looking for the entrance to the coffee shop that I didn't notice the light had turned from green to yellow to red. I looked up, freaked, tried to stop, realized that wasn't going to work, and then went through the light. I could have been killed, or worse, killed someone else. And all because I really wanted a cup of coffee. How pathetic.

But I was reminded again this past week that sometimes that person who sped through the light might be a dumbass like I was while looking for some coffee, but sometimes that person has a pressing need. (Need I say that defensive driving is a good thing?) The last post I made, about the the day I took the GRE, was also the last time I went straight through a red light. That time, though, there was a reason beyond coffee.

After I took the GRE, I continued down the road to go visit my friend Laura, who lived in Houston at the time and worked at Compaq. While well equipped with my toilet paper in the car for the trip, I was already emotionally and physically exhausted, and this was also in a time before I lost all sense of modesty. Laura was going to meet me after a 3/4 day at work at her apartment, but she wasn't there when I arrived. No problem, right? I've got AC in the truck and music to listen to, right? Well, yes, if you disregard the tiny little problem that presented itself forcefully in my gut shortly after ringing the doorbell to no avail. Oh shit. Literally.

I knocked on the people's door across the way - no luck. I went to my truck, thinking I could spot a place to do some business - no luck. The parking lot and apartment building was a wide-open field with windows and doors and pitifully few cars for cover. I jumped in my truck, sped out of the parking lot, ran two redlights and swerved across traffic in order to get to the Church's chicken store right down the road. I made it to the bathroom, which I'm happy about. But now when I think of it, I wonder what the price could have been.

After that, I called my friend and told her to call me back when she got home. I wasn't moving out of that joint until I knew I was able to go inside her apartment. I don't think I left her apartment again during that visit. I let the anxiety at my IBS issues take control. It wasn't the first time I did that nor the last.

Mind and Body

I was thinking today, since my stomach hurts, about the relationship between stress and the gastrointestinal system. All stress, all excitement, all of everything really affects how my GI system works. And now that I'm sitting on pins and needles waiting to hear if I get a year-long position at Auburn, I'm feeling the stress. Even though I know that if I don't get the position, then I'm ok - I've got the assurance of the adjunct coordinator at the local community college that I can teach a couple classes, and I'm pretty sure I can pick one up at UT-Austin. But still....a real position with benefits has my stomach in wads.

Yet I was reminded this past week of what it used to be like when my little bundle of nerves in the stomach was even more freaked out by my constant digestion of foods the tummy didn't like. I was asked to audition for Kaplan as a teacher for the GRE or SAT this past week. But that means that I would have to retake the tests since my scores are more than five years old. My mother urged me to study for the exam, but I didn't feel that way and so I felt like explaining.

The first and only time I took the GRE was so I could apply to grad school. I was in the midst of my 12 year fun and games with explosive diarrhea, and since all that was made worse by stress, you can imagine how much fun it was to take the GRE - a test so loaded with stress it should be called such. I was living for the summer with my dad in Longview, TX, but the closest place I could take the GRE was at Stephen F. Austin State U. about 2.5 hours away. So I got up at 5 a.m., drove 2.5 hours under high stress to arrive and take the exam at 8 a.m. I was so stressed out that I had to get up TWENTY-THREE times during the course of the exam to go to the bathroom. I swear this is probably a guiness book of world record for the most times a person has to poo during a three and a half hour exam. Thankfully, the proctors only made me sign out the first 10 times - because you know they don't stop the time on your exam just because you are having difficulties with the restroom. (Now, I would just wear depends and clean myself up later, but that was then, this is now.)

I still scored a 760 on the math, a 760 on the analytical and a 700 on the verbal. The analytical has been replaced by writing now. And I figured after 30 hours of math in grad school and a Ph.D. in English, if I can't score well on all parts of the test, I definitely have a problem. And it isn't the bathroom!

Memory of Panic

Some neighbors came over last night, and I found it particularly interesting when our discussion turned to worries about health. I mentioned my first experience with a panic attack, and I was gratified to note that of the five of us at the table, three had had a panic attack. Anxiety disorders are more widespread than even I had known.

I remember my first panic attack, which happened around January of 1998. Unlike the others at the table, I didn't "just" have a panic attack. I don't remember having anxiety issues until I started having IBS symptoms. Funny how a year long experience of uncontrollable, daily diarrhea will cause a little anxiety! 'Cause this is your grandmother's lack of control, and it's hard when you're 20. I remember the first time I wore depends to deal with traveling on a plane with the experience's interminable lines. A friend who worked at a nursing home asked me if I was ready for a room at the home yet. Not quite yet, I replied, but getting close.

The crushing feeling of a panic attack was not something I'd ever experienced, and how was I to know that it would feel like I was dying? There I was, studying for a German exam, sitting on the couch, and all of a sudden, the bottom dropped out of my world. Tightness in the chest, can't breath, shaking, and a moment when it feels like the world stops and the heart does so with it. The first thought, "this is a heart attack."

I freaked, as so many do with their first panic attack. And to my chagrin, I called 911. Paramedics in route, I'm still freaking out. I'm dying after all. Didn't take the paramedics long to figure out that what I was experience was panic. I felt like a complete and total idiot, and it was a long time before I let panic drive me to the medical community. (another story, another time). In and of itself that's pretty amazing since that first of the panic attacks became a normal part of my life - anxiety can become normal if experienced long enough.