10 Confessions - scandalous!!! (OK, not really)

1. I like cutting my toenails so short that they bleed. What's worse, I like it when I get an ingrown toenail. I like the pain and I like digging out the toenail on my own.

2. I don't believe in God. And I think I am a better person when it comes to "morals" than most people who say that they do believe in God.

3. I compare myself to other girls all the time when it comes to my looks. I've always thought I was ugly and being around really pretty girls makes me feel bad about myself and terribly self conscious.

4. I've not even kissed another man besides my husband in 10 years. Well, I've kissed some boys on the cheek but that was all a friendship kind of thing.

5. I sometimes don't wear my wedding ring when I go out just so boys will flirt with me more. (Yes, DH knows about this. And I can get away with it because he LOST his wedding ring...so there!)

6. I want more than anything for my sisters to be happy and successful in life. I have absolutely no jealous feelings towards them at all.

7. One of the main reasons that I want to have children right now is because I am afraid that my parents will die without seeing their grandchildren and that my mom won't be around to give me advice and support.

8. I am TERRIFIED of spiders and I don't want to get over this fear...ever.

9. I hate Sex and the City.

10. If I could get away with speaking in a British accent I would so totally do it all of the time.

If any of these things makes me a bad person, then so be it.

It works!

Going back on Lexapro has made a huge difference in my life. When I went off of it in November everything was so gradual. The return to my crazy way of thinking was just so slow that I hardly noticed it until it was too late. But the neat thing about being on anti-depressants, for me, is that it just tends to make things clearer. Things I used to obsess over seem completely irrelevant now.

When I was in high school I described the feeling as though a cloud had been lifted. Now it's more like what my husband says: I was looking through a dirty windshield and didn't realize how dirty it was until I cleaned it off. :)

Those symptoms I was having before that I mistook for a bad disease are still there. But my mind isn't focusing on them anymore. And when that happens, they just go away. It is amazing what terrible things anxiety can do to your body.

I don't care if being on an antidepressant is considered weak or not. It is pretty much a necessity for me. It is a life saver. My quality of life is so much better. I am just able to be ME and that is a nice feeling.

Because I like me, dammit!!

Completely Content

Days like these are my favorite. Days with no real worries, no real concerns or to do lists. Spending a lot of time with my husband, doing some light shopping, going to dinner...just being together. It's nice.

The Results Are In

My results were normal. He said it was probably my anxiety and that the antidepressants should continue to help. He was very nice and said that my symptoms were real and were not something "in my head". So there world! Ha ha...

And, also I have a pineal cyst in my brain. In rare instances it can grow and cause a problem, so we are just going to do another MRI in 6-9 months to make sure it isn't growing. Mine is asymptomatic though, so that's good.

Pineal cysts are benign (non-cancerous) fluid-filled sacs located in the region of the brain that contains the pineal gland. Small pineal cysts (.5 cm or smaller) are common occurrences, often found incidentally on routine neurological exams. Small pineal cysts rarely cause symptoms (asymptomatic).

So, now I'm left in good health waiting to ovulate.

Exciting times!

Hip Hip Hooray!

I think I'm really excited. DH and I have decided to go ahead and try to get pregnant. This is great news. I feel really good about it right now. My Lexapro seems to be working and my psychosomatic symptoms seem to be on the decrease.

I've been given the go ahead by my Ob-Gyn, we have the money, and we have the room in our current house. A baby would fit nicely.

Here is to being excited and happy. Yay! As of right now, my worries seem remote.

Where I Stand

I went and did the MRI and the EMG test two days ago for my suspected illness. The EMG was really quite bad. It was VERY uncomfortable and the test itself looked completely medieval. They hooked me up to this machine and actually shocked me with electrical volts. This made for some very unpleasant sensations and twitching movements coming from my muscles. The other part of the EMG test was where they actually stick needles in you to do some kind of nerve conductivity test, but they didn't have to do that for me. Thank goodness. My palms were sweaty enough.

So after the EMG I went and got my MRI. That was not bad at all. Some people complain of feeling claustrophobic, but I didn't. The only bad part was that you had to sit very still for 25 minutes. And then another 20 minutes. And then they injected dye into my veins and I had to go back for another 10 minutes. Overall it was kind of relaxing. I just closed my eyes and counted my breaths. I also made a mini To Do List in my head. I really need to get to my taxes this weekend....

I've been on Zoloft for probably 1 week now, so it should be kicking in shortly. But I'm switching to Lexapro, so who knows how that'll change things. I actually feel pretty good at the moment. I cannot believe how out of control anxiety can get. I still have some weird physical sensations going on, but I am trying to chalk it up to my stressed out mind and body and stop attaching it to MS or something similar. I have good moments and bad.

Yesterday my feet felt tingly all day. I messed up and got back online and did some symptom searching. Yes...it's still MS. And yes...I know I shouldn't symptom search. It's so hard not to. It's like giving an alcoholic a beer and telling them to just hold it for you for a while. That's the way I feel about googling my symptoms. I'm on the internet ALL day and it just beckons to me. Easy access = trouble

So I won't get the results of these tests until next Thursday where I have a follow up appointment with my neurologist. I'm hoping it's good news and that I can start focusing on something different. Something better. Getting pregnant!!

Let it Snow

We're supposed to get 4-10 inches of snow this weekend. And I hope we do. I hope we get a foot of snow. The idea of being stuck in the house surrounded by snow is appealing to me. I want to snuggle with my DH in the living room watching movies, playing games, and drinking hot chocolate. I want to blow up our air mattress in the living room and "camp out".

