My life is scary these days. At this very moment I'm walking outside with my dogs getting them some exercise and using the voice recognition on my phone to create this posting rather than sitting in front of my computer typing. This is a new way for me to do this and since I've been doing it for days already I'm sure I already mentioned that it in a previous posting, but if I hadn't then I just wanted everyone to know about my new novel approach to posting blogs. I’m sure using, reviewing and editing by this process in the end is going to take me as much time if not more as it does typing thing off the top my head in front of my laptop however it will be in real-time and will express my current thoughts, not thoughts that I struggle to remember later, but of course as I said there's lots editing so I'm only posting about half of what I actually record. The way I normally do this is by trying to remember a topic or thought to post at a later time and if I don't forget about it altogether when I do finally get to that computer the thoughts or memories that I had I wanted to share are gone, don't seem as important or as I said, just forgotten. Throw into the mix the time it takes to turn on and logon to my computer. Half the time when I actually do I feel like typing these things by the time I bother opening my laptop, starting the document, and begin typing my thoughts which naturally are translated through to my fingers onto the keyboard and into the computer the original meaning or point I was trying to make is lost even to myself or worse when I lose interest. How can I expect anyone will be interested in reading about my hum-drum life when it doesn't even inter me. The there are real world event that always tends to pull me away or take the time that I want to dedicate to the blog.
Anyway I said my life is scary these days because I'm starting to have anxiety attacks again. When I was young during the 80s (in my 20’s) I would experience these episodes quite frequently however lately (and when I say lately I mean the last decade or so) they haven’t been that much of an interference in my life, at least to the point they were when I was younger when once I would become consumed with the panic it could often littlerally make me sit still motionless for fear that any movement might be to excessive on my body creating that heart failure I so feared. I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid of dying. The process, the pain, that's what scares me.
These attacks all seem to have started (or I should say started returning) a few weeks ago when my blood pressure skyrocketed during a conference meet at work, the intensity escalating to the point where paramedics had to be called. Of course once the medics arrived (and actually even before they got there) the feeling of fear and panic started to subside and I was regretting that I had allowed myself to give in to the fears to the point I would admit to my coworkers that I was in a state of panic rather than trying to ride it out as the events generally hit a highpoint and then begin to taper off but I could not talk myself out of it this time and allowed myself to be convinced that this event was the real thing, and after all was back to normal the experience was so embarrassing, it made me appear a fool in front of my coworkers; the damage was done, my giving it to the fear and announcing my panic had already occurred and there was no taking back the distraction I had caused to my office and fellow workers.
Things just aren't going great for me and my family at the moment. Aside from my high anxiety cause mostly by my husband's health and some financial matters, my dearest beloved dog has passed away (See: Good-Bye to my Beloved Pet). I had to have him put to sleep about a week or so ago because his legs had been giving out on him. He reached the point where it was difficult for him to stand and when he would finally get up after a huge amount of effort he would generally fall and sometimes into his own feces. He became terrified of the stairs and it was all I could do to get him in and out of the house there are no options to avoid steps because both the front and back of my house have stairs. The dog had been diagnosed about a year ago with hip-dysplasia and there was no way we could afford the exorbitant costs involved to go through with the surgery the doctor suggested might or might not help. Actually the doctor said his best recommendation as an alternative to surgery would be to keep him as comfortable as possible, that at this point it was a quality of life issue and due to his age even if we could have afforded the surgery the hopes that he would recovered or even ever walked properly again were severely reduced and questionable. So keeping the quality of life recommendation in the forefront of my mind I maintained his health using over the counter Cosequin supplements, and costly prescribed pain pills and anti-inflammatory meds (more than we could afford but we put the expense on our charge cards because we loved the dog and wanted him to be as happy and comfortable as possible for his remaining days).
