Things Were Downhill From Here.
*Trigger Warning*
I woke up one morning, and I was broken.
I was sweaty, had hot flushes, palpitations, I felt sick, I was agitated. I didn't know where to put myself. I couldn't settle, I couldn't sit still, I felt as though I needed to get, to get away. But it didn't matter where I put myself, I could not escape from that feeling.
I visited my GP that day, who started me on another dose of SSRIs. But warned me that they would take six weeks to have an effect. Six weeks? How was I going to get through six weeks of feeling like I did?
I struggled through the day, anxiety through the roof, just not managing to bring myself down from the feeling of fear.
I fired off an email to university and my personal tutor, telling them that I would be stepping off the course, as I felt unable to carry on. I felt unable to even make it as far as uni, let alone stay there and study. I wish I still had access to the email. When I later spoke to my personal tutor, she said it read like a train crash had happened. It was like watching it in slow motion not knowing what to do. That she could tell from just that email, that I had just crashed and burned, and was broken. Very broken.
My community placement was still miles from home, despite me requesting several times to be moved closer to home as the journey was taking it out of me each day. I didn't know what was happening to me, it enveloped me, there was no escaping it. I was doomed.
The baby (now 7) had been discharged from hospital the day before after suffering a systemic infection following a case of tonsillitis. He was diagnosed with a heart murmur whilst there. That was the straw that finally broke the camels back I think.
The next few days and weeks passed in a bit of a blur. I visited occupational health through work, and had a meeting with my personal tutor. Occupational health and my GP offered to sign me off sick, to give me time to settle a little, and then decide where to go from there. My personal tutor advised taking the time off, and if I still felt like I couldn't continue the course in six weeks, then I could step off. But she advised me not to leave my studies whilst I was still feeling so raw, and I took that advice. The summer break was also coming up, so on top of my six weeks sick leave, I would have an additional five weeks summer break, giving me plenty of time to assess my options and make a decision.
At home, I struggled. I developed severe agoraphobia. So severe in fact, that I couldn't even go into my own garden. I couldn't be left alone, I panicked if I didn't have either Tommy or my parents with me. I was incapable of anything and everything. Essentially a baby again that needed 24/7 looking after.
The heightened anxiety and panic eventually left me, for long enough to be able to function almost normally at home. I was still unable to be in the house alone, and the agoraphobia lingered. I started to feel strong enough to start fighting it. I would stand on the back doorstep and venture a few paces into the garden. The back garden was fully enclosed, and not overlooked, so I would just stand there for a while, maybe walking a few paces into the garden, then a few paces back, and repeat. I didn't push myself until I experienced a panic attack. Whilst I know that many sources will say that you should continue to induce panic, and then sit it out and allow the panic to naturally pass, I didn't feel strong enough for that. What worked for me, was taking a few paces then as soon as I felt the anxiety start to rise, stop, wait a second, then return to 'safety'.
I started to do the same out of the front door too. I lived on a very busy road that brought traffic off the motorway and into the centre of town, and the road was constantly busy. I lived on a little service road that was set back ever so slightly from the main road and run alongside, parallel to it.
Id stand outside the front door for a few seconds. Then go back in and potter about the house. Nothing scary happened when I stood on the front doorstep, so I did it again a few hours later. Again, nothing happened, so I did it again a little later on in day. Again, although I wasn't pushing myself to the limit of panic, I was doing more than I did the day before, and that was the important thing.
A few days later, I was able to walk into the front garden, and sit on the wall. Not actually go out of the garden, but just sit on the wall inside it, just watching the world go by. This was slightly more anxiety inducing, but not bringing me to the level of panic again.
A week or so down the line, I walked outside the front gate, unlocked my car which was parked directly outside it, and sat in it. Again, slowly slowly, I was doing slightly more than the week before. It was slow too. Painfully slow. It was an achievement to me that I was able to just unlock and sit in the car. I didn't stay there too long, again, the idea wasn't to bring myself to a state of panic, it was to do slightly more than I had done the day or week before.
At the weekend, I decided to give the car a clean. This was one of the highest anxiety inducing activities I had done since I started my slow recovery.
The anxiety was constant throughout. It never lowered, although it also never reached the point I felt like I needed to escape or run back into the house. I had put into place a few safety behaviours, such as leaving the front door open, so if I did need to get back inside, I wouldn't have to fumble for keys, or be held up by opening the front door.
This painfully slow recovery continued. Each morning, I would get up and try to get just that tiny bit further. I was literally the person who couldn't even put washing out in her own back garden, to someone who went out the front door, and walked 50 paces to the nearest lamppost. That is how my recovery was measured. In lampposts. Sometimes it would take me 10 minutes to walk to the nearest one as I kept hesitating and turning back, sometimes I could just stroll to it without a care in the world. It didn't matter how I got there though, the important thing is that I did it.
Within a little while, I was making it to the second lamppost, then the third. I then set my target at the park, where I used to walk my dog daily. It was a straight road to the park. I could see the entrance. I reckon if I shouted, someone standing at the entrance will have heard it, just to give an idea of the distance. It took me several days, getting one, maybe two paces closer to the park each time I went out.
Then...I was at the entrance! It was an ungated park, so just an opening in a fence, but it took me a couple more days to actually cross that threshold into the park. I stepped in. I stood for thirty seconds, I stepped out. That was enough for one day, and I went back home. The following day, I stepped in, walked forward on to the grass, stood for thirty seconds, then walked out and home. By the end of the week, I was feeling pleased with my achievements. I mean, it is pitiful. I had gone from a happy, confident person who could happily drive herself anywhere around the country, to someone who was celebrating the achievement of stepping onto the grass at the park less than 50 yards from her house. But hey, not long before that, I couldn't even step onto the grass in my own back garden.
That weekend, I made a couple of sandwiches and chucked a banana in my bag, and off I went for my daily walk, to the park, inside the park, onto the grass, and sat down and had a little picnic for one. It was a small victory.
This slow recovery continued, although the pace of it stepped up a bit when I gradually resumed driving, first with someone beside me, then alone.
By the end of the summer, I contacted my personal tutor, and told her I felt ready to return to work. I was given a phased return of half a day twice a week, increasing by half a day a week until I was back full time. As is often the case within the NHS, nothing works as it should, and after just one week, I was back working full time shifts.
I could function. I could get the kids to school, I could get to work. I was finally given a community placement closer to home. I still couldn't manage much more than that, but that didn't matter. As long as I could cover the very basics, that is all that mattered. I shopped online so I didn't have to go to the supermarket. We stopped going on weekends away as it was too much for me. Tommy and I had to give up our usual habit of heading out for lunch whenever the two of us had a day off. But the basics were covered, and life could continue. A different life, granted, but I was still slowing recovering. And I believed that I would one day 'get there'. Get back to the person I used to be. I was settling into the new routine of being me, and beginning to feel better in myself.
Then I discovered Tommy had been seeing someone else...
No comments:
Post a Comment