Post by Greenfire32 on Jun 12, 2015 12:15:42 GMT -5
Well shit, I've gone and done it again.
So stress has once again landed me in the Emergency Room. As this is now the second time this has happened, I can safely say to everyone who might still doubt the "validity" of stress as an actual life-threatening condition: you're wrong.
It's a very real thing and not just something they tell kids to scare them into being good people.
As most of you know, I've been having dental work done. Mostly the new dentist is fixing the old dentist's mistakes and unintended consequences have arisen because of that. I have been in near-constant pain for the last 3ish weeks now and have been taking the max-recommended ibuprofen every day.
Also, as most of you know from the drunk streams, I am a lightweight. It doesn't take much to get the desired effect. Apply that to painkillers. While on average I haven't even come CLOSE to what you would call "over-dose levels" I am fairly sure that for ME in particular, with my own "uniqueness" so to speak, I have reached those levels...for ME. Keep in mind that ibuprofen is NOT an addictive pain killer, so the worry that I'm becoming addicting to pain killers is NOT the issue here.
I was, however, starting to notice "symptoms" in other parts of my body (and I do believe I mentioned this in one of my streams), mainly in my heart. Now, being a fairly rational person, I decided to do some research. Can drugs like ibuprofen cause heart attacks or strokes or anything like that? The answer, I found, was yes. Ibuprofen belongs to a family of drug known as NSAID (Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug) and is HIGHLY recommended that you NOT take for an extended period of time specifically because it is WELL DOCUMENTED to causing heart attacks.
Ok. Good to know. I told myself at the time to NOT take anymore ibuprofen no matter how bad the pain got. I made it two days without pain killers.
At 3am on Thursday, June 11, I awoke with a powerful thirstiness. I got up and drank some water. Of course, the temperature and the liquid nature of the water set my teeth off something fierce. This was some serious pain, you guys. It was so intense, that I wished I was dead at that very moment just so that it wouldn't hurt anymore.
With the knowledge of my past research now in the front of my mind, I bit the bullet and took two ibuprofen to numb the pain. It was nothing but pure desperation.
I was ok for about 30mins until until I suffered extreme and sudden anxiety to the point where I was no longer entirely lucid. I was absolutely one hundred percent convinced that my heart was stopping and that I was dying. There was no other reality for me. This was it. This was the end. This was my tomb.
I went downstairs to cheeseychick (we don't sleep in the same bed because of my Delayed-Sleep-Phase-Disorder), told her I loved her, and said I was dying. Now when the person you live with wakes you up at 3am and basically says, "These are my last words, watch me die," HER stress levels increased 100 fold.
I fought her tooth and nail when she said we were going to the hospital because I absolutely HATE doctors. We ended up walking around the block for about 2 hours because I found that if I was MOVING, the anxiety and the feeling of impending doom was subsided. But if I was STILL, I was dead. I literally felt like I was outrunning death itself. Like the reaper was attached to me by a string and if I kept moving I could feel myself pulling him behind me yet out of reach, but if I stopped he would catch up get me.
After about 2 hours of walking the block, I decided the worst has passed and we sat down in the house for about 5 minutes before it started all over again. Just like before, if I was constantly moving, never stopping not even for a second, I was fine.
Needless to say this time, she took me to the ER. Blood was drawn, drug test was taken (100% positive they thought I was tripping on drugs at this point because again, constantly pacing) and they hooked me up to an EKG and heart monitor to show me that my heart was NOT stopping. It was a little fast, but for someone who thinks they're dying, a fast heart beat isn't exactly alien territory.
The ER called mental health and had a lady talk to me about what was happening and basically said that something was causing my fight or flight response to trigger and for some reason it wasn't turning off. I had been in a constant state of DEEP fear of mortality for about 5 hours by this point.
She asked me if I was suicidal or was having bad thoughts. I told her "no" and that's the truth. I told her I wasn't having dark THOUGHTS, I was having dark FEELINGS. I didn't think that I wanted suicide or that I wanted to hurt other people, I was just 100% convinced that my body was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it. There was a certain futility to the whole thing.
I told her the worst part wasn't that I was FEELING like I was dying, but that I could feel a PHYSICAL feeling of death as well. I told her the whole reason why I thought my heart was stopping in the first place is because it PHYSICALLY felt like my heart was stopping (and had been the whole time I was in that state of mind).
If it WAS just in my head, I could block it by thinking of other things and just keeping my mind on anything but that, but it wasn't JUST in my head, I could feel it in my BODY too.
Ultimately, she told me that because ALL of the tests they ran on my body came back negative for anything, whatever was causing this was a problem of mental health and that it was probably brought on by a recent and sudden massive increase of stress (see above posts for such an example). She also told me that people's brains usually stop developing fully around the 25-30 year old mark and that problems such as this could have always been there in the background, blocked by my brain's own development. And now that it's fully grown, problems such as this could start to become "normal" for me.
I sincerely hope this isn't the case.
She prescribed me Zanex and now I'm officially a mental health patient. The good news? I'm not crazy or anything, I just cant control my flight or fight response for some reason. Hopefully its just a temporary thing and not my life as of yesterday.
I write this post 100% lucidly and mostly panic free. I feel fine as of right now, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a little panic in the back of my mind at this very moment.
So what does this mean for my streams? I don't really know. In a way, my streams are therapeutic, so I don't want to stop doing them. However, since I don't really know what is triggering this whole problem, I am afraid to keep doing them at the same time.
For now, I'm going to continue doing them. But should I start having an attack, the stream is over and it's over for the rest of the day.
It's so strange to think that just 2 days ago I was "normal" and now I'm...whatever this is.
