Saturday (April 25) was the celebration for Earth Day (April 22). It was attached to the city’s farmers market. I will admit, it took me a minute to get my courage up to start talking to people. My anxiety has been higher the past few weeks. By higher, I mean thinking about supplementing it with vitamin X with my daily social meds. I didn’t. I just focus my mind on other things and try to suppress it the best I can. Not that suppressing it is really going to help in the scheme of things, but I didn’t have time to dig down to the splinter causing this rash of irritation. After, I went to the farmers market to see what they had to offer. My social and emotional goal is to go again or make it a weekly thing to get me out of the house.
The anxiety is worrying me, or should I say it’s causing anxiety, which is making it worse. I think I almost had a full-on panic attack when I worked in the food pantry at Open Heart Kitchen. I took big 50lbs bags of potatoes and carrots and creating 2lb to 3lb bags for easy hand out. Within the first hour, my eyes began to feel like there were curtains slowly closing around my eyes. Not just seeing the darkness coming but feeling it as well. I started to get lightheaded and I thought I would lose consciousness. I went to the table to see if there was room for me to sit down and help them cut net bags. There was a chair but not space to cut….so I walked away. I would assume, if I showed the distress on the outside (pale out, or seeming incoherent, someone would have said something) I went back to my table and began to put onions in netted bags. It cleared up and went away. I didn’t faint. I didn’t make much of a fool of myself by asking for help. Yea me.
I bring this up now because while I was walking the farmers market I started feeling the same way. I’d have these episodes before when I was working with an acute and prolonged case of irritable bowel syndrome. Then I thought it was dehydration. I wasn’t dehydrated at OHK, I might have been at the farmers market.
My anxiety has been taking this opportunity to play “You’re dying, why try.” song and “What’s going to happen to Sammy” on the flip side. I’m waking up in the middle of the night with my heart racing and my breath trying to catch up. I try to push the record off the player, but my brain keeps spinning, the evil pixies keep singing and I throw myself into distracting pursuits to take my mind off things.
There is hopeful news. I finally got my medical straightened out and I see a doctor on Wednesday. My prefrontal cortex is saying it’s probably nothing, just anxiety or dehydration. My limbic system is shouting: BRAIN TUMOR. I will say, a disease of the brain, the one thing I’ve prized over everything else in my life is terrifying.
Blogging From The Void 