It's Getting Better

I hesitate to admit it, but I'm feeling a whole lot better these days. I wake up in the morning and don't dread getting out of bed (now its the chill in the air that keeps me under the covers until I must get up). I eat breakfast, walk the dogs, do some chores, have the desire to keep my house clean again, and all without anxiety. I still have my moments, but they are much less severe and come less often, sometimes days. It's heavenly. I'm slowly tapering off the Ativan, cutting back a quarter of a pill every 5 days and am currently down to .75 mg.

So how did I get back to being a normal person? I don't know! That's how it works. I kept doing the things a "normal" person would do, going to work, shopping, paying bills, all with the anxiety, and then one day the fear and dread wasn't there. It's a fabulous feeling not being afraid of your own body and mind. The hell of it is that I'm never sure when it will come back. For now, I'll just enjoy every moment in remission. Today I have plans to clean my house from top to bottom (well, side to side). If both my girls are off today, perhaps we'll even indulge in lunch out, something we haven't done in months.

I feel like I'm standing on the outside of hell today, not wanting to glance back to see where I've been lest I am sucked back into the dark side. Happy days are here again!!!

And It gets worse

I now have constant anxiety, have to force myself to eat, which today included a glass of Ovaltine, 2 cheese sticks, 8 crackers, and water. I can't even describe what my stomach is doing. Its tight, its aggitated, it thinks we're about to bungie jump off a cliff. I tried a relaxation exercise, laid down for an hour, and shivered and twitched throughout the whole thing. It has to be the Ativan doing it. I want to drive to the emergency room right now and beg for something to calm me down. My blood pressure this afternoon was 160/100! My usual is 130/80. Tomorrow I see my doctor again. I'm going to ask for Valium. There is a method prescribed to be many that switches Ativan (or any benzo user) over to Valium slowly because it is easier (less withdrawl symptoms) to taper off of. And who knows, maybe I'll find I like the Valium and just stay on it. If it keeps me from feeling like this, I might just do it. I am so very very miserable right now. It's like I've been on a caffeine high for 2 days straight. At 6 a.m. I woke up with a near panic attack - heart rate 134, cold sweats. I'm not strong enough to do this. It's too hard. Haven't I been through enough already? There can not possibly be a God in heaven to let this continue on like this. I begged for help today and got nothing. I can't do this. I don't know how to continue in this state of terror. Yet there is no way out. I must simply experience the horror of it, knowing that there is nothing more I can do besides put myself out of my misery, but I can't do that without putting the rest of my family through worse misery for the rest of their lives. So I am trapped. I don't know where to go from here. The thought of suffering through another night is overwhelming. I'm considering driving over to the emergency room and sleeping in my car so I'm close by...just in case. Hell. Sheer, utter, hell. My blessing on anyone who has to deal with this.

Still Struggling

Why's it gotta be so hard? That's all I want to know. I've tapered down to 1.625mg (down from 2mg) of Ativan a day and I'm anxious as hell most of the time. Is it withdrawl, or is it just the anxiety? I don't know, but it sucks. Usually work will calm me down, but the anxiety lasted throughout the whole day. And night time is usually a better time for me, but tonight I'm, you guessed it, ANXIOUS. I have shortened my taper schedule to have me done by the first week of November. I just hope this works and I'm not too terribly anxious by the end. I must learn some new coping skills to handle this anxiety without drugs. Hell. Real, live, hell. Right now. And for who knows how much longer. I hate this!!!!

