The word of the week is anxiety.
NOTE: it took me all of Sunday, off
and on, to write this week's blog entry.
Jan 16 – Not again?
I'm really not trying to add to
Blue Monday, which is today.
I woke up this morning( at 3am, seems to be the Time Of Troubles
)with sharp chest pains, on the left... I'll admit: I was scared today, and for most of the
rest of the week.
But, I quickly got to thinking: what
can I do to turn this around?
I'm not getting answers that make
sense( yet )like an abnormal EKG or even simple gas, so
I have to dig back: what might have been the root cause?
Stress. Latent stress, mostly, that I've carried so damn long...
Stress damaged my chest( maybe my heart? )back
in 2012, as avid blog readers will recall, when I was under such a load that I
ended up going to the hospital with( you guessed it )these exact SAME chest
pains: something had given way. A nasty bout of pneumonia a year later also knocked something loose inside, which I thought was unrelated - who knows?
After giving THAT job the boot a few
months later, the pains went away... for good, or so I thought. Apparently the
damage was more long-term, and my recent Year of Anxiety has tweaked that same
soreness back into life, with interest.
So I'm left with: change and live, or
continue on blindly and... who knows.
I'll go with change.
So I've cut out a few foods this
week and last, to see if they're triggers including gluten and dairy, of which I know
dairy's a problem in other ways. It's a challenge to find some solid protein to
eat, but turkey broth mixed with quinoa is going to carry me for a while to see
if I can eliminate any sort of recurring internal inflammation: good first
step.
Next up is getting answers about my
tendons( hopefully in early February,
when I see a specialist )so I can ease my way back into exercising, which I believe is KEY to a
return to good health. I never had ANY chest pains the entire time I was cycling to my previous job daily, working on my
feet all day and moving constantly.
Not once, despite the
still-mysterious physical stress injury I’d experienced.
So there's that to keep in mind:
symptoms vs. causation, and finding which is the root.
Jan 17 – Positive 2017
Awright, let's forget all about 2016... or should we?
Most people( in the next few years, at least )will remember 2016 as the awful
year that So Many Famous People Died... and they'd be right, except for two
things:
One, there's still many famous people
from the same age group left to go and
Two: 2016 had a ton of good things going for it.
Former astronaut Chris Hadfield
posted a wonderful list on New Year's Eve of just how many things we were privileged to experience in 2016, and
now a few weeks later someone's made a great video summary of most of those
great things:
I wish I could have posted the ACTUAL
video, but there seems to be a tech trend towards not releasing
postings on YouTube, and to be honest it was too much trouble to try and
capture the video just to post it on my blog, though I did try.
Bottom line: while 2017 looks to
be a turbulent year, 2016 was actually pretty good, apart from losing people
like Carrie Fisher and David Bowie, among others.
Jan 18 – Peter Verin
Here in Victoria, we have many homeless folks.
Unlike some of the bigger cities
across the country, they're here year-round, because of the climate. So most
folks ignore them, even though most are unfailingly polite when asking for
change, because the actions of a few colour the perceptions of all, as with any
group that's marginalized by society.
This week, a homeless man named Peter
Verin passed.
I never met the man, but there was an
outpouring of emotion from those who did, as he was said to be unique among
Victoria's homeless: well-read and homeless by choice for over 40 years, often
seen on the campus of UVic debating students.
What caught my eye from the article in the TimesColonist this week was that Peter made reading books a part of his
daily routine, to the point where he was more knowledgeable than almost anyone
he encountered. He fit it into his free spirit lifestyle, and my guess is that
it molded him into the man that touched the lives of thousands in many positive
ways, so that hundreds gathered to mourn him.
Among his writings, Peter had this to
say about passing on:
I think it's one of the loveliest
things I've read about endings, and to have it come from the mind of a
well-read man who could have been a scholar had he chosen that path but instead
chose to spend his life apart from the river most of us swim in, is something I
find remarkable.
Jan 19 – Obama's secret? Books.
Being the POTUS is probably one of
the most stressful jobs there is.
How does one survive it?
There's many memoirs about the job
from former POTUS, but although the most recent - President Obama - hasn't
written his own memoirs yet of his time in office, he did recently share a
secret about how he stayed balanced day to day:
Books.
The New York Times ran an article
this week detailing how books are an integral part of Obama's life, and my
respect for the man, no longer POTUS as of tomorrow, skyrocketed even more when
I read this excerpt:
While I'm Canadian, I can appreciate
those in power who use it wisely and justly to promote the greater good... and
I reserve a special place for those people to whom books are what they know to
be the best tools to lift up those they serve.
Farewell, President Obama: the world
was a better place after you served.
Jan 20 – Balance
Whatta day...
I was on edge all day at work, with
my heart beating too fast, despite a non-oatmeal breakfast( which apparently, being harder to digest,
works the heart harder )I’d had.
By mid-afternoon, I was having to
take small breaks every 15 minutes, just to get my breathing and heart under
control. Fortunately, it wasn't a busy day, and my team was so supportive, it
brought tears to my eyes... I'm a lucky man to work there!
This evening, I made an appointment
right after work for acupuncture, at a local spot right next to where I used to
live on May Street. I took the bus there, focusing on my breathing, and settled
into a comfy chair among a dozen others to explain my situation to the nice
acupuncturist who was running the show tonight.
