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Josherino)
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thehandtruck posted:my dude you might have some stuff going on in your noggin (not a judgement, just a description). imo prioritize talking to a therapist or checking out AA before moving to another country Now if they were in the US, moving would actually be the better option than waiting on a therapist.
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Sep 5, 2022 04:06
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 02:20 |
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Whiny long post warning. I'm not doing well. So my wife has been suffering from increasing health anxiety, to the point that she's spending basically every day in either urgent care, the ER, or doctors offices. Sometimes multiple in the same day. It started with being hyper vigilant about her heart rate and BP, and now she is just constantly monitoring herself and having panic attacks every time any reading isn't precisely nominal, which always convince her she's having either a heart attack or stroke. I get why shes anxious about her heart and brain: 1. When she was 8 she was being watched by her grandmother who died of a heart attack right in front of her, leaving her to deal with notifying family and authorities on her own. 2. A week after we got married, when I was 37, I had a widowmaker heart attack and spent about a total of a hour and a half being dead. 3. A couple years back in the middle of COVID lockdown they found an aneurysm in her head that was in danger of killing her. She went into the ER for a sinus headache and they just happened to catch it on the CT. She got a stent and it seemed to relieve the bubble, but now she gets regular migraines. 4. She sent her mom to the doctor for some eye problems she noticed and they found an aneurysm in her as well. So she's had some definite PTSD and has also had the experience of having successfully had her worst suspicions confirmed a couple of times. We had a daughter about a year after my heart attack, and that definitely seems to be contributing to her anxieties, worrying that she's not going to be there for her. About six months ago she tried going off of her Lexapro because she thought it was giving her unwanted side effects (I honestly don't recall what exactly at this point), and that's when the anxiety really seemed to start spiraling, though that could be coincidental. She has since tried several times going back on SSRIs but each time after the first dose she convinces herself she is getting serotonin syndrome and quits. But now my wife is basically non-functional. She spends what little time she's not in a medical office either having or desperately fighting off panic attacks. She won't stick with any treatment plan that her various doctors propose because she inevitably finds or has some side effect from the prescribed medication, goes off of it, and winds up back where she started. She's not sleeping, barely eating, and just really isn't able to be there for her family anymore. I try to support every decision she makes, make sure I make it as easy as possible for her to get to her appointments, offer to go every time (declined, because I have to watch the kid when she's in the hospital). I've even taken off work because of her daily health scares. I recently started a really good job. But it's also very challenging, and takes a lot of my focus. I have AuDHD so focus is hard to muster in the best circumstances. I'm trying my best to make a good impression and learn my job well, and I just feel like I'm already fumbling everything out of the gate. I'm 3 weeks in, still in training, and I'm already asking to leave early and to WFH on in-office days. I feel like if I lose this opportunity, it will mean we go back to poverty. So I'm super stressed about the impression I'm making, despite my boss seeming fairly cool and like he has a family-first mentality. But I'm also bad at reading when I'm actually pissing people off and they're just being polite to my face. So between that and also being constantly terrified that something might actually be wrong this time when my wife has a medical complaint, she has started to almost become a trigger for my own anxiety when I'm around her. I'm so stressed with all the constant routine and plan changes with her constant ER visits and general inability to be present, and I can feel my heart rate increase in a bad way when I'm around her now. I find myself getting angry frequently and having no clear target for the anger. I'm not mad at her, I believe she is actually experiencing the symptoms, but often by the time we get to the ER the symptoms have subsided for the most part, and generally her EKGs and CT scans all show her to be quite fit. There was one visit where they noted some sort of spinal degeneration on the imaging report, a condition which specifically could cause the headaches she was complaining about in that visit, and nobody in the ER actually brought that up with her; she