Breathe In, Breathe Out

I have many things to blog about, yet I choose to bypass those to share something personal. To set the stage, one week ago (Tuesday, August 3), I had a busy work day filled with testing, then a post-work meeting and then dinner with some of my lovely advisors to talk about the fall semester. After dinner, I was driving home on the 15 south in Escondido. I felt something weird (like a shimmy, which was probably the groove in the road...they are doing lots of construction on the 15) while driving. At that moment, I got nervous....like something bad was going to happen. By the time, I hit the Scripps Poway Parkway exit, I had to pull off the freeway...I had entered the realm of a full blown panic/anxiety attack. My hands were numb, my breathing was ragged and my heart felt like it was racing out of my chest. After about 10 minutes, I was calm enough to start driving again...but could not even make it past the next exit before I had to get off the freeway. After trying this several times, I ended up taking all the surface streets home. By the time I got home, I was a nervous wreck.

Wednesday morning, I was not happy to be making the 30 minute drive to work, but made it. After work, I had to make a Costco run for a party (more on that in another post) and was feeling confident. However, by the time I hit the Genessee off ramp, I had to get off the freeway as another attack was coming on. As soon as I walked in the door at home, I burst into tears. D was worried...and for the rest of the evening, everytime he looked at me, I burst into sobbing fits. He sent me to bed early to get some rest.

Thursday morning, I became almost paralyzed with fear about getting behind the wheel of the car. D sensed my fear and drove me to work. Mom called...D had emailed her expressing his concern about me. I decided to call my doctor to talk about what had happened...as luck would have it, he was on call and could see me in the afternoon. From the moment I walked into his office, I cried talking to the nurse and the doctor. He said that my body was just so overloaded with stress that it had pushed me into this anxiety. He recommended that I stay home on Friday to give myself a chance to rest and prescribed me some anti-anxiety medication. This worried me because my boss was out for her husband''s hip replacement surgery which leaves me in charge. But,, I followed doctor's orders and stayed home Friday.

The medication has taken some of the edge and anxiety away, but I am still not driving myself to work. D has been taking good care of me...it causes him to have a longer day driving home to Poway to Kearny Mesa (his office) back to Poway and then home. It's still rough for me, but I'm trying to take deep breaths and be good to myself. Work is so crazy...I am handling (at some stage of the cycle) close to 20 recruitments. With school starting in a few weeks, we are trying to turn and burn recruitments to get staffing set for the fall. In the process, I think I turned and burned me...I thought that I was handling all of this so well, but apparently not!

I wanted to share this, so that people can understand what is going on....I'm trying to be a little selfish right now and take care of my needs. Thank you for listening!