Tuesday, May 7, 2013

No place like home

My house is noisy at night. The fish tank filter, water fountains, not to mention the hubby's snoring. Aside from all that the night is when I feel most alive. I guess three months after I quit bartending I still feel most like myself when the sun goes down. My medication has worn thin and it is easier for me to think.
After my last appointment with my psychologist I did some research on what he called "non-epileptic seizures" What I thought had been panic attacks were apparently something entirely different.
When my psychiatrist asked me to explain to him what a "panic episode" was like for me, he explained to me that usually when someone has a panic attack they can completely internalize it, you could look at them and have no idea that something horrible was going on inside them. My experience has been very different. It starts with flashbacks that lead to half-hour to hours long episodes in which I would become a tightly curled up shaking, sobbing,austing. 
mess of pain. It is usually followed my major disorientation, I would be completely unaware of how long the episode lasted, and it is completely exh
The worst one I can recall hit me when I was in the middle of the staircase in my house. I had started to feel that heavy weight on my chest that makes it hard to breath. The dizziness followed shortly and I hurried upstairs to my bedroom to get the number for the crisis line my victim advocate had given me. I was halfway down the stairs when I felt a physical blow to the chest and in a whirl of dreadful memories I lost all physical control of my body and collided down the stairs. 
I recall a brief moment of conscious thought during the episode that I reached out to my phone next to me and with all the means I had I texted a simple "sos" to my husband. He called me promptly but I was unable to give him any audible response to whatever he was saying and I did not understand a word of it. My mind couldn't connect his words to anything I could understand. I laid there shaking, crying for what felt like hours until I lost consciousness. My younger sister found me later, still at the bottom of the stairs. 
All I recall after that is a splitting headache and an incredible pain throughout my body. I realized passingly that there was blood on the floor that had spilled from a gash in my head. My hair still hasn't come all the way back in from where it was torn out upon my landing. 
I later put together that after Jordan couldn't get a coherent response out of me he called Danica thinking she could get to me more quickly. The "lifetime" that I laid there turned out to be about forty minutes. 
It was shortly after this incident that I finally decided to seek out professional help. 
Sometimes my husband looks at me with a grim face asking why I won't go to the store with him. What am I so afraid of? Nothing bad is going to happen. It is hard to put into words the fact that I carry the bad with me. It is a sort of disease that falls into occasional dormancy, that can awake at any moment without warning. It is bad enough to have something like that happen to you in your own home but can you imagine experiencing that in a public place, In a building full of strangers...staring...confused...scared of you not knowing that you are not the threat? I will fight my battles but for now, I will fight them within the walls of my own home.

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