Whew - now I know

Well, I've just gotten a real head-full of information from just the latest posts (including that one from niamac - the loonnnggg one).  What I'm getting is that the more I let it bother me the worse it will get.  And that being afraid of the medication is not such a good thing.  Okay.  I'm going to talk to the doctor about a short course of anti-anxiety medication, long enough anyway to give me a cooling off period.  

I have some very real medical health issues, some very stressing life problems and a long history with emotional dysfunction.  All good reasons to be anxious.  Lately I've been convinced I am dying.  But, after reading so many posts about that fear (and despite the fact that infections have really and truly nearly killed me a couple of times) I'm going to chill out.  Pursue the medical tests, etc. but accept that anxiety is a great big issue that won't just go away on its own.  

I recently found out - through a hair-raising experience of nearly being involuntarily committed to a psych hospital after a Benedryl and antibiotic drug reaction-induced nervous breakdown - that fear of my feelings is my greatest problem.  Okay, I freak out, cry, feel like I'm losing my mind.  But I proved to myself when I spent eight hours talking them out of committting me that i CAN control my fear.  I had gone to a doctor appointment regarding the drug reaction at a hospital in a very crime-ridden city (BIG important hospital/school) an hour from where I live.  They couldn't decide whether I'd really had a drug reaction or if it was a fungal infection (I went equiped with a medical abstract about a drug eruption/reaction that EXACTLY described what I was experiencing and they'd never heard of it).  When they told me they couldn't treat me until after biopsy (I was out of my mind with a whole body rash, horribly itchy, five days of 50mg four times a day Benedryl (per instruction from a doctor I'd already seen who misdiagnosed the rash as poison ivy), over a week of zero sleep...  I just broke down and cried, hard, and knew I was having another nervous breakdown, which scared the !!! out of me.  They asked questions about suicidal thinking that I was too out-of-it to lie about (I'm pathologically honest, anyway) - I'm NOT suicidal, I don't want to die, but I THINK about it every day.  I ended up on the locked psych ward in their ER - before I realized what was happening.  I cried until the last dose of Benedry I had taken wore off.  (Later I read on the box that it can cause agitation "in children" - I am 58.)  About that time another somebody-very-young doctor came in and I said I wanted to go home and she told me they were going to keep me in the hospital and give me some meds, which was, uh... okay, I guess... oh, damn... not again...  until she said, "But we don't have any beds, so we've got to find you a room somewhere."  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Somewhere?  In a crime-crazy city?  Um, no, says I, to myself and to her... changed my mind, I'll get meds on my own, after all, "we both know it takes three weeks for those meds to take effect" (she didn't expect me to know that).. let's not do that.  Man it kicked me out of that breakdown like I'd been knocked off my chair.  I talked them out of it.  Somehow I KNEW it was the Benedryl - apparently that idea was no surprise to them.  Wasn't easy, they didn't let me go until 10pm - I was strung out from the drug reaction, more than a week of no sleep from the itching and burning, Benedryl withdrawal rebound headache, and the (very real) nervous breakdown.  I was in no shape.  But i got myself out of there and got home.  

A couple of days later I got a call that the biopsy confirmed the drug reaction and got a prescription ointment for the rash - it took days to even begin to help and the itching and rash spreading have only just settled down - three weeks later - it looks like second-degree burns.  Still not much sleep, partly from the rash, partly from some very real anxieties... and I've had LOTS of time to think.  

Fear... fear is the bear.  I beat it that day, I can beat it again... and again and again.  I'm still rocky, still anxious, crying every day, but I'm not as afraid now.  These posts helped me realize I am probably not dying, despite a lifetime of other very real illness, just anxious.  Well, okay.  I don't like it, but I'm going to find a way to live with it.  Medication, as necessary - as little as possible for as short a time as possible.  But the main thing is from now on I'm going to hold onto my sanity and not just give up when it goes dorky and trys to spin out of control.  I know now that I can do it.  I'm not afraid anymore (well, that's a lie - I'm scared silly, but now I know that that's the problem).  Done.