Hellish Bout of Misery

"There's nothing wrong with you. It's just anxiety." Those words lingered inside my mind, "it's just anxiety," as if it were nothing - as if it doesn't keep me up all hours of the night to the point of being nonfunctional the entire following day and eventually, tearing down my immune system. So, I'm left lying in bed for the next week or so sick with a fever. I've asked a million and one times, "How do you fix it?" They all want to throw pills at me, but they don't want to work for their pay - I mean, really work, like helping me cope with this disease. And it is a disease.

Crying hysterically to my psychiatrist, "I. just. don't. want. to. live. anymore."

They usually jot down onto their notepads, "She's very 'put together' and knows how to deal with this. She'll be fine. She's just venting again."

"Again." 

The seizures keep me up at night. The sleep study techs all confirmed that it was anxiety-induced seizures. They assured me that psychogenic seizures aren't real seizures. When I look at my bedroom, all I see is a torture chamber - a place that I'm mentally and physically tortured by my own mind. I wake up, jolting up into the middle of the bed and then start seizing, sometimes even stuck paralyzed because I can't get any air in or out of my lungs. My dog crawls up next to me, to see what's going on. She lays with me until the shaking stops. When I fall asleep, she resumes into a little ball cozied up under the covers with us.

My poor Madelene wakes up with me too. She doesn't know what else to do other than snuggle up next to me until I fall asleep…if I fall asleep. The jolts are so shocking that it scares her out of a deep slumber. I'm not sure if she even has deep slumbers anymore since these have started. Neither have I. I'm so sleep deprived. There are times when I am so sleep deprived that I can't possibly drive the next day. It's become debilitating. Nobody ever understands it.

It's affected every aspect of my life: work, social, leisure, hobbies as well as trying to help my mother the best to my ability. But I'm so tired all the time. I feel so incredibly weak that I feel like the insides of me are shaking. Even just to play fetch with my dog has become a triathlon for me. Just to pick up a ball and throw it is my biggest source of exercise because I. just. can't. move.

For the past few weeks I have been on a strict Paleo regimen. It has helped me lose a bit of weight, but not the fatigue. I come down with the strangest ailments too - to which I ignore now because all of it is somehow psychosomatically related. At night, my face turns bright red with my chest flaring up in a strange rash-like something or other. My blood pressure is 110/70 - perfect the doctor says. My blood work is fine.

So then…what?

I have been called "selfish" and "self-absorbed" because I finally want to start living life with my wife. We were trying to have a baby, with two failed attempts. My body just can't hold onto 'life'. My hardest efforts to help my family in a now crisis situation usually goes unnoticed. From cooking meals, to helping out financially. It's all I can do right now. Our lives have changed since Dad fell ill with cancer and passed on. Now, Mom has cancer and it's all we can do to try and get her to her appointments. It's also very difficult to deal with this while walking on eggshells and avoiding loose canons by emotional outbursts from other people. I cannot emotionally handle that and it has become my biggest fear, so I avoid it at all costs, even if it means pushing away certain family members.

I have had to decline (or perhaps delay) some great projects with other amazing writers and also had to decline a few business opportunities with my video production part of work because I just can't focus. I don't have the time and when I do, it's trying to play catch up on sleep, which is impossible as you know. So please bear with me as my posts are lessening as the weeks go by, but I'm still here hoping that this hellish bout of misery subsides.

For more of Deb's articles, please visit: www.debrapasquella.com or join her on Facebook and Twitter. Check out her cooking blog for some of her famous recipes!