“It’s gotta be COVID.”
“I don’t know.”
“I just don’t understand why …”
“I know, I don’t know.”
On the first Monday of the New Year – the day revered by resolution setters everywhere as the marker for the ultimate fresh start – Hank and I spooned in the aggressive light of my Versa watch face. I put my arm down and the room transformed back into a bear cave. My lungs awkwardly fought to sync our mismatched breaths for a minute. His slow. Mine hurried. This was supposed to be calming, comforting. I flipped my wrist and, at his urging, offered an update. “Now it’s 55 … 68 … 99 … 110 …”
My heart rate, sporadic and screaming, had jolted me awake at 4 a.m. I’d tried all my usual tricks to get back to sleep. I’d counted my inhales, breath holds and exhales. I’d done a head-to-toe body scan and release. Something wasn’t right. I grabbed my watch off the nightstand. After 30 minutes of anxiously seeing the numbers climb, then subside then jump again, I jostled Hank so he could join my panic. (I find breakdowns are always best experienced as a couple, don’t you?)
Prior to this predawn perplexity, I had not been feeling great. Some extended family members had come down with COVID just after Christmas, and we were wrapping up a 10-day quarantine out of caution and consideration for others. For about three days Hank and I had both been feeling pretty blah. As a bonus to the blah, I was also experiencing headaches, fire-hot heartburn, shortness of breath and chest pain. Relentless chest pain. On Saturday, convinced I had the wretched rona, I went for a drive-thru test.
But here, in the technology glow cast by a woman frantically searching for data to pair with her frenzied pulse, alas the news came through via text that it was not, in fact, the virus. Hank couldn’t believe it.
“I think it’s a good idea for you to go in, right at 8 when the walk-in clinic opens,” he said, and I agreed.
I climbed out of his arms, out of our bed and closed the door to our bathroom. I wanted him to fall back asleep. I filled the tub with the hottest water the tank would entertain. I climbed in and stared at the tile on the wall. Cracks. Chips. Imperfections. When I couldn’t take the sweat on my face any longer, I ran my hot palms down my cheeks and climbed out.
The clinic was far less of a zoo than I’d anticipated. I was called back within minutes and found myself in a familiar seat, rattling off a list of symptoms that felt disjointed and unlikely for a woman my age, yet there I was.
“I don’t know how to explain it … like pain but also pressure … fairly constant, yeah … fatigue, like I can’t get off the couch … some back pain, not terrible … can’t get a good breath … headaches pretty often … sometimes exercise helps … yes, I have battled anxiety before … yes, my father. He had two heart attacks in his 30s …”
Sometimes, when I’m in a doctor’s office, I imagine what’s really going through the provider’s mind. I believe they’re annoyed that I’m taking up time better spent suturing a wound or extracting a worrisome growth and zipping it off to pathology. Today could be the day they save a life. But instead, they’re stuck listening to another 30-something working mother with an exhaustive list of nondescript complaints. Of course, they never say anything to confirm my suspicions. They’re always kind, attentive, frantically typing and nodding in tandem.
This particular nurse practitioner was very thorough and extremely warm. When I showed her the data in my phone from the morning, she felt that, given my family’s health history, it was best that I go to the ER for an EKG and chest X-ray. “It very well could be anxiety,” she offered, “but I’d feel better if we had some additional tests. You absolutely did the right thing coming in.”
I thanked her, like an adult. I walked out of the building, like an adult. I climbed into my car, called Hank and sobbed like a six-year-old waiting for a flu shot.
I cried because I didn’t want to go to the hospital alone. I didn’t want an IV in my arm, or to change into a gown (what underwear did I even have on?) or to watch terrible daytime television when there was so much else to be done. I didn’t want to be that girl who drained valuable resources in the midst of a pandemic, in the trenches where true tragedy is taking more lives than any of us can stomach. I didn’t want to hear them tell me it was just anxiety. Again.