So stress has once again landed me in the Emergency Room. As this is now the second time this has happened, I can safely say to everyone who might still doubt the "validity" of stress as an actual life-threatening condition: you're wrong.
It's a very real thing and not just something they tell kids to scare them into being good people.
As most of you know, I've been having dental work done. Mostly the new dentist is fixing the old dentist's mistakes and unintended consequences have arisen because of that. I have been in near-constant pain for the last 3ish weeks now and have been taking the max-recommended ibuprofen every day.
Also, as most of you know from the drunk streams, I am a lightweight. It doesn't take much to get the desired effect. Apply that to painkillers. While on average I haven't even come CLOSE to what you would call "over-dose levels" I am fairly sure that for ME in particular, with my own "uniqueness" so to speak, I have reached those levels...for ME. Keep in mind that ibuprofen is NOT an addictive pain killer, so the worry that I'm becoming addicting to pain killers is NOT the issue here.
I was, however, starting to notice "symptoms" in other parts of my body (and I do believe I mentioned this in one of my streams), mainly in my heart. Now, being a fairly rational person, I decided to do some research. Can drugs like ibuprofen cause heart attacks or strokes or anything like that? The answer, I found, was yes. Ibuprofen belongs to a family of drug known as NSAID (Non Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug) and is HIGHLY recommended that you NOT take for an extended period of time specifically because it is WELL DOCUMENTED to causing heart attacks.
Ok. Good to know. I told myself at the time to NOT take anymore ibuprofen no matter how bad the pain got. I made it two days without pain killers.
At 3am on Thursday, June 11, I awoke with a powerful thirstiness. I got up and drank some water. Of course, the temperature and the liquid nature of the water set my teeth off something fierce. This was some serious pain, you guys. It was so intense, that I wished I was dead at that very moment just so that it wouldn't hurt anymore.
With the knowledge of my past research now in the front of my mind, I bit the bullet and took two ibuprofen to numb the pain. It was nothing but pure desperation.
I was ok for about 30mins until until I suffered extreme and sudden anxiety to the point where I was no longer entirely lucid. I was absolutely one hundred percent convinced that my heart was stopping and that I was dying. There was no other reality for me. This was it. This was the end. This was my tomb.
I went downstairs to cheeseychick (we don't sleep in the same bed because of my Delayed-Sleep-Phase-Disorder), told her I loved her, and said I was dying. Now when the person you live with wakes you up at 3am and basically says, "These are my last words, watch me die," HER stress levels increased 100 fold.
I fought her tooth and nail when she said we were going to the hospital because I absolutely HATE doctors. We ended up walking around the block for about 2 hours because I found that if I was MOVING, the anxiety and the feeling of impending doom was subsided. But if I was STILL, I was dead. I literally felt like I was outrunning death itself. Like the reaper was attached to me by a string and if I kept moving I could feel myself pulling him behind me yet out of reach, but if I stopped he would catch up get me.
After about 2 hours of walking the block, I decided the worst has passed and we sat down in the house for about 5 minutes before it started all over again. Just like before, if I was constantly moving, never stopping not even for a second, I was fine.
Needless to say this time, she took me to the ER. Blood was drawn, drug test was taken (100% positive they thought I was tripping on drugs at this point because again, constantly pacing) and they hooked me up to an EKG and heart monitor to show me that my heart was NOT stopping. It was a little fast, but for someone who thinks they're dying, a fast heart beat isn't exactly alien territory.
The ER called mental health and had a lady talk to me about what was happening and basically said that something was causing my fight or flight response to trigger and for some reason it wasn't turning off. I had been in a constant state of DEEP fear of mortality for about 5 hours by this point.
She asked me if I was suicidal or was having bad thoughts. I told her "no" and that's the truth. I told her I wasn't having dark THOUGHTS, I was having dark FEELINGS. I didn't think that I wanted suicide or that I wanted to hurt other people, I was just 100% convinced that my body was dying and that there was nothing I could do about it. There was a certain futility to the whole thing.
I told her the worst part wasn't that I was FEELING like I was dying, but that I could feel a PHYSICAL feeling of death as well. I told her the whole reason why I thought my heart was stopping in the first place is because it PHYSICALLY felt like my heart was stopping (and had been the whole time I was in that state of mind).
If it WAS just in my head, I could block it by thinking of other things and just keeping my mind on anything but that, but it wasn't JUST in my head, I could feel it in my BODY too.
Ultimately, she told me that because ALL of the tests they ran on my body came back negative for anything, whatever was causing this was a problem of mental health and that it was probably brought on by a recent and sudden massive increase of stress (see above posts for such an example). She also told me that people's brains usually stop developing fully around the 25-30 year old mark and that problems such as this could have always been there in the background, blocked by my brain's own development. And now that it's fully grown, problems such as this could start to become "normal" for me.
I sincerely hope this isn't the case.
She prescribed me Zanex and now I'm officially a mental health patient. The good news? I'm not crazy or anything, I just cant control my flight or fight response for some reason. Hopefully its just a temporary thing and not my life as of yesterday.
I write this post 100% lucidly and mostly panic free. I feel fine as of right now, but I would be lying if I said I didn't feel a little panic in the back of my mind at this very moment.
So what does this mean for my streams? I don't really know. In a way, my streams are therapeutic, so I don't want to stop doing them. However, since I don't really know what is triggering this whole problem, I am afraid to keep doing them at the same time.
For now, I'm going to continue doing them. But should I start having an attack, the stream is over and it's over for the rest of the day.
It's so strange to think that just 2 days ago I was "normal" and now I'm...whatever this is.