Crying for help

I am starting tonight's blog post sat in my Doctors Surgery waiting room, waiting to review the medication for my anxiety and depression.

Friday morning I woke up anxious, having dreamt all night about returning to work. That's not an unusual occurrence, I dream about that occasionally and it always results in me feeling vulnerable and off balance the next day. However, later in the morning, driving to do a food shop I got an overwhelming need to cry, and a sudden sense of panic and anxiety. I found myself driving along taking deep breaths just trying to calm myself.
Thankfully one of my clients rang my mobile and a brief hands free chat with them distracted me enough for the 'attack' (I'm not sure if that's an appropriate name but don't know what else to call it) to pass.
Food shopping kept my mind off of things and although I still felt weird and panicky I figured it would pass once I picked Sophie up from Nursery and was kept busy running around with her all afternoon.
After lunch though, sat on the sofa feeding Joe his milk, I started crying.
Wrenching, uncontrollable sobbing. The kind where your nose is streaming as much as your eyes, where your head hurts and you want to calm down but every time you so much as pause you feel so desolate and unhappy you start sobbing again.
I just couldn't stop. I paid little attention to the rest of Joes feed, but managed to put him in his baby swing. Sophie brought me tissues looking concerned and asking what was wrong, I told her through my tears that I felt poorly, that it was nothing she'd done and not to worry. I can't tell you how much I hate her seeing me like that, how desperately I don't want to scare her, or upset her, but honestly there was nothing I could do. It was a literal floodgate of emotions and once it started it just wouldn't stop.

I started to go into shut down mode, something normally reserved for when my depression is at it's severest. I huddle up tight in a ball, normally rocking or swaying, close my eyes and sob. That's it, for hours. Sometimes I eventually stop crying but I still sit there doing nothing else. I don't want to interact, I struggle to function, and most scarily I struggle to care.
If Sophie fell over and hurt herself whilst I was in shut down mode I honestly cannot guarantee I'd be able to snap out of it to help her. I had some Promethazine left from the hospital which would've calmed me down, but it always makes me very sleepy, and after crying for so long I'd have been out like a light, leaving the kids to their own devices.

Knowing this, I tried desperately to find someone I trusted to come round and help. It wasn't so much that I thought anyone could do anything for me at this point, as it was that I wanted someone to be there to look after the kids, so I could just be left to it.

My closest friends couldn't be there for various reasons (and to you all, I know you would've been if you could've been, please don't feel bad) and I couldn't reach the family members that I felt comfortable seeing in that kind of state. In the end, out of utter desperation I rang my GP. He wasn't working, another GP was on. That completely threw me and I panicked, hanging up the phone*.
My health visitors number was on the wall, and I glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye. Thank god she answered the phone, and even more that she dropped everything and was with me within ten minutes.

I told her as much as I could, through snot and tears. I couldn't make decisions or answer questions. I just could not function, and thankfully she recognised that. She took over with the kids, and rang my GP*. She booked an appointment for me for that afternoon. She told me to take painkillers for my head and then left me to lay on the sofa, covering my eyes with my arms. My sister rang and I asked her to come over.
I don't remember much for a while after that. Everything carried on around me, people talking, phones going off, kids vying for attention, but all I could do was lay there in the self imposed darkness, trying to calm down. I lay there plotting how, once everyone had left me alone, I'd go to bed to sleep, then wake up in the middle of the night and leave. Just that. Leave.
It didn't matter where to, and I had no reason why, I just wanted to go and be left alone somewhere, not having to deal with, or feel, anything.

Plotting that escape calmed me down. By the time I saw the alternative GP that evening I could communicate without crying, I was out of shut down mode.
He prescribed me Diazepam, a low dose, and advised me to take some that night and whenever required over the weekend but ONLY if required.

I slept like a log that night, no chance to find out if I still intended to fulfil my plans to disappear. I have not felt myself since, and I've feared regression or relapse (two words the health visitor unfortunately kept using when she arrived which was unhelpful for my mood).
BUT I'm proud to say I still know my body & fucked up mind well enough to do what I can to combat and fight my current state of mind.
Saturday morning I woke up in full on 'curl up, sleep all day and ignore the world' mode and I knew I had to do something to stop it. I put soph on the back of my bike and rode round the estates for half hour. Fresh air, endorphins and a giggling toddler worked their magic and I managed to stay out of bed and pretty coherent for the rest of the weekend.

I have now had my medication review with my GP, and we're sticking with 40mg citalopram, with diazepam on hand for any further panic attacks. I think I've mentioned before that there are some hormone issues in my family, and I suffer from very severe PMT. The GP and I suspect post pregnancy hormones for this sudden, light switch, panic attack, and I'm going to start logging my anxiety levels and my periods in a diary to see just how much they correlate.
He did a hypnotherapy session for me whilst I was there and I felt better for it immediately. Calmer, more in control. Soothed.

Now, sat here in bed writing this and reflecting on the past few days, I feel a mixture of emotions. I'm honestly devastated that I went back to being so low, so quickly, when I've come so far these past 3 months. I'm embarrassed because so few people understand or believe how it can happen for no reason. There was no trigger. Just a build up of anxiety, a switch flicked by someone somewhere and boom, I'm a crying, incapable, selfish wreck again.

But I'm also relieved. Relieved that it last hours instead of days or weeks.
And thankful that I've a support network in place of people I can call without fear of judgement or ignorance; dear friends, some family and, of course, Twitter. Full of like minded friends who really do know how it feels, replying to my cries for help & keeping me company until people could get to me, I'd be truly lost without Twitter. Several times over.

I know I'm doing well, I know one panic attack does not a failure make, but I am sick of the lack of control. Of my body doing things to make my life miserable no matter what
I do. I'm not a wallower, I fight, I like to be in control and I do everything I can to help myself. But days like Friday make me feel like it's never enough. That no matter what I do, my mind will sabotage it.

My life is a story made up of two sane steps forward, three crazy steps back....on and on and on and on.


*I have the most amazing Doctor, he manages to show understanding without patronising and you get a sense that he genuinely cares and wants you to be ok. The amount of times he's gone over and above for me, seeing me for hypnosis at the last minute and booking me in for appointments at 6.30 in the morning is amazing. I often wonder how different my recovery may have been, or indeed if it would have happened at all, without his support. When the health visitor rang the surgery on Friday, they were already going to call me back. They'd picked up that I was upset on the phone when I'd rung and hung up, got the number I'd called from and found my medical history. I think that is amazing. My surgery, my GP- they're a bloody credit to the NHS.