Just one thing at a time

On Monday I woke up five minutes before the alarm, seven minutes before the SAD wake-up light. I was full-on awake, too, not the usual foggy, groggy, reluctant half-awake that starts most mornings.

My stomach lurched and a sense of dread took over, covering me just as effectively as the fuzzy blanket touching my cheek. I couldn't quite catch my breath and my stomach clenched. Anxiety. I was being squeezed in the tight grip of anxiety. Not a great way to start a Monday morning.

I fought back tears and tried to identify the source of my misery. The wake-up light switched on and the cat, who had been gently licking my hand, walked on my head, abandoning me for the wave of photons pouring out of the light. She's in love with that thing. The light only made me more irritable because now that I could see, I couldn't concentrate on finding the reason anxiety had slapped me awake at 5:55 A.M.

Breathing was a challenge, but I realized it had nothing to do with anxiety. Lately I've felt like my lungs have been pricked full of pinholes, so air goes in but doesn't build up any satisfying, chest-expanding pressure, nor does it seem to stay in my lungs. My most recent inhale generated a loud creaking noise that sounded more like a tired sofa than like a gentle breath.

I made it through the morning routine, but I was slow--so damn slow my husband had to get my breakfast ready. On the way to work, the anxiety almost choked me and I started to cry. There's a huge, perpetual construction project along the creek that I knew I couldn't cry through--it required my complete attention.

Throughout the week, the anxiety showed up several more times, but it was overshadowed by something much more acute. For the past month, a pain has been growing in my lower abdomen. I have IBS and the devil's constellation of symptoms related to interstitial cystitis. One more abdominal pain doesn't usually get my attention, but this one has steadily worsened to the point of being debilitating. I'm not bleeding from any part of my anatomy, so it's not cancer. I can't even identify its origination point. I have something akin to cramps, but much worse. It feels like I am being scraped and poked from the inside out by a thousand jagged pins. Using the toilet has become agony as any function there results in not relief, but almost immediate gut-tearing pain that takes my pinhole-fragile breath away. When I walk, it feel like my bladder is bouncing hard on a rickety suspension system. I can't pull in my gut--the pressure is too uncomfortable and I am chronically bloated. This pain is bad. Really bad.

Fatigue. I went from being a person who couldn't sleep to one who can't stay awake. I'm exhausted half-way through my work day. When I come home, I fall asleep on the couch by 7:30 and don't wake up until 10:00. This is no winter malaise, despite the cold. Sometimes I get so cold, my feet hurt from the sensation. My body is wracked with chills that come in great spasms. The only relief is to wear pajamas, socks, and a fleece, and then get into bed under lots of covers with an oversized heating pad to warm my core.

I don't know if this is urinary, intestinal, or gynecological. This is exactly where I started two years ago and a succession of blood tests, ultrasounds, and digital exams revealed nothing. I have no interest in going through that again.

My body's pain mechanisms haven't worked right since I had shingles. It's bad enough I have chronic breast pain (harmless--it's referred pain from the shingles nerve damage).

I'm worried about the nonprofit. I'm concerned about my lackluster job performance lately. I'm obsessed with the thoughts surrounding my health. For whatever reason, I am petrified my BP drugs are going to fail. What will I do if and when that happens?

Anxiety. It's never just one thing. It's not the fear the drugs will fail; it's a gut-wrenching fear that my BP will overpower them and I will break apart into a shattered mess of irrational, rude, hyper-kinetic, labile mood, socially inappropriate unpleasantness. Why can't hypomania be unipolar the way depression is?

Coping would be much easier if these things would visit one at a time.

I am not afraid to die, but the thought of chronic suffering has me sliding into that dark place where anxiety finds a fertile environment that throws me even more off-kilter.

If I could just sleep a little bit more, maybe someone could wake me when it's over.