only found out because she obsessively reads her lab results. So now we get to add a general distrust of the medical system (also justifiable, imo) to all the factors. At this point I think she has exhausted her body and mind and honestly dont see much of a way out beyond having her admitted to some sort of inpatient facility where she could get sedated sufficiently to allow her body to recover from exhaustion while they get her re-medicated on some sort of antidepressant, preferably with anti anxiety features as well, while being able to monitor the constant side effects and other panic triggers she always gets on medication. But I'm also anxious about admitting her, because of all the horror stories out there. I dont want her to be stuck somewhere where I couldn't help her if she was scared or abused. She is also not fully convinced on being admitted. Tonight, she is back in the ER. I'm at home putting our kid to bed, and they're apparently admitting her overnight. Her heart rate was jumping over 100 any time she wasn't lying down, when it would return to the 50s and 60s. I'm not sure if this is from just being generally exhausted, or if it's from withdrawals from the two weeks of Ativan that some doc gave her that I'm surprised she actually took, for all the good it did for her anxiety. They switched her to clonopin but didnt account for having to crossfade the tolerances, which could have triggered withdrawals for the Ativan. I dont really know how to handle this anymore. I feel my nerves straining to their very last fiber. It's hard to not become resentful. I'm fully in a Depression from this, and I have nobody to talk to about it. I can't talk with my wife because she always has so much on her mind and doesn't have the bandwidth for anything but focusing on her own health for the past few months. I feel like I've lost my partner and I'm actually in mourning and don't fully realize it yet. I focus on my kid where I can to keep distracted, but Ive been finding myself dissociating constantly during the evenings when trying to spend time with my family. She co-sleeps with our kid, because our kid has lots of problems sleeping on her own so we just stopped fighting that battle, if we ever fought it at all. I haven't shared more than a brief daily perfunctory goodnight hug and maybe kiss for a long time, and that's about all I get for any sort of intimacy anymore. I'm not even talking about sex, I just want to be close and talk about, well, anything. But she's always so pent up and stressed out that I know it would be burdensome to her. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help my wife. I don't know how to help myself. I don't know how to keep myself remotely sane while keeping this new job. I'm just getting my ADHD treated with Strattera, finally worked up to a functional dose. Can't do stim meds cause of my heart bullshit, and my ADHD med doc isn't fully on board with the autism diagnosis I gave myself but she's also a pill mill doc at a firm focused on ADHD so when you're a hammer, every problem is a nail. But all of this lack of routine while I'm adjusting to a change in my work life is just eating at my brain in all the wrong places. I had adjusted to the lack of time with my wife at night by just playing video games, and that has become the only source of dopamine in my life lately besides my kid. Not the best coping strategy, but it's let me hang on this far I guess. But I still wind up nearly crying to sleep some nights from pure loneliness. I wake up in the worst moods because I realize yet again that I'm alone, despite having a wife and kid. But what the hell do I do? How can I help her with her health anxiety, keep myself from spiraling into depression, keep my job, and be a present dad? I mentioned some of this to my ADHD med doc and she was like "poo poo that sounds like a lot, I don't even know where to begin to unravel that, good luck." Isn't this what fugue states are supposed to be for? I could use one of those. I'm tired. Thanks for making it this far.
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Apr 8, 2024 04:54
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Jorge Bell posted:drat, that sounds like a really tough situation. A therapist might be able to help give you some coping mechanisms and be a good touchpoint for self evaluation to make sure you're hanging on well enough to be able to take care of this huge situation. Thanks, yeah, I'd love a decent therapist. The last one I went to got hyperfocused on how i use the term 'kid' to refer to my kid and just weirdly wouldn't let go of it. The one before that was just a lame betterhelp-type talk therapy student who had absolutely nothing helpful to say and was just a void for me to yell into, which I have the Internet for. I keep asking my med doc for a referral but they're really not set up to do that, they're medication maintenance only. I might see about getting in the NAMI Family Group sessions, but the next one isn't til week after next and who knows how helpful that will be anyway.