She worked wonders.
I spent over an hour just relaxing, with the
tiny bits of sharp metal working their medical magic, and I could feel everything in
my body relaxing bit by bit. I listened to a calming selection of tunes on my
Zik headphones, tuning out the world completely.
By the time I left after 7pm, I felt
completely relaxed.
My heartrate felt like a metronome:
slow and steady, no matter if I was standing or walking or sitting. I rode the
bus home with a smile, and boggled at the difference I felt in myself from what
I was experiencing only a few hours ago.
After I got home, I had a little more
to eat and watched The Great Muppet Caper, which I've never actually
seen... and I laughed the whole way though. Perfect!
I slept very well tonight, calm and
easy and a believer in acupuncture all over again... no 3am wakeup here.
Jan 21 – Flypaper
What a sham...
Look, I know that I'm in Canada, and
that the recent election of Strumpet to the POTUS isn't any of my business...
but what he represents is.
You don't have to Google for long
before you find a list of all the things that the newest( as of today )POTUS is, as well as isn't... and none of them are
good things.
There's an old saying: "When the
US catches a cold, the world sneezes" and I think that's being mild in
this case. The USA now has the worse head cold in its history, and there's
going to be more needed than tissues and chicken soup to remedy the problems
that have already cropped up.
I'm not going to list every fear,
every stupid act( and there's been many
already today, the second day of the new administration! )but to simply say
that the people of the USA have to somehow take a stand against the idiots that
have taken over the top positions... and to hold the line.
Most likely, I predict, those who
voted against Strumpet will be joined sooner rather than later by all those who
did, who also possess a brain, or even common human decency.
Let's hope that the new POTUS
impeaches himself before that has to happen.
On the anxiety front, today was
pretty good. I got some things done around the house, and went in for another
acupuncture treatment, which as it was administered by another lady, I didn't
feel was nearly as effective. Still, I managed to relax for about 1.5 hours in
a comfy chair with my music, with no other cares pressing on me, so that was a
good thing.
The evening was spent again relaxing, when I
watched The Muppets Most Wanted, again which I haven't ever seen. It was again exactly what I needed, as I have always loved Jim Henson's work and The Muppets in particular have a special place in my life.
Pretty dang good.
Jan 22 – As Douglas Adams said...
Wow. That sucked.
A few hours after waking up this
morning, I started feeling odd, like my body was humming somehow. I didn't know
what to make of it, and spent about 30 minutes just breathing while listening
to Marconi Union's Weightless to calm
myself.
But it didn't help.
Fortunately, my sister was home, and
around 9am I asked her help as my head started spinning and the humming got
worse: I was having a panic attack, one of only a few I've experienced in my
life but far worse than anything I'd imagined. The humming feeling made
me feel like I was buzzing with electricity, my hands and feet went cold and
sweaty, and of course my heart was racing – textbook panic attack, though I did
manage to breathe properly, as I’d been practicing for a few weeks now.
Thanks to my sister, I got through
it.
She was there for me, to talk to and
laugh with about things we remembered, about dreams I have still to see
completed, and to just encourage me with all the accomplishments I've made in
my life. All the challenges I’ve overcome, the strength that I’ve displayed in
doing so, and the wonderful life I have ahead of me now that a job, a lady, and
a secure family situation have all been attained here and now.
After an hour, I was feeling somewhat
normalized.
I think what triggered the panic
attack was my searching for things to eat online: being off gluten, dairy,
sugar, caffeine, salt and alcohol( meh on
that last one )has meant that my meal choices have been rather limited for
the last few weeks, and I wasn't finding anything that worked online, so I
think my subconscious went "We're gonna starve!" and everything
avalanched from there into full-panic mode.
That's my best guess, looking back on
it 12 hours later.
I spent the next 3-4 hours in Super
Relax mode, watching comedies, reading calming books, and generally NOT
thinking in ANY way about trigger words like Stress, Heartrate, Panic or anything similar: I even refrained from
checking my heartrate to 'see how I was doing' like I had during the week -
nope. I also tried out some Passionflower
tea I'd picked up on Friday, which seemed to help, and I found an amazing website
that really spoke to my fears of anxiety without trying to push solutions that
cost a ton of cash.
By the time evening had rolled
around, I'd arisen from the couch determined to do my best to just GET ON with
my day, and my life: I wasn't going to give in to whatever tiny
minute-by-minute demands my anxiety was making of me. I've beaten worse
problems in my past through determination, positive willpower and perseverance,
so this is no different: I can either spend the next long while jumping every
time there's a pain in my chest( which there were only grumbles earlier today,
even during the attack )or I can move forward with the idea that I'm doing all
I can to find the CAUSE of those pains, and they're not heart-related unless I
MAKE them into that by panicking at every little twinge or slightly elevated
heartrate. As long as I just focus on breathing and sitting properly of a day,
I can go from there to working towards putting this behind me… and writing
about it today really has helped, though I couldn’t use the voice dictation
software, as talking out loud made me uncomfortable – seeing the words appear
as I typed was normal enough.
That's it, in a nutshell: it's all up
to me to determine how I face this newest challenge, and I'm looking it in the
eye as of tonight to call it's bluff.
See you all next week!
There's not much more to say, apart
from my determination to live my life as usual this week: work, relax, and give
worrying a swift kick in the rear if it rears its hoary head!
