Me and my anxiety
A peak into my very chaotic last four months
Last year was a very anxious year for me. It was though my shoulders were up, ready for an attack at every moment. I experienced so much in 365 days. I took a mental health leave from my job. I was deeply unmotivated and agitated by everyone and everything at my workplace. I negotiated a union contract that would dictate the wages and labor practices of 50 people. I became an aunt. I was ghosted by a guy and then ran in to that very same guy at a party on his rooftop. Two of my closest coworkers got news job. I traveled alone in Europe. My brother moved from just a 15-minute walk from me to over an hour away. I felt simultaneously in crisis mode and at a standstill. Thankful for my life and wishing for more. And all these extreme highs and lows came to a head in early November.
On a mild and slow Friday, I worked from a cafe near my apartment. I was sweating and noticing every single noise around me. The cafe doesn’t have blinds and the sun shined directly on my forehead. I could not focus. Every person that walked in distracted me. My headphones gave me a headache. My jeans were too tight. The coffee I paid too much for pumped through my veins like a drug. My heart was going way too fast and I couldn’t breathe. After an hour of pointless “work,” I went home and tried to settle myself, but nothing helped. I sat in a virtual meeting and knew I needed to see a doctor.
I walked myself to Urgent Care and very impatiently waited for someone to see me. After I was called back, I told the nurse my symptoms - heart palpitations, shortness of breath. And that I have a family history of blood clots. She grabbed the doctor who did not decrease my anxiety as she described her experience with pulmonary embolisms. They ran an EKG, which is when doctors stick a bunch of wires all over your chest to check if your heart rate is normal. Luckily, mine was, but the doctor sent me home with a chest x-ray and pulmonologist referral and the words, “If something feels off, trust your gut and go to the emergency room.”
I left and immediately started sobbing. I didn’t get any answers. I still couldn’t breathe. And my heart was still racing. I called my mom trying to figure out what to do. Going home to panic about my symptoms didn’t feel like an option. So, I Ubered to the ER. My friend Emily met me there, because there was absolutely no way I could face this alone. I also called my brother and sister-in-law who met me at the hospital. They were on their way to have a date night and derailed it to be with me. I was quickly ushered in as I was having chest pain.
This was my worst nightmare. I have never liked doctors. I have always been anxious before going. And I was spending my Friday night in the ER. As I was standing in the x-ray room braless with a white t-shirt on, my mom arrived. She had been visiting my nephew and raced to the ER after I called her in a panic. After about three hours in the ER still in those jeans that felt too tight, another EKG, a chest x-ray, blood tests, and a nebulizer, I was sent home with an asthma diagnosis. I thought everything was fine.
But for the next few weeks, nothing improved. I was still feeling my heart race throughout my entire body, and I could not get a deep breath. My pulmonologist ran asthma tests and confirmed I did not have that. She then thought I had chronic GERD, which is an absolutely disgusting name for acid reflux. So, I took medicine to prevent that, but didn’t feel any better. On Thanksgiving, I felt completely off. My hands felt tingly, I was nervous and on edge, hearth still racing. Everything felt the same even though I had seen so many doctors.
I was then sent to get a chest CT scan all the way in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I took a 40-minute Uber, once again got naked in a strange doctor’s office, put on an itchy robe, and sat on a cold table as a machine scanned the inside of my body somehow. While waiting for those results, I saw a cardiologist, who assured me I was fine, but scheduled a cardio-echogram, a stress test, and for me to wear a heart monitor.
It felt like my body was falling apart. My lungs and my heart weren’t working like they used to. I couldn’t stop crying. Every time I went into a doctor’s office, I sobbed. Every time I spoke about my health, I cried. I went out to dinner with coworkers in the West Village and sat at a table and sobbed as I told them I couldn’t drink at dinner because I had taken a Xanax just so I could convince myself to leave my house. Every step in the subway station caused me nerves. What if I ran out of breath walking up the stairs? That would then snowball into me questioning if I would be able to live in New York forever like I’d always wanted.
And these thoughts, these ruminations, were constant. From the moment I woke up to the second my eyes closed at night, I was thinking about my breathing and my heart rate and my health and if I was okay and if I wasn’t. During my months long panic, I went to my dermatologist. This doctor is the one and only doctor I love going to. The office is full of young girlies playing pop music. I leave with skincare hacks and freebees. And my doctor is cool and direct and easy to talk to. I went to her because I thought a medication I was taking was causing all of my recent health issues. As I sat in front of her, crying, she looked at me and said, “Tess, I think you have generalized anxiety. And I think it’s causing all of this.”
I left her office, disappointed that I didn’t immediately find a cure for my symptoms, but also motivated to speak to my doctor about my anxiety. On my next call with her, with my mom seated right beside me, I told her how I was feeling. And not the pretty version I often shared. The “I’m doing fine” version that rolls right off the tongue. I told her the panic version. The truth. The “I’m operating on such high vibrations I don’t know how much longer my body can take it” version. I finally came to realize that I wasn’t experiencing some failure of my heart or lungs in the cafe on that Friday in November. I was having a panic attack. So, with encouragement from my mom, my sister, and my sister-in-law, I was prescribed anti-anxiety medication.
I’ve been on Lexapro - love her - for six weeks now and I feel so much better. This medication, combined with all my other tests run by my pulmonologist and my cardiologist that tell me my heart and lungs are normal and fine, has improved my life drastically. I am back to my silly self. The girl that is down for anything. I am more relaxed and less agitated. I’m slower to anger and annoyance. I feel optimistic again. Like I can see my future. Like I’m not afraid to leave my house and to see my friends.
Looking back on my life since the pandemic, I see something different than I did before. I see how my anxiety impacted every piece of me. That I was able to push through very often, but that it changed parts of my personality that I so dearly love. That it made me keep my shoulders up and tense. That it made me cry every day. That it made me see no way out of situations holding me back. Me and my anxiety are now friends. We were once competitors, vying for the attention of my brain. But now I think we can work together in this life.
Since November, I’ve seen six doctors more than ten times. I have received two EKGs, a chest x-ray, a CT scan, and an echogram. I did asthma tests, a stress test, anxiety and depression evaluations, and wore a heart monitor for a week. I started four medications and stopped taking three. And after all of that, I found out that my brain was making my body hallucinate. Making my body feel like I couldn’t breathe and my heart was racing. And therefore, I couldn’t breathe and my heart was racing.
I am over the hump now, solidly on SSRIs and feeling back to the Tess I know. Me and my anxiety are friends now. And while I wish I could’ve discovered this piece of me in many different ways, I’m glad that I know what’s going on in my head.
Ty for lexy!