The last time it snowed a lot I was in high school. Was it 1994? I can't remember. But I do remember having such a good time and feeling so safe being cocooned in the house with all that snow outside. I think we got almost 2 feet of snow. It was unreal. But my sisters and I went outside and played and just had a really good time. No school. No obligations.

Ah...those were the days.

OK. Not really. That's just a good memory for me. I don't think you could pay me to go back to 1994.

Crazy Starts at the Movies

In an attempt to take a look at my anxiety I have been thinking a lot about where it originates from. I'm pretty sure I have been this way my entire life. I've been recalling several instances in my life where my anxiety ruled.

For instance, take my bad association with movie theaters.

The very first time I can remember going to the movies was with my dad. I had to be probably 3 years old. It was a Muppet Movie. I remember at some point Kermit was getting on a train and leaving his friends behind. I don't recall the reason, but I do recall being very sad at this prospect. So sad that I started crying and couldn't stop. My dad had to carry me out of the theater. I never got to see the happy ending that I'm sure would have come if I had just waited it out like the other 3 year olds. It was too much for me to bear thinking that Kermit was just simply going to go away for good. I couldn't see the bigger picture. Of course, I was 3 so maybe that had something to do with it.

Another time I remember going to the movies with an older friend. She was 3 years older than I was and she was sort of my "baby sitter" for the day. I thought I was totally cool going to the movies without my parents. Hmm...I'm guessing I was around 7 or 8. So we get in the theater and I am munching on some popcorn during the previews. That's when I ate a piece of burnt popcorn. It tasted funny. I didn't know what it was. In my mind, I created a scenario where the concession stand workers put exactly one piece of poisoned popcorn in the bin. It was sort of a game to them. Let's see who we can kill today. And I so happened to get this poisoned piece of popcorn. At age 7 I started crying, assuming that I was about to die in a matter of minutes. Luckily, my older friend simply told me that it was no big deal. She got burnt pieces of popcorn like that before too. She didn't make fun of me either. What a relief. She's still my friend today. :)

Those are two big instances that I can recall that pretty much tainted movie going for me for quite some time. From that point forward, once I got in the movie theater I could create several catastrophe scenarios. I would imagine that the outside world was being hit by tornadoes or bombs while I was safely tucked in the theater. Once the movie was over I'd leave and almost be surprised that everything was as it was before the movie began. I half expected to come out of the movie theater only to find a post Apocalypse world. Buildings smashed, people lying dead in the streets, trees split to smithereens, my family gone without a trace. How did I know? You can't see outside. Who knows what was going on out there?!

Many instances I would get a mini-panic attack when the previews started. The loud noise in the theater disturbed me. It got my heart beating and exacerbated my panic cycle. I thought several times that I was going to freak out in the theater and have to leave or that I was losing my mind. Now I know that I was just having a little panic episode. At the time, I thought I was going crazy.

Today I still get that little bit of fear as a movie starts. Am I going to have another panic attack? Usually, I don't. But occasionally, that little big of dread sneaks in and I have to calm myself down. This is the story of my life.

I Let the Boat Do Most of the Work

I'm so proud. Right after my last post I took a walk. Big deal, right? Well, it is. Obviously, I've been way to zoned in on myself lately. At the beginning of the walk, I noticed that I started to feel a bit shaky. I started to get a little of that depersonalization that happens with panic attacks. You know, where you sort of start to feel like things are just sort of unreal and separate from yourself. I get that a lot when I start to feel anxious. But instead of taking those feelings and running with them, I calmed myself down. I really did. It was a true test of brainpower and I overcame. Hallelujah! I just told myself that these feelings would pass and that my brain was trying to provoke the fight or flight response. My increased heart rate and increased oxygen levels that I was experiencing just from starting to walk reminded my brain of the same feelings I get when I am anxious. Thus, the problems started to snowball. I was afraid of having another panic attack because of the symtpoms I was experiencing. But this time I knew what was happening and I could control it. Well, I didn't really control it, I just waited it out, really.

"I let the boat do most of the work." Bob Wiley

Weekends with Worry

I'm beginning to wonder if I'm not depressed. I don't know. I've been adamantly stating for the past 5 years that I am not depressed; just anxiety stricken. I know the two can be separate, but maybe not.

I sleep a lot. And by a lot, I mean that, left to my own devices I will sleep 12+ hours a day. It seems to be my method of escape from not knowing what else to do.

I really have no motivation to get up on the weekends. Even though I need to take the car in for an oil change, do laundry, clean the house, go to the library, go grocery shopping, go to the gym...all of these things just seem overwhelming and instead of getting up and doing one thing at a time I will stay in bed and sleep. Often I don't even sleep...I just lie there and fantasize. I guess it's a form of stress relief. I used to do it a lot in high school when I was more depressed. I enjoy my fantasy life. In that life I am someone totally different from realitly. It's nice.

I have recently acquired several books on dealing with anxiety. It seems that I have a highly "reactive body". Meaning I respond more intensely to environmental stimuli than your average person. This explains how I can be so sensitive to my body's normal functions and instead of just noticing them, I can easily create deadly diseases as the cause of my tingling fingers and ignore the fact that it's probably just an anxious reaction. It's a panic disorder. I get a physical symptom due to my sensitive body and the stress I am experiencing. I don't identify the source of my anxiety symptoms accurately and then I begin watching my body to take note of any sensation that originally frightened me. Thus, I become trapped in the anxiety/panic cycle.

Kind of cool that I can understand this is my problem. But not so easy to stop the cycle.

So that's where I am right now. Just trying to be my "normal" self again. I should probably stop analyzing everything to death. I'm just like Bob Wiley. ;)

Now...baby steps go take a walk.