My thoughts of hope may have been premature

So...I had some good days, then my days started getting worse and worse. The depression, the lack of motivation, the exhaustion, weakness. It appears that the Ativan is not working and is, in fact, making me worse. So now, after 4 weeks on this drug, my body is dependent and I am having to go through withdrawl. Ativan is a nasty drug. It is one of the strongest benzodiazapines - for example, half a mg of Ativan is the same as 10 mg of valium! It has to be tapered off of very very slowly. The recommended method is to add valium to the mix. For me, my schedule of tapering should be (now that I've tapered myself to 2mg per day down from 3mg in a very short time):
Weeks 1 & 2: Morning - .5mg Ativan, midday - .5mg Ativan, betime - .5mg Ativan + 5 mg Valium
Weeks 3 & 4: Morning - 5mg Valium, stop Ativan, midday - .5mg Ativan, bedtime - .5mg Ativan + 5mg Valium
Weeks 5 & 6: Morning - 10mg Valium, midday - stop Ativan, bedtime - .5mg Ativan + 5mg Valium
Weeks 7 & 8: Morning - 10mg Valium, bedtime - 10mg Valium, stop Ativan
So that would get me off Ativan but onto Valium! All I want to do is be drug free and I don't want to go through 8 more weeks to get there! But I also don't want to suffer the agony of withdrawing too quickly or not the right way. I cry all the time, I have delusions of non-existance, all I can think about is the damned pill and how to get off of it. How ironic, the drug phobic is now dependent on a drug and forced to detox from it! I'm so very depressed. I may not have the patience to do it the long way. I have gotten to the point where I barely eat anything because I have no apetite, I don't leave the house much because of the agoraphobia, I couldn't even shower this morning - I just washed off in the sink and shampooed my hair in the kitchen sink. I don't know what I'm going to do for work this week. If I can't leave the house, how will I go to work? God, I just feel like I've gone so far downhill that I may not be able to make it back up again. I was watching a show on PBS - a violinist playing in Vienne. I couldn't help crying from thinking about all that I've lost. I used to play the violin in the church choir, I used to teach it, play in an orchestra. Now I'm too afraid to do any of those things. I will never travel overseas. I may never travel out of state. I feel like my life is over. What is the point? I have so many periods during the day where I lose hope completely. My life is in the very deepest realm of hell. The way out seems so far off I don't know that I can make it.

The sound of tears

I'm a silent crier, sometimes there is a gasp to replenish my oxygen, but for the most part, silence. I learned it as a child. It wasn't acceptable to cry in my house, or at least that was the vibe I got. So my crying was done alone in my bedroom. This morning I'm again crying alone in my bedroom, silently of course. I'm crying because I don't want to have to struggle through another day of anxiety. It's just not fun. As I cry, the tears roll quietly down my cheek then drop to the pillow, the only sound being the little plunk as they hit the pillowcase. I had a decent day yesterday. I went to the grocery, spent an hour shopping without much anxiety, walked through another store for a few minutes, went to work, came home exhausted but went back out to another grocery for milk and bread, then later went with my daughter to look at tv's. I cried only once yesterday, as I got ready for work. And it was just a brief cry. Its a little after 10 this morning and I'm still in bed. I don't want to get up and face the day. But I know I have to. There are dogs to be let out to potty, there is my job at 2:00, and its not good for me to lay around and ruminate on my plight. So I will drag my anxious body out of bed and into the shower and hope like hell that I don't get more anxious while I'm showering. Then the usual routine - get dressed, put on makeup, choke down some breakfast, wait until work time, wait until work is done, and then come home and just sit and rock and watch tv. What a full life I have. Hell, that's what it is.

Things may be looking up

After some very VERY bad days, I ended up going to see my doctor again. My anxiety was so over the top that I wasn't functioning at all. I cried all the time, I wanted to die, my stomach was a mess, the only solution I saw was death. Because of my medicine phobia, I could be prescribed all the tranquilizers in the world and told they would do nothing but help me, and I would not be able to take the first one. So I told the doctor that the only way for me to get help was to go into the hospital and be given medicine there, in a safe environment where I knew I would be "saved" if anything went awry. My doctor admitted me that day! I was excited and frightened! So that my insurance would pay I was diagnosed with peptic ulcer disease, which my stomach symptoms mimicked. I checked in around 1 p.m., had a private room. My best friend, who also suffers from anxiety, accompanied me. My expectations were to spend 3 or 4 days and nights being given Ativan, IV at first, then in pill form so that I could get on a schedule and get used to taking pills. By 4 p.m. my IV was finally inserted (after many failed attempts) and I got my first dose of .5mg of Ativan. It made me very dizzy, but did little for the anxiety. 4 hours later I got dose number two, 1mg. That seemed to help, but I was so anxious that it didn't wipe it out completely. 4 hours later, another 1mg. I was very tired by then. I'd brought my computer so my daughter and I laid in my bed and we watched a MASH dvd I'd brought. I slept pretty well. The next day I was told I'd be leaving! I couldn't believe it! I was devastated! This was supposed to have been my salvation, my last chance of recovery - and I still hadn't taken any Ativan orally! That day I had 2 more 1mg IV doses, and at 4 or 5 p.m. was taken up to have an endoscope procedure to see what was up with my stomach. I was given more drugs which knocked me out completely so I don't remember anything about that. They wheeled me back to my room - it was about 10p.m. by then and I had to be out before midnight or get charged for another day. I was so dopey that I had to be completely assisted to my wheelchair, into the car, and then into my bed at home. I don't remember much about any of it other than I slept very well that night!