He was a beautiful German Shepherd and I had him for 11 years and I love him (or should say loved him) so much and now he's gone and everywhere I look and everything I do in the house I remember him and I remember our lives together and then I return to reality and remember he’s gone, no longer here, will never come to me again, he will never rub his head to my thigh like he used to do the get my attention, never again will he cock his head as he stares at me intently focused on my voice as if wanting or having the ability to understand what I was saying to him, I remember these things and I want to cry. I cried a lot at first after he was gone, I cried before we made the final decision because I just didn’t want to face it and then when we finally did decide it was time I cried the whole time the process was going on, and afterwards I cried for several days whenever the awareness of his absence would return. I don't cry as much anymore which is frustrating because I still want to cry but there just aren’t any tears left. I get mad at myself for not being able to cry anymore because he deserves the tears. He deserves my remembering him every day and the life we had together and I'm so afraid of when the memories start fading, which they will, like the memories of my former pets have faded, like they did for my mother and my father when they all passed.
Now that he is gone I still have two German Shepherds and I need to make a point to ensure the life they have left is the best it can be but I'm afraid the many distractions in my life will limit the amount of time I do spend with them and in the end will regret lost opportunities just as I currently regret lost potential because of the passing of my first Shepherd.
As I indicated at the beginning of this post I'm walking the yard with my remaining dogs right now and as we stroll I am dictating to my phone. I kind of like this notion of describing my thoughts to text, I feel like regardless of how boring or unimportant my thoughts and life may/might be to others at least this process of recording real-time is ensuring that if and when I die, experiences, beautiful things like my sweet dog (or horrible things too for that matter) will be remembered and will not have been for naught. I think this may be a good way to get my thoughts into this blog.
There is so much more to add regarding my scary and anxious life but obviously it is impossible blurt all these experiences or thoughts one explosive recording or text document to anyone that is silly enough to even bother reading these posts, you like the victims of the fascist Trump’s future torture and waterboarding techniques (the ideologies that will soon be taught to every young soldier as a means for extracting information) my thoughts and experiences will have to be dribbled drop by drop onto the sufferer that chooses to read or cares even an iota about this gobbledygook until they succumb to the monotony and run screaming from this site never to return.
My anxiety and stress is coming at me from so many different levels and obviously the election of a madman as my President is also part of my stress factor. In my personal life aside from losing my dog my husband of 35 years has been dealing with numerous heart issues. He has been ending up in the hospital every few weeks most frequently diagnosed with congestive heart failure or because the defibrillator/pacemaker device in his chest might "fire" (or "go off" - the doctors refer to the device triggering as “firing”); and now because of everything going on in our lives and his fear of being zapped (which is not a pretty sight, I've witnessed it several times already), the constant threat of that severe shock which has saved his life but is very disturbing or simply dying from a heart attack (if dying like that could be “simple”) of which he has already had 5, possibly 6, all these issues have culminated to a state where he himself is now having anxiety attacks. These are something he had never experienced in his life and although throughout my life he has put up with my numerous outrageous and sudden attacks he now knows what it feels like to experience that anticipation of the worst pain ever, the one that takes you out of this world. When I was young and would suddenly panic he would frequently express his frustrations with me telling me that when I was old and gray I would realize that my attacks had been foolishness and regret all the time I spent focused on dying. I do regret all the time lost, the self-medication that occurred, drinking to get over the feeling when I didn't want to drink. Now I am older, and grayer, and they are back and I don't feel foolish, I feel scared..
Starting in my 20’s all the way through my 30’s these experiences were so debilitating that they would literally keep me from doing things because I was afraid that I would have a heart attack at any time. I wouldn’t go places that were too far from some sort of community, rural areas, because I needed to ensure for my own peace of mind that I was near a hospital, that emergency services would be able to arrive quickly should something happen so notions like experiences camping or going fishing out in the wilderness or trips on the ocean would be strictly off limits. These limitation of course affected our lives and kept us from doing so much of the things that other couples our age would do because the mere thought of being somewhere distant that might inhibit my rescue was enough alone to trigger a panic attack.
Now I'm in my fifties and I went through most of my forties without having any anxiety attacks but in the last month now at 53 years of age, I have had two severe anxiety attacks one of which I mentioned above and I truly believe the are reoccurring because of all the stuff that's been happening in my life. All the stress in my life at the moment, my husband's health, my dog dying, issues at work, financial problems, my personal health issues, my constant worry about my existing pets and what would happen to them should something happen to me while my husband is going through one of his now quite frequent hospital stays, all these things combined confront me nearly daily. All the negative aspects of life seem to be snowballing and I just don't know how much I can take, either mentally or physically.