Anxiety - The Wolf Is Always Waiting
Let's Talk About Anxiety
Dealing with anxiety during normal, everyday situations is something most people can recognise. For around five years now, I've been living with high functioning anxiety and health anxiety.
Health anxiety is typified by feeling overly anxious about serious illnesses, diseases or medical procedures. While people who have high levels of health anxiety are incorrectly labelled hypochondriacs, as this term does a disservice to those who suffer this serious and debilitating condition.
People like me who have high levels of health anxiety you may experience the following symptoms:
Dealing with anxiety during normal, everyday situations is something most people can recognise. For around five years now, I've been living with high functioning anxiety and health anxiety.
Health anxiety is typified by feeling overly anxious about serious illnesses, diseases or medical procedures. While people who have high levels of health anxiety are incorrectly labelled hypochondriacs, as this term does a disservice to those who suffer this serious and debilitating condition.
People like me who have high levels of health anxiety you may experience the following symptoms:
- Uncontrollable worry about physical bodily symptoms.
- Checking body frequently for signs of illness or changes in health patterns.
- Being fearful for health concerns of family or relatives (e.g my son or husband).
- Focusing excessively on the body and its physical symptoms (e.g. fluctuations in heart rate).
- Frequently worrying or seeking reassurance about health from friends, family, and doctors.
- Avoiding conversations, places, people, activities that remind you of your worries about illness.
Since being diagnosed with breast cancer, let's just say my health anxiety was accelerated into hyperdrive wharp speed. Within the space of four weeks, I was told I had cancer, I was told I had to have my right breast removed via mastectomy, I was told I would need to endure chemotherapy, radiotherapy and my body would enter early menopause. I was told I also faced five to 10 years of Tamoxifen treatment to prevent recurrence of breast cancer.
Initially my rational brain was able to handle the situation in its entirety - I had cancerous cells in my body, they needed to be removed, remaining cancer cells needed to be treated and I simply needed to go through the processes to progress to the end....good health, wellness and "cancer free".
But my anxious mind was literally screaming "Fuck! What the fuck will I do? How the hell will I cope? These medical procedures will completely make me flip over the edge. I SIMPLY WILL NOT COPE." My anxious mind was faced with the flight, fight or freeze options.
After weeks of going with the flow and taking step-by-step instructions from my medical team, my anxious mind was certainly feeling out of control. I had no input into what had been happening to my body and it was overwhelming me from the inside out.
At the end of my first week of chemotherapy treatment, I had endured several nights of interrupted sleep and a heightened heart rate. On Friday night, I felt a noticeable drop in my heart rate at bed time. This caused my anxiety to rear its ugly head and my heart rate then spiked sky high. What followed was an evening of racing heartbeat, almost total sleeplessness, pacing the halls to calm myself down, shaking leg muscles, feeling nauseous and wanting to run away from my own body. Like previous anxiety episodes, I was trying to ride this one out to the end but I was anxious that chemotherapy was also now part of the mix - how should I handle this one and at what stage should I seek medical help or outside intervention?
The following day I was scheduled to attend a function at my son's school which I wanted to fulfil, despite being in the throes of a major anxiety episode. I was walking around the school, pacing the edge of the sporting fields and feeling at any moment that vomit could about to be exposed in front of parents, children and visitors. This is probably the anxious person's worst nightmare.
Feeling at my wits end, I called one of my BFFs who also happens to be an oncology nurse for a regional Queensland hospital. She talked me through what was going on in my head and listened to my thoughts and feelings about being sleepless, having a racing heartbeat and feeling overwhelmed with everything. She advised pharmaceutical intervention was the best way I was going to be able to calm the anxiety. I followed her suggestion and took the anxiety medication prescribed by my oncologist. Why hadn't I taken it last night? I can say in hindsight that I was trying not to get "addicted" or falling into the routine of popping the pills when I felt anxious.
Another of my BFFs is an experienced senior nurse and she agreed with my onc nurse friend that pharmaceutical support is necessary to get me through these anxious moments, especially to place my body in a position where it can rest adequately and sleep well. My two nurse BFFs also agreed that my body and my brain has been through a hell of a lot of trauma in the past few months, and that I needed to give myself permission to feel freaked out and overwhelmed. The following evening, I was able to sleep soundly with the assistance of pharmaceutical support prescribed by my GP.
I feel that the wolf of anxiety is always sniffing at my heels and I know many others who feel the same. Having health anxiety and breast cancer is fucked. There's no other way to put it. But I'm lucky in that I have access to friends, support services, an understanding husband and a psychologist specialising in cancer patients who can help me traverse this new journey I'm travelling. Anxiety is manageable but when you feel as though you're having a heart attack and you want to run away from your own body, it's the worst feeling in the world.