The next day I was in the depths of despair. I had a bottle of Ativan with instructions that read, "Take one tablet by mouth once in the morning and one tablet once in the evening, and every four hours as needed." I was still so dizzy from all the drugs from the day before that I waited until 3 p.m. to take my first pill. It did little for me. I took it very sporatically. I spent my days sobbing and wishing I were back in the hospital where I would be safe and cared for. Monday (6 days after my release) I had an appointment with a psychiatrist who came highly recommended. I was so messed up with anxiety, loopiness from the drugs, and depression, I had my dad pick me up and take me. I once again had high hopes for this guy to save me. We discussed my problems briefly, he asked me what drugs I'd researched on the internet that I wanted him to prescribe, and I told him I just wanted him, in his infinite wisdom, to tell me what to take and how often to take it. I told him about my drug phobia, how the Ativan didn't seem to be doing it, but that if I changed to something else I'd have to start it in the hospital. He said that wasn't very likely. So he wrote me a script for Klonopin, a longer lasting benzo, and told me I could either take it or not, or take the Ativan. No suggestions about how often I should take the Ativan, like he could give a crap less what I did. Just get out of my office before you start crying! I called my dad to pick me up and stood in the parking lot sobbing, now hopelessly lost. My mom showed up thinking I'd be all better and we could go shopping. I just wanted to go home. I cried the whole way back to their house. My mom and I talked in the car for a while before we went in. She said she didn't understand how I felt because she couldn't fathom the feelings of anxiety and panic, but that it didn't make it any less real. She took me inside and we sat down and made a plan, a schedule of when I would take the Ativan. She would call me every morning and make sure I was doing what I was supposed to do. And I was to go to work no matter what. Tuesday I was anxious in the morning and was supposed to go to work at 1p.m. I called her on the way, almost in tears. She talked me through it. Once I got there I was fine, even had a good time. Wednesday I felt fabulous! No anxiety! I felt wonderful all through work, and after work I wanted to go shopping for some new clothes because I felt happy and wanted to look good! The next day wasn't quite as good, so I started to worry, and Friday wasn't good at all. So I changed my dose to .5mg every 4 to 5 hours. I still have good days and bad days. I haven't figured out why one day is good and the next day is bad, but I now feel like there may be hope for me yet.

Still in hell, but on a work-release program.

Getting Worse

The anxiety is getting worse. It wasn't long ago I could go to the grocery store without much problem. Now its a struggle to just run in and get a gallon of milk. The weather has been lovely and I'd love to take the dogs for a good long walk, but all I can bear is 5 or 10 minutes, then I have to rush home. I wake up in the morning and before I'm even out of bed I'm overwhelmed with anxiety and dread. This morning I got brave and took .5 mg of xanax which helped while I laid in bed, but once I was up it didn't make any difference at all. I'm sitting here after my shower rocking and trying to not go into full panic mode. I'm so miserable. I so depressed. I feel like I'll never come out of this bout of anxiety, like I'm doomed to spend the rest of my life in hell. I've lost 25 pounds in 3 months, which isn't a bad thing, but I'd rather be fat and feel good than be anxious and look good. I don't know what else to do. How does the anxiety feel? My stomach is in a knot, I feel like I can't breathe, I feel like an electric current is running through my bloodstream, death seems to be right around the corner, or if not death at the very least collapse. If I died today it would be all right with me. I can't stand to feel this way for another second and yet I know I've got the whole day to suffer through it. If I knew it wouldn't affect my family and loved ones, and if I knew I could do it without any further suffering and be sure I didn't botch it up and end up worse off, suicide would be the only other option. But I know how terrible it is to inflict suicide on my children and parents, so I can't think about doing it. Now if I just happened to get in a fatal car wreck.....

Hell. My existence is hell. I want out. Now!