But I went to the hospital alone. I changed into the gown and they put the IV in my arm. The room was filled with caregivers, hooking up the EKG, lingering in the doorway, all waiting to see if they needed to call in the cardiology team. As soon as the numbers populated on the screen, the room cleared to two, my nurse (a kind man about my age) and the NP, who assured me it did not appear I would be dying today.
I waited while the saline ran through me. While the results of my bloodwork and chest X-ray all came back and slowly confirmed what I knew deep down from that first familiar ache I’d felt six hours before. There was nothing medically wrong with me. I just wanted to get out of there.
I sat in my car in the parking lot and ugly cried from embarrassment and wasted money and resources. I couldn’t believe I was here again. I thought I understood the cues. The signals. I had an understanding with my mind and my responses. But this one really fooled me. Again.
When I got home, even Hank was baffled. He’d witnessed my body’s very physical retaliation to something. To some masked threat that we were both sure, this time, would be revealed as something more than stress surfacing as severe discomfort. This is the part that’s so hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Anxiety feels like drowning. It feels like a heart attack. It feels like a medical crisis. The pain is so, so real. And so scary.
A friend of mine who also experiences anxiety said, “You know, we’re both intelligent, level-headed women, and yet …” And yet. It’s so true. You feel crazy for feeling so threatened in your own body only to discover you were safe the entire time. Everything you’ve been taught, everything in your mind urges you to seek help. But in the end, no one can really help you. It just has to pass. Like a violent, ship-tossing storm.
The other common misconception is that anxiety is a smoke signal. But I assure you I’m not on fire. My marriage is great. My kids drive me crazy the average, acceptable amount. I have tremendous friends and family all around me. My anxiety is not always a manifestation of unresolved issues, particularly when it comes to relationships.
I’m not sharing this for pity or sympathy. I’m sharing it because every time I talk about one of these unfortunate events, I meet someone else who has it, and hasn’t talked about it, either because they feel ashamed they can’t fix it, or ashamed of how they manage it, whether that be medication or meditation. The stigma is just as bad as the condition itself.
I’ve had people tell me I just need to stop worrying. Workout. Quit eating crap. Journal. Meditate. Stop dwelling on the bad and focus on the good. The world is great if you let it be. As if the issue is that I forgot to slide on my rose-colored glasses that morning. It’s as simple as reframing or refocusing. It’s fixable, if I just try hard enough.
But those who have walked into the cement wall that is an anxiety or panic disorder know that it’s completely out of your control. No one opts in to feeling like they’re coming out of their skin. It’s not voluntary and it’s not simple. Just when I think I’ve figured out how to minimize it, the monster grows a new head and I feel like I’m starting completely over.
And I will start over. Remember, my 2021 word is “ownership.” This is me. This is who I am. Cracks. Chips. Imperfections.
I got up this morning and worked out and put a little less creamer in my coffee. It’s a new day and my chest feels a little lighter. But if you woke up and found it hard to breathe, or to smile, I want you to know that you aren’t alone, and that if you have to take a pill or a walk or a day off from life, that’s OK. If you want to watch the entire first and only season of Bridgerton, I think every woman with a pulse supports that, sister. And if you want to cry about it, that’s cool, too. Being brave isn’t synonymous with being stoic. It’s showing your broken pieces, your willingness to pick them all up off the floor and put the damn puzzle together the best you can, even though you know that shit’s just going to break apart and you’ll have to do it all over again.
I let myself feel embarrassed yesterday. But not today.
There were lots of tears yesterday. Not one today. (Yet.)
We have to stop letting other people tell us how to process or feel or accept. The data can be deceiving. Good intentions can hurt. Anxiety can feel like a prison, but as I meet more and more of the other inmates, I realize the trick is to come out of my cell so the sentence isn’t quite so bad. Quite so lonely.
I see more hot baths, sleepy time teas and slow jogs in the woods in my immediate future. Those are some of the things that sometimes help me. If there are things that help you, I’d love to hear them. Or just to hear from you at all. Slide your cell door open and come by for a visit, any time.
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