“It could be a collapsed lung,” the doctor said. “Sometimes, twenty-something white guys get these spontaneously collapsed lungs. But we’ll also do an EKG to make sure there’s nothing wrong with your heart.”
I didn’t care what it was. Granted, both of those things
sounded bad. Collapsed lungs or arrhythmias were not things I wanted to
experience anytime soon—anytime at all really—but more than anything, I wanted
the pain to go away.
My parents and I had been watching TV. Family Feud I think it was, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I
had spent the day buying travel books for my trip to Prague. Now, as I thumbed
through them, I was trying to get a blog together that I could use while I was
overseas. I’d built the template months ago; I was just trying to figure out
what to post first.
That’s when it happened. It started in my abdomen and slowly
climbed up my chest and into my back. At first it just felt like basic cramping
and I adjusted myself in the chair. But it kept spreading, and soon, it started
tightening. My chest felt like it was being crushed. It hurt to inhale, but it
hurt even more to exhale. The muscles
all through my arms went rigid. I could move them, but it was more comfortable if
I didn’t.
My parents tried to help me, but the pain was unlike
anything I’d felt before. After almost an hour of trying to get it to go away,
we went to the hospital where the ER admitted me.
“Now there hasn’t been any physical trauma that would cause
anything like this?” the doctor asked. She was tall and blonde, with kind of a
stalky build, probably in her late forties/early fifties. When she came into the room, we’d compared
stories about SCUBA diving. Oddly, talking about something besides the pain
seemed to make the pain less severe.
“No,” I said.
“And how about anything psychological?” she asked. “Anything
stressing you out or anything you’re worried about or anxious over?”
That did it. The vice around my body squeezed and I clenched
my teeth. If I were truly honest, I was anxious about going to Prague. Buying
books and making plans suddenly made it feel more and more real. I was excited
for the opportunity, but inside I was panicked and I’d been trying to hide that
ever since I got my acceptance letter (almost 3 months earlier.)
“I supposed I have been a little stressed lately,” I
admitted. She made a note and left the room. As she did, I asked her to send in
my Mom. Six hours, several scans, and various IV pain killers all revealed that
I had had a run-of-the-mill anxiety attack.
Over the next month, as I got ready to go, the same panicked
feeling came and went. I bought a health magazine at one point that had an article
on anxiety attacks. Apparently they are a growing epidemic in my demographic
(white, college-aged, males.) The best advice it gave was to not worry about
having anxiety attacks, recognize an attack when it was coming on, step away
from the current task, and start counting until the attack subsided. Throughout
shopping, packing, saying “goodbyes” and air travel, the trick had worked. While
I’d get the painful tingling in my abdomen from time to time, I never had
another attack as bad as that night in the hospital. Since I’d been on the
ground in Prague, I hadn’t felt an attack at all.
Feb 28, 2013
(continued)I was in the middle of writing my blog post for today, and
had just begun to describe grocery shopping, when out of nowhere, I felt a
familiar sensation grab my core. I adjusted a little and tried to make it go
away. I stood up and stretched, took some deep breaths, and tried to really focus
on just blogging.
It didn’t work.
Within 15 minutes, the pain was pounding in my back and
suffocating my chest. My body once again felt like it was in a vice and I couldn’t
breathe. My arms went stiff, my joints clenching tighter and tighter. My muscles spasmed and breathing felt
impossible.
I set down my laptop and walked out into the kitchen. I
filled my mug with water and sat at the table sipping it and counting. When my
roommates came back, I stood up, and with a smile excused myself to the
bathroom. I put the lid down over the toilet and sat on it. It was cooler in
the bathroom and I resumed taking deep breaths. Within a few minutes, the
attack subsided. I stood up, went back in my room and continued to blog.
After typing just two sentences, the pain seized me again.
It felt crippling, but I tried really hard not to show it.
What did I have to be
stressed out about? I’m in Europe! I’m meeting people, playing tourist, loving
the stories and the history I get to see every day. Why can’t that be enough?
I decided to try taking a shower. Very disoriented, I stood
up and went into the washroom. As I did, I realized I forgot my towel. I went
back to get it. When I returned to the washroom, I realized I forgot my
toiletry kit. I went back to get it. My brain was firing signals from nowhere any
despite telling myself to calm down, but body wasn’t getting the message.
My roommates were in and out for a poker game that was going
on upstairs. I stayed in the shower for quite a while. The warm water felt good
and I felt my muscles begin to let up.
When I got out, I got dressed and returned to my computer. I
felt a lot better. I started blogging, and typed out several more sentences,
when once again, like a knife ripping through my chest, the pain shot across my
body. My back seized up and my lungs felt like they were collapsing. I couldn’t
do it anymore. I had to force my body to relax.
I tossed my laptop to the floor and quickly shut off the
lights. I lay down in bed, but as soon as I did, I felt like I was suffocating.
Grabbing a few jackets and some of my clothes out of my drawers, I created a
wedge under my pillow to prop myself up.
I started to count. One. Two. Three. Four. Five…the pain
just kept squeezing. I felt like if I didn’t keep focusing on my breathing, my
body would forget how.
Just calm down, I thought.
Please calm down. There’s nothing to
worry about. You’ve had a great trip. You’re safe. Your family is safe. Your
friends are safe. You have a fun weekend coming up. Just calm down!
Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight. Sixty-nine. This was so much worse
than the night I went to the hospital.
I guess if I thought about it, stress was a normal response.
As of tomorrow (Friday) I will have been out of the country for three weeks. I’ve
been away from my parents and my friends for that entire time. I’ve been in a
new routine, in an unfamiliar culture. Simple day to day tasks I could have done
in minutes back home can take hours here. Learning the schedule, catching the
tram, figuring out my classes…it’s all be hectic. I’ve been living on my own for
the first time in my life—really on my own since Boy Scouts gave me an excuse
to swing by the house on a regular basis for the last 18 months of college. I’m
doing laundry on a regular basis and cooking for myself when I want to eat. My
diet has completely changed, as has my sleep schedule. I’m sure I’m a bit
dehydrated too. I suppose my brain might need a chance to catch up to my body.
But I wasn’t going to let this little attack stop me. I have
been having so much fun. I’ve learned so much about Prague, and about myself,
that I didn’t want a little bit of stress to slow me down. My plans for the
weekend are exciting, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know the people I’m going to
go with. This is just a blip in the radar. This was probably some repressed
fear and emotion that I needed to deal with, and now that my body was sorting
it out, I could get back to the adventure.
For over half an hour, my body would relax only to tense
back up again. I kept counting until the pain went away, then I’d let my mind
wander. Within a few minutes of straying from the rhythm of numbers, would
retighten, feeling worse than before. The last number I consciously remember
thinking was 1,624.
Somewhere shortly after that, I drifted off.
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