Nobody Panic! Get on the floor!

I'd been pacing around the house that evening, folding laundry, running a bath for the girls, chatting on the phone, putting toys away, catching glimpses of the news, local, so mostly fires, stabbings, and kidnappings with a little bit of the weather and traffic report to keep me interested.  Once I'd gotten the girls in the tub, earlier than usual because we'd been trapped inside after school because of the rain, I started to feel faint, a little light-headed, and a bit spacey.  I sat on the toilet seat while the girls bathed (played) and started to tell them about 911, what to do in an emergency, where to go (downstairs), where not to (out the door and up the street).  I told them that I would write telephone numbers on the fridge and that we would practice dialing them.  They were confused.  I was too.  I really had no idea why I suddenly felt like they had to have this information RIGHT.NOW.  I said that were I to faint, that would be the signal to call 911 and to wait for them to ask certain questions.  We have been working on our address and other important information but Lily was most confused about fainting.  "What is fainting?" she asked and when I showed her, both girls stood up in the tub and promptly begged me not to do that.


I didn't faint.  I did stay down on the ground for a bit though giving them a "demo."  When I stood up, the room started to spin and I felt like I would throw up.  I was hot and clammy and then my chest started to hurt on the left side.  It felt like a three hundred pound person was sitting on my chest and my breathing became more and more labored as I gasped for full breaths.  When my hand started to tingle and my fingers went numb, I freaked.  I didn't call 911 as I had instructed the girls to do.  I had them get out of the tub and get on their pajamas and I called my sister.  I told her I thought I was having a heart attack and that I didn't want to die in front of the girls.  She tried desperately to convince me that I wasn't having a heart attack, but a panic attack.  She asked if I was pacing up and down in fear that if I stopped I would drop.  I answered, "Yes" but I still felt like I was going to drop to the floor.  I got off the phone with her and called my friend Tiffany and asked her to come over right away.  I told her I thought I should call 911 but needed someone to stay with the girls.


I smiled at the girls as they got dressed, put on the television for them, pet their faces, and tried to reassure them with my facial expressions and gestures that everything was fine.  Then I called 911 and told them I feared I was having a heart attack.  Tiffany arrived minutes before the EMTs and then it all broke loose.  Here's how I presented.  Forty-two year old, African-American female, with no history of heart disease or diabetes complaining of chest pain, numbness, and shortness of breath.  I am afraid to stand up, am a bit hot but dry and they are looking for clammy.  Tiffany is distracting the girls, but I can see Lily peering at me, stealing glances, trying to understand what all the commotion is about.  There are three large men in uniform in our house looking at me, attaching electrodes, taking my blood pressure, touching my forehead, telling me I should go to the hospital.  I go because I want to be sure.  I am leery because I can only imagine the cost.  Imagine that choice.  Thank you, US healthcare system.


After a few hours of tests, blood sampling, chest x-rays, blood pressure reviews, I realize, as does everyone else involved, that I am not having a heart attack.  And I want to go home.  I am tired.  I am cold.  I am hungry and I am just wondering how I got to this place.  This place where I am living in such a heightened state of anxiety that panic and fear has overtaken my senses.  I have been this way for a while yet never considered this toll.  My body is kind of over me and just cannot hack this program anymore.  The postpartum in Barbados.  The absolute stress, terror, and isolation that came with living there.  The disconnect from everyone and everything I had known.  The near complete breakdown of my marriage.  The realization that there are very few people in our lives, certainly in mine, who can walk with me.  (Those who do, do it with aplomb and I am sincerely grateful.  But I am a fool who often tries to get "blood from a stone" and suffers greatly for that.)  The feeling like a freak, being overwhelmed at mommying, scared I will scar my kids as I have been.  It is all too much.

Months ago I started a new behavioral therapy.  It has truly changed me and I think for the better.  It is called EMDR (eye movement desensitization and reprocessing) which

But first I had to feel like I was having a heart attack.  Because these images, these thoughts, these feelings, this pain, this hurt cannot come up and go away so easily.  And as I allow myself to acknowledge them, not rationalize them, it hurts.  Badly.  So I thought I was dying, having a heart attack.  In some ways I am.  I am letting go of that scared little girl who doesn't trust anyone or anything in the world and trying to hold hands with the people who really love me and only those people.  I am trying to seek out the joy and not always prepare for the pain or the letdown.   I am holding other people accountable and not just blaming myself when they hurt me!  I am screaming "Uncle!" when I have had too much and am not apologizing for having a lower threshold than expected especially when I have proven time and time again that my threshold is pretty damned high.

This pressure, this panic, anxiety can kill you and I still have too much to share.  I am off the floor but I am limping to the door.  I want to go outside without my shoes on, laugh my head off , tickle and be tickled.  I can't let go of my past, but I surely don't want it to be the definition of me, just a marker on the road.  And if I am to pass in front of my children, I want to be a supremely old lady who has lived an incredible life, shared with wonderful people, not taken the small things so seriously that they destroy me, and to have loved, loved, loved. 


(c)  Repatriated Mama:Back to the Suburban Grind.