Life really.
Over the last 5 months, I've really shed my 'rose-tinted glasses' I'm having a hard time realizing exactly what life is, and what it includes... For 20 years, my view of life was really unharmed, untouched by tragedy... I had a difficult childhood, grew up in an unstable environment with a mom who has major anxiety and depression ( which I have now too, but working through it at least. ) But I never really had to deal with sickness or mortality... I'm now seeing and excepting ( fighting every step of the way ) what life is really...There is sickness, and death... and you cannot escape it. You do not have control over everything and you never can. People get sick, people have surgery, people have disability, and people die. In the last 5 months its either been pure ka-winkie-dink or just life that: My mom got sick two months after my PE with a respiritory infection, my great grandma ( yes great, at least I can be thankful for good genes, strong women straight from Italy) had pneumonia and we all thought the worst, but thank god she pulled through and ok, my landlady at my apt. had a stroke, my doggie thats 14 years old is very sick, and now last night I come to find out that my dad needs surgery for a hernia that he neglected for 7 years! I keep thinking "is this really life, and I've been blind all this time??? or is this just a bad time in the universe for health?" At 21 years old excepting life for what it really is and excepting mortality itself is really hard! It seems like everything is hitting at once, JEEZ someone up there must really want me to take a hint huh! I spent a lot of my life avoiding the thought of sickness and death, I wanted to believe the world was perfect but I got a huge slap! Health is not a given... and now I'm realizing that being "healthy" doesnt mean you might not have a condition or ailment. When I went to the ER in the beginning of OCT. I thought I was clotting in my legs b/c I was cramping, and I was histerical ( I also just had a huge fight with my g/f about me being nutz for thinking I was clotting ) The dr brought me a xzanex and told my mom that I was a young "healthy" girl and I would be fine... My mind goes "HEALTHY??? WTF is this dr smoking? I just had PE in June" Maybee being healthy isnt being perfect? I dread having a condition... but if I were to have one does that mean Im not healthy? I have TMJ now... does that make me not healthy? I think for a long time I've been putting an unrealizistic label on health... I have TMJ and I always will and sometimes it will hurt and sometimes it wont... but it isnt going to kill me! I need to put normal expectations on my health not wish I was perfect. Its becoming more apparent to me that everyone has a health issue... back pain, migraines... heart burn... life cannot be perfect and we are not robots. I've been living in this state of denial that I never had a pain before my PE which isnt true...ive had lot of pains, and stomach viruses and nasty colds, and an apendectomy when I was 9. This mental journal has been incredible! So, my horoscope said I was going to get some "good news" on Dec. 1st... and I guess I did!I went to have my INR done and finally its bumped back up to normal 2.5 yay! it was 2.1 for a few weeks... maybee that mojito helped 8)! I went to see the urologist for a follow up, and I talked him about this issue being a side effect of coumadin and he said it very well might be, and that hed love to do a study on this. Im still taking the pill he gave me to stop me from peeing all of the time, its working fine. I cant help being annoyed I feel like an old lady! Im on coumadin and a overactive bladder pill ugh! I got really down about that last night, bc I just want to be 21. I also got an e-mail from one of our fellow DS friends about a class action suit against YAZ/YASMIN so thats great news to me! Im hoping that this will stop them from producing this stupid pill! I know believeing in Horoscopes can be total cheese but hey weather my mind power put the universe in alignment for good things to happen, or the stars are really right...good things still happened right? I saw a book on CD at borders, called the "worry cure" and I thought it would be good, so my gf found it at the library and i listened to it, I think the whole thing was 3 hours...Im gunna listen again as I may have drifted off some, but its about anxiety and I found it to be very helpful, some of it talks about money, relationships and such but some of it talks about health anxiety which really helped me understand, its like this guy is in your head and know those little thoughts and tricks your mind plays that you just dont talk about! I'm sure they have it in book form too but I like listening better! I have a pulmonologist appointment Dec. 18th, I dont know what to expect, I saw one in the hospital, but my primary wants me to go for a follow up, not because theres something wrong, I may do a post to see what they do to you lol... Im seeing my Hematologist on the 15th of dec, Im going to write down a list of questions...as thats the only way I get answers!!! This will be the first time Im seeing him since I found out my clot is dissolved! I have the ct scan report from that day taped to my wall lol it says "CT SCAN OF CHEST W/ CONTRAST: and then it says "NO ABNORMALITY" " woohoo for that, so Ill bring him a copy... just for the hell of it. My g/f leaves for CA on wednesday so Im sad, this will be the last time I'll see her for a week ugh...but the time might do us some good for the relationship. So, thats it for now.
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You know, I went through behavioral therapy for anxiety a few years ago. It was amazing and really helped me. I\'m kind of a pragmatic person, and we basically went through the different physical sensations that cause anxiety (at the time I was having bad panic attacks) and desensitized me to them - so, if I would get anxious and my heart would start beating faster, we retrained my brain to not see this as worrisome (if that makes sense). I\'ve always had anxiety and this was just after 9/11 when I was convinced that everything I ate was going to be tainted with anthrax and I was going to die (ok, now I\'m sounding really crazy!). I\'m not sure how it would be different now, now that there has been a real, life threatening thing that happened to me, but I haven\'t had bad anxiety since then.
This sounds really interesting! How do you find a behavioral therapist? Dont feel bad I was in 8th grade I think, when 9/11 happened and I would freak out when if I would so much a cough thinking I had it too! Plus, in FL we were having outbreaks of the west nile virus from mosquitos and I remember not wanting to go outside lol, even though there were like 2 cases only, and nowhere near my area...I wish I would have fixed my anxiety eariler in life, or my mom would have picked up on it...but then why would she, shes really nutz and never fixed it!
I was living in Philly at the time and there was a place called the Center for the Treatment and Study of Anxiety - a normal therapist recommended it to me. It wasn\'t that expensive, either (surprisingly). I was having several panic attacks a week back then and I think I\'ve had maybe 3 panic attacks since I finished therapy like 7 years ago.
8th grade... I was in my 20s. Ugh. Way to make me feel old :)
aww stop it your not old!
Don\'t feel bad. and you\'re right - the world isn\'t perfect. there isn\'t a such thing as perfection. If there was - trust me everyone would be happy and I do mean everyone. For a long time life to me meant kind of like that old saying that even my dad says \"life\'s a bitch and then you die\". There are some beautiful parts to life, it\'s just the matter of patience and finding that inner beauty. And yes, life can be a bitch, lord knows it can be. I have had it hard as well and I still struggle. I\'ve had a hard time making friends and I always felt there was something wrong with me and I would always think the worst. When I was finally diagnosed with my first illness at 19. PCOS - I had no idea what it was, but when I began to do research about what I was up against, I realized it wasn\'t just me that was feeling or doing certain things and bringing on the pain to myself - it was the illness as well\' almost like it was encouraging me to feel this way. After just understanding it and getting somewhat comfortable with it and accepting it, a year and a half later at 21 I was hit yet again with another illness. PE - I was told what it was. Here I was trying to change my life and yet I get hit with something else. I felt like I was being punished for trying to be healthy. I would get frustrated and I felt like a failure. But to me, I look at it as some sort of wake up call, telling me it\'s okay to feel angry, upset, frustrated, and like a failure. We all make mistakes, we\'ve gone through failures and good/bad experiences. Life is the greatest teacher that will give us lessons and experiences. You just can\'t stop. You must keep going \' cause in the end, \"life is beautiful\" (Nikki sixx).