Update

I’ve been lucky this year.  Paxil CR has done a great job of handling my general anxiety, and my IBS has been (mostly) in remission.  Anyone else out there have any stories, good or bad?

Lighten Things Up a Bit

Peppermint

I’ve been experimenting with taking peppermint oil capsules to help control IBS.  I have to buy them online, as no one in my area has even heard of them.  I suppose that’s the price one pays for living out in the ass-end of space.  There’s been some promising research on it, so I’ll let you know how it goes.  So far the only drawback is peppermint belches.

Discovery Health

The Discovery channel has an interesting show about anxiety.  You can watch clips at: http://health.discovery.com/videos/psych-week-2010/

And additional info on their site.

What Does It Feel Like?

Although some of the details vary from person to person, and sometimes the descriptions can be vague and confused, when someone describes an anxiety attack to someone else who has them, they understand on a level almost like telepathy.  They may not share the exact same symptoms, but the feeling of pure panic translates across people.

Some people have described theirs as a fear they’re about to have a heart attack.  Some have described theirs as a fear they’re dying.  Mine feels like a combination of coming unglued and violently defecating.  Having IBS for so long, my bowels are the area that I fear most, so that’s one of the big teeth that bite into me.  Other people, not having that particular monkey on their back, feel the bite of death, the heavy breathing of the Reaper at their neck.

That part can vary.  But what doesn’t vary is how it makes you feel.  If you haven’t felt true panic, you’re a lucky person indeed.  And you probably aren’t reading this blog.  It’s a base feeling, an almost primitive emotion hardwired into our systems.  It’s a fear like no other.  You have to get away, to escape, to survive.  And it doesn’t matter who you trample in your escape.  Nothing else matters.  Your vision tunnels towards finding some way out of the trap you’ve stumbled into.

You start to sweat even as you feel cold.  Your heart races.  Your mouth dries up and your stomach clenches.  Your breath comes in quick bursts and you shake like you might come apart.  You wonder if people can tell you’re seconds from going totally apeshit.  And you realize you don’t care if they do.

On a biological level, your body is preparing to fight or flee, the perfect “fight or flight” response.  It’s very useful if you just turned a corner and found yourself facing a saber tooth tiger.  Not so useful if you’re driving to work or standing in line at the store.

If I’m with my family on some outing, I try to hold my shit together until it passes.  And it always does, although it seems like it takes years.  If I see an escape opening, I try to take it, like suggesting that maybe we should take a break in a nice restaurant (where I can go to the bathroom and decompress). 

I try to tell myself, it’s all in my head.  It will go away.  Go to your calm place and wait.

It’s like thinking about cold water when you’re hand is on fire.

And we all go through it.

Disney World on Spring Break? Seriously?

Last year I took my family to Disney World during Spring Break, using the ill gotten gains from the sale of white pre-pubescent slaves.  Or whatever.  I hate leaving the house, but the rest of the family is normal, so off the the Magic Kingdom we went.  After all, the weather was nice, so how bad could it be?

omg.  omFg!

Everyone on the planet was at Disney World that week.  If you think you weren’t, then you must have been sleepwalking, because I saw you there.  It was so crowded that the Magic Kingdom (and other parks) had to stop letting people in because they had reached capacity.  And their capacity if friggin enormous!

And I have a problem with crowds.

When we hit Main Street, it was more crowded than Roppongi in Tokyo.  It was wall to wall people, in full tourist mode, flowing like a wave in various directions, crashing against mouse shaped stones and spilling down cobblestone canals.  Even though  I was holding a child’s hand in each of mine, a large part of my brain was screaming to turn and run, flee, escape before something horrible happened.

I stared at my feet, which made it a little better.  Just ground.  I let my wife pick the direction, and use the stroller to break trail.  If she was too slow, I cut in front and bulled my way through.

It was horrible.  Not to mention, with so many people there, you couldn’t get on any rides in under two hours.  And the Haunted Mansion ride, one of my favorites, had a line going all the way to Frontierland (that’s a long line).

Everyone was grumpy, but I spent the whole week on the verge of panic.  I don’t remember it being that way as a kid…

An incident near a large garden

I want to mention that anything mentioned in this blog that may be illegal, libelous, or otherwise actionable are purely works of fiction.  Told to me by someone else.  In a dream.

I was driving to pick up my son at gymnastics.  His team is about thirty minutes away from my comfort zone.  But normally I don’t have a problem.  This time, though, my IBS decided to be a little unruly.  Halfway between someplace and no place, nature started calling.  The sort of call that begins as a familiar percolating and rapidly escalates.  I knew I didn’t have a lot of time, but I wasn’t near anything with an open restroom.  I had enough time – maybe – to pick a place to try.  If I was wrong, or the restrooms were closed, or being cleaned, I was in trouble.  Time waits for no man, and neither does IBS.

Up ahead I saw cars pulling into a popular botanical garden that we were members of.  Usually they closed at 5pm (and it was now 6pm), but it looked like they were open, judging by the people there.  So I committed my resources and turned in there.

I parked in the nearest spot to the building (okay, I wasn’t TECHNICALLY handicapped, but I didn’t have the time to argue), and ran to the door.

I had made a mistake.

The garden and buildings weren’t open.  They were having an outdoor concert.  And there was a line of a gazillion people waiting to get in.  The door I was standing in front of was locked, and not part of the evening’s festivities.

But I was simply out of time. 

So, while people milled around me, some wondering why I had parked illegally, I grabbed the door handle and pulled.  I did my best to keep my facial expression calm, as if I was just opening any old door.  The lock snapped under my adrenalin-lace Mr. Incredible strength (I can get a lot done when I put my weight into something ), and I went in.  The bathroom was used with extreme prejudice.  I wondered if I had triggered some alarm, but frankly, I didn’t care at that point.  Some human responses can not be overridden with fear.

This is my life.