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Apr 8, 2024 12:47
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Pitcher Witcher posted:That's an awful situation. My parent went through something similar to your wife though they went in patient many times until they found a cocktail of medicine that worked for their mental illnesses. They were also struggling with drug abuse. I had group therapy and a therapist through my college at the time and it helped immensely. The feelings you described echoed what that time was like for me. It's so hard to see them go through the cycles and wash out the same or worse than before and besides your support there's nothing else you can do and it's very frustrating. They have to do it. Yeah I think we're at the inpatient point, because honestly not much could be worse than this. She hasn't ever had a drug abuse problem, if anything it's hard to get her to take anything, at least more than once. Once I or a doctor manage to convince her to take something to try to help her, she will always find some sort of side effect later that prompts a panic attack and then she won't take it anymore. She's super afraid of benzo addiction, especially after the Ativan experience, but it's honestly the only class of drug that ever has any impact on her symptoms. It's the only thing that has gotten her to calm down for any period of time. I feel like she just needs to roll with a benzo until she can be calm enough to get established on a proper medication, and then wean off the benzo. But she's convinced that if she does commit to taking the benzos, her docs will just one day decide they don't wanna prescribe it anymore and then she'll go through full withdrawals, which can be deadly. It's not like she's unaware of her condition, either. She knows how irrational she is being, but still cannot stop her brain from being in a permanent panic state. When she's not numbing her brain with rewatching old sitcoms, she's watching YouTube therapists talking about health anxiety, or blasting binaural beats in her ears, or any number of other things to try to calm down.
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Apr 8, 2024 13:00
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Ytlaya posted:This is awful. My dad is like a less extreme version of your wife, and it's incredibly stressful trying to manage his attitudes towards health stuff. In his case there's the additional factor of the health issues sometimes being real, but often completely different from whatever he's complaining about, which puts me in the unenviable position of having to figure things out. Like a few weeks ago when he kept telling the healthcare workers at the ER about his flu and some completely unrelated issue with his diaphragm, when the actual emergency was that his bladder was not voiding. If I wasn't there to repeatedly emphasize this I don't know what would have happened. We're constantly having situations where she thinks some medication she just started is causing heart palpitations, we'll go in to the ER, and they'll be like "yeah you stopped drinking for like a day, you're dehydrated." Its incredibly frustrating. I'm trying to be supportive but a lot of the time the issues she's going in for are things she inadvertently causes herself. And at this point of not having had meaningful sleep or eating well for weeks, her body is exhausted and breaking down. All her symptoms now, as far as I can figure, are from that. She has the migraines as a preexisting condition, but I'm sure she's been exacerbating those symptoms as well by being so worked up all the time. But yeah I'm just not sure how to cope, myself. It just seems like it will never end until one of her symptoms kills her.
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Apr 8, 2024 13:08
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thehandtruck posted:there's something else going on with your wife. pattern of med/treatment resistance, problems, avoidance. those are usually things people with bipolar 2 (or 1) present with a lot imo. lot of addict behavior as well. obsession, addiction to intensity/panic attacks etc. why isnt she in therapy, why arent you? u guys seem very codependent as well, what with her roping you into her chaos and you enabling a ton of that. assuming everything in your post is factually correct and nothing is left out, if she's non functional, very long term in-patient seems logical. it sounds like she needs a very high level of care right now, and knowing she's being taken care of, you'll sleep better than you have in years. i mean, what she is doing and you are enabling is unsustainable, right? co sleeping with your child too, oof, id be worried she's dumping her anxiety into your kid and hoping to get dopamine in return, similar to you. your family is completely out of balance. Well we're finally getting to the point of considering in patient commitment. She has tried therapists, as have I, without much success. Regarding the co-sleeping, it's something I've communicated to her in no uncertain way on multiple occasions that I am not okay with, both for my daughters health and my own. But I simply haven't taken it to the point of making it a knockdown drag out fight until I got my way. We were dealing with PPD at the time and I had to pick my battle, so the situation has just developed as it has developed. It's honestly the least of my concerns right now. And any enabling of her health anxiety has just been supporting her visiting the doctor when she feels symptoms. I'm not going to tell her not to go and then be the guy that kept his wife home while she had a stroke or whatever. Because the annoying thing in all of this is that she has had legitimate issues sprinkled among the imaginary ones. I have to be better safe than sorry, so if she feels a need to see a doctor, go see one. But yeah, I do know this is unsustainable, which is why I posted. It's not like we haven't been constantly trying different tactics. But nothing can defeat a brain that's convinced it's dying, apparently. Which, ironically, is the entire summation of all health anxiety therapists - the repeating theme in every video or podcast that I've noticed is them saying that you can't stop it, and you just have to figure out how to accept it, but not a single one seems to have the answer of how to actually do that. Just stop not wanting to die?
