My Anxiety Story: Part 2

I've decided to carry on with my anxiety story as after posting the last part, I felt a whole lot better, so let's continue~

 So it was the Christmas holidays, and I was very up and down when it came to my anxiety. I managed to find a couple of things to focus on, like playing The Sims, and I could spend a good hour or two being 'normal.' When I'd realise and acknowledge the fact I had done so well, it'd spark off the anxiety once again.

I spent nearly all day, everyday, feeling anxious, experiencing a whole array of symptoms and pains, and then Googling them to see what they could be. (I really had no idea they were just the effects of such high anxiety.) This then led to some pretty bad insomnia. I'd spend hours laying on my bed trying to convince myself that tomorrow was a new day and I'd wake up and just enjoy life, go back to being the old Rob who lived without a care, and was very happy. That was never the case. I'd wake up tired, hot and within about 20 seconds have some kind of pain, and I was really starting to lose control.

Some mornings I'd wake up and have trouble breathing, and of course I'd go straight to Google to see what was wrong with me. I'd stopped going on the medical websites and started looking at forums to see real-life cases, and a woman had said that she lost her father through something similar. He stopped breathing and died in his sleep. Of course that meant, I now had a fear of sleeping. The fact that I had even less control over my body made me feel even more physically ill.

Christmas and New Years' finally came, and I had a break from the anxiety. I say I had a break, but as soon as we got home from visiting family and stuff I went straight back into anxiety autopilot. New Years Day was spent with my friends, and was such a relief. No-one still really knew what was going on, but I didn't have to fake any happiness or anything - just being with them was enough to keep me smiling and laughing. As we counted down, and saw in the new year I thought to myself 'Right, you're going to start the year happy, and you're going to stay that away. New Year, New Start.' Then, of course, I got home the morning after, and the cycle started again.

A couple of days later, I decided to go shopping with my mum and dad. It was only a small trip to Tesco, but I thought I could do with getting out of the house, and be in a different environment. I also thought buying some new pens would help me focus on going back to school. I was doing pretty well until I had a sudden pain in my chest. It felt like someone quickly squeezed my heart, and I'd never felt that before. I'd learnt to power through any pains I had, but this was a new one. I thought I was having a proper heart attack this time, and was hunched over the ice creams, trying to breathe through whatever the hell was happening to me. I told my dad and he knew it was just me panicking, and we proceeded to shop, though I had a very tight grasp on my jacket and just couldn't think of anything other than what I imagined was me dropping to the floor any second. In the car, 20 or so minutes later, my dad asked me what I wanted to do. I was scared and said 'go to A&E' and so we took the shopping home, and drove to the hospital. Again, they found nothing and blamed it on muscle pains. I felt like a right knob.

The next day, I was a bit more relaxed. I knew there was nothing severely wrong with me, as the tests they did at the hospital would've shown something. It was coming up to the start of term again, so I was getting myself ready for it, trying to revise for my exams, that were only 2 or 3 weeks away. Bear in mind, I had about 5 exams, and could not revise at all as my focus just wasn't there. In the evening, my... toilet activity... was very frequent. I kept needing to use the toilet desperately, but barely anything was happening. Instead of going on Google to see what I had, I simply searched for some kind of remedy, as it was getting quite annoying by this point. A comment on a website said something like, if you get any pains in your lower abdomen it could be a UTI. 20 minutes later, my body, the ultimate troll, decides to give me stomach pains, and I made my dad drive me back up to the hospital. It was after midnight, and I walked in and explained. One of the nurses recognised me from the day before, and once I'd told her everything she gave me a look of disappointment, stating that if I did have the pain that goes with a UTI, I wouldn't be walking as well as I was. I felt embarrassed but they still checked everything just in case.

I can't remember where in the timeline this happened, but on a Wednesday night I stay round my nan and grandad's house. I've done it for nearly 13 years now, and one of my worries was something happening round there, and them not being able to help. I'd been having a bit of toothace the last couple of days, and my gum had inflamed slightly, so I was a bit worried that I'd had some kind of abscess. I'd heard that if it's untreated, it could kill you in under 6 hours if the infection gets into your bloodstream, so I was really on edge. I looked up the symptoms and it had things like shivers, sweating even though you feel cold, red bumps/rashes on the skin, and an increase in your heart rate. In the evening, I was sat using my laptop, and suddenly my heart started beating quite fast and I had a couple of shivers. I have 2 little red bumps on my arm and I put 2 and 2 together and made about a million. I phoned 999 and simply said 'I think I've got sepsis!' The guy on the phone managed to calm me down a little, and asked me to measure my heart rate with him. What I should add is at this point, I had ran up the stairs to put my shoes on and find my coat and my heart rate was through the roof. He sent an ambulance and by the time I got downstairs they knocked at the door, and did some tests, and again, found nothing. I was a lot calmer just with them being around and they left. I still wasn't able to sleep.

I felt like such a drain on the NHS, and everyone around me, and my school work was really starting to suffer, especially with exams around the corner...