fear

The Scary Thing

Right now, at this very moment, my chest is killing me. And it has been for at least the past hour. I am on a new medication (Prozac), l’m fairly certain increased heart rate is something I am supposed to be on the look out for. I also have a heart murmur.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. This has happened before and after starting the Prozac. A few years ago this happened so intensely in the middle of the night my husband called my doctor and spent at least 20 minutes on the phone with him describing my symptoms and checking my pulse. Tonight I have checked my pulse 3 times, seems normal, felt my heart beat, seems normal. My chest is fucking killing me.  Of course this triggers anxiety, making it even worse.

Checking my pulse is hard, all of my doctors have had trouble, always had to reposition their fingers a few times with a puzzled look on their faces, this also makes it harder. Am I sure that’s really my pulse? Am I doing this right? Does this app really work?

This leads me to what I feel like is one of the worst parts of living with fibromyalgia. I never know if something is actually wrong with me. I used to be so in tune with my body, this specific side pain means I’m getting a UTI the tests won’t pick up for a week, this type of headache means I’m dehydrated, etc.  Now,  I feel like I’m having a heart attack, maybe, maybe fibro.  Been working out, is that a pulled muscle or fibro?  Back hurting, is my bulging disc inflammed or fibro?  Tooth hurting cavity or fibro?  I’m sure you’re getting the idea.

I never know what’s actually happening in my body any more.  I never know whether I should be worried, if it’s something I should get checked out, or something I should just grit my teeth and get through. This is terrible for my anxiety. I am scared, a lot. I swear it’s almost as if having fibro turns me into a hypochondriac because I never know what’s wrong with me. I always have to consider all the possibilities.

Right now, right this minute, is my heart slowly giving out on me, or is it just my monster, my fibro here to scare me again?

Fog Rolling In

The Fibro Fog is setting in.  Sunday was stressful and difficult and caused a minor flare.  My drained energy and spider encounter were more than I could handle yesterday and today I just want to finish the chores around my room.  But I have soo much fog left over from the stress and flare. I can’t even keep a list of things I want to do in my head so that I can figure out a game plan. I would use the memo pad in my phone to hold this list but then anything I don’t finish has to go on my long term to do list which just seems to keep growing and growing. I have no clue where the fuck to start or what to do with myself. I’m worried I won’t be able to figure it out and get super depressed and be hard on myself for not getting anything done. I did that yesterday, I don’t want to do it again.

Oh God The Landscaping

The landscaping my dad did around his house has torn up the homes of all of the spiders living in our yard… Now they are relocating to our bedroom. I tried to put laundry away, picked up a shirt and a big spider came scurrying out.  I no longer want to touch anything. This is the third spider within two feet of my bed in teo days.  I have been sleeping with the lights on for days. On my husbands day off we didn’t manage to run errands for other reasons. But now I’m finally trying to do at least the chores I can do and right away a spider jumps out at me.  Ugh, it’s hard to even type or read that word.  Now I’m just on my bed scared to continue any chores. Scared of the blanket laying over me.  And another day of getting nothing done just makes me feel so useless. 😪

Aaaah

Last night as I was putting in the first load of laundry I saw a big ass spider crawling on a laundry basket that seems to live in front of our washer and dryer. I started the load but had my husband come down to be my hands to move it ahead and start another. It was late and I was just going to leave it til morning. We both had trouble sleeping last night, he was up til around 3 and I was up til 4 or 5. When I  woke up there was so much commotion going on on the first floor of the house that I couldn’t help but think it’s my dad and his wife stomping around about my laundry still being there. That may sound silly but my dad wife isn’t very stable and is very protective of “her” areas of the house. She attempted to passive aggressively keep us from doing laundry here at all when we first moved in. Normally when I leave laundry over night I pop up right away to get it so I don’t have to stew in this anxiety. But my husband is still sleeping and the spider is still down there so I will continue to feel like the whole house is angry with me and worrying about the well-being of my clothes until he wakes and I can convince him to get dressed and walk down two flights of stairs and outside. I think it’s time to smoke that’ll wake him anyway.