Day 185

Day 185, self quarantine:

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

So as I was writing my post at dawn yesterday, I realized I didn’t feel that great.  As soon as I hit “publish” I sat back on the sofa, took a deep breath and...

And realized I couldn’t.

And when I tried again, I had chest pains.

I can’t even begin to describe the panic I felt so of course what happened next was I slid into a full fledged anxiety attack.

It wasn’t even 6:00 a.m. and Gary was upstairs sleeping.  I stared at his useless flip phone on the dining room table.

I couldn’t breathe and I couldn’t move.  I was terrified.

I was *this close* to typing HELP on Facebook.

Because I guess dialing 911 would have made too much sense.

I sat there frozen for several minutes until I could at least breathe a little and get to the stairs a few feet away.

I just wanted to get upstairs to Gary.  I so didn’t want him waking up to my cold dead body downstairs.

I don’t know how I made it but I did.  I stumbled into our bedroom and gasped “Gary” and luckily he was in and out of sleep and heard me.

Jake, who was sound asleep next to him, knew something was wrong right away.  I fell on the bed and Jake immediately crawled on his belly over to me.

Poor Gary.  That made twice in a couple days I scared the hell out of him.

“Rob!  What’s wrong?”

So I told him about the chest pains and shortness of breath and he leapt out of bed and started getting dressed.

“Where are you going?” I asked confused because now I had sweat pouring off me and I was entering the chills and goosebump stage of my panic attack.

If you ever had panic attacks, you know what I’m talking about.  You get shit in waves.

“We’re going to the hospital,” he said.

Gary is the worst at waking up normally so having to wake up with me all sweaty and gasping and dying was not a perfect scenario.

I rolled into my spot on the bed and tried to take a breath. It was jagged but I didn’t have pain.  I hugged Jake and tried to sound normal.

“I’m not going to a hospital during a pandemic.  I’m okay. Panic attack. I just can’t catch my breath. I don’t have chest pains any more.”

Of course he argued and tried to get me to go, but as soon as I was in bed talking I knew for sure I wasn’t having a heart attack and so did Gary.

But it was the mother of all panic attacks.

Gary has witnessed them and he’s been my treating physician for the

past fifty years so he stopped trying to get me to the hospital and instead made me tea.

I still have the residuals this morning.  It’s worse than a tequila hangover but similar.  

I made a video appointment with my doctor just in case.

I just took my temperature, half expecting to have a fever because I am really feeling out of it but I don’t so I’m taking deep breaths, which I can easily do now but I still feel awful.  Like I just want to go back to bed and sleep for around twelve hours.

Working is going to be challenging today.  I don’t know if I can do it.

Ugh, god damn you, Trump.

I’ve been so damn worried about everything.  I thought I was handling it all fine but apparently not.

Anyway,  after the smoke cleared yesterday, I finally made some decisions.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and Happy Tuesday.