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Apr 8, 2024 13:24
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Again, not sure how I'm legitimizing her insanity. She has legitimate health issues happening among the imagined ones, so I have to err on the side of letting the doctors decide there's nothing wrong with her, since I am no expert. When her issues come up (all the time lately), I always address it as soberly as I can by telling her that I think she is not having an actual health crisis when her heart rate drops by 5 bpm from her average. But I also will not stand in her way in terms of getting to a doctor, that seems dangerous to me. I can advise, but I cannot restrain. But I want to get her to the right doctor. The ER docs are similarly unequipped to handle this.
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Apr 8, 2024 15:42
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Hey, taking Xanax just on the weekends shouldn't result in a physical addiction, right? That seems to be when I need them most so I think if I just keep it to those times I should stay clear of the bad withdrawals if/when I stop taking them.
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Apr 21, 2024 02:19
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Yeah I ain't got time for that right now, benzos it will have to be, I gotta be functional for my kid. Thanks though. I take the smallest dose and never double up. I just force myself to deal with the anxiety and panic during the week, but the weekend is when I'm most exposed to my triggers. I already guilt myself enough over having to use an addictive medication, thanks.
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Apr 21, 2024 17:48
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Ytlaya posted:If you're going to be going this route (which I do understand - sometimes there aren't really any good options), one way you can at least significantly reduce the risk is by simply ensuring that you don't have enough to use it more frequently. If a doctor is prescribing, you can ask for an amount that is "enough to use on just the weekends, but not enough to use more often than that" (and the same also works if a doctor isn't involved, though requires a bit more self-discipline). And, if possible, it can help to give someone else control over dispensing it (this might not be an option for you, but if you have an SO or any other trustworthy adults you live with they could maybe do this). Basically you just want to preemptively make it harder for yourself to change your dose/frequency later. The idea is that, whenever a lovely weekday comes when you really wish you could take some Xanax, there's some barrier there to make it more difficult (either in the form of "awkwardly needing to ask someone" or "knowing that if you do this you'll end up running short later"). Thanks, this was helpful. I'm already on the lowest dose and only get 15 pills a month, so it's not like I can take it daily for long. I usually have a few pills left at the end of each month. I just want to make sure that if my regular usage is so sparse as to be just on weekends, would that greatly reduce the likelihood of forming a physical dependence. I don't want run into the experience of having a weekend where I don't feel like I need it (lol that never happens), I don't have a loving seizure or whatever because of it. But if even that level of regularity (.5 - 1mg each weekend) can cause physical addiction, I'll go find something else I guess (lol nothing else touches the anxiety or helps me feel remotely normal like benzos so gently caress me). Believe me, I understand that this is not a long term solution, but I'd like to have at least one layer of anxiety less while trying to survive this poo poo. Sorry for snapping at the goon earlier, but it is one of the aforementioned weekends and I am in The poo poo. Just wasn't taking their message the right way and instead just saw it as "yeah here's why your one and only lifeline right now sucks, despite your post being entirely about avoiding addiction." If I was taking recreational doses I'd just go post in TCC. But I already have intrusive negative thoughts about how weak willed I am even when I take a pill after a whole week of abstaining. I just want some reassurance that a solid 5 days between doses will cut it for keeping me unhooked physiologically.
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Apr 22, 2024 05:19
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And now someone brought bed bugs into the house and my wife is freaking out having panic attacks over going into anaphylaxis from the bedbugs (she is not allergic to them). I'm stuck at work and cannot miss any more right now, especially when it's a panic attack over nothing. My thoughts are spiraling now and I can't focus on work at all.
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Apr 25, 2024 17:57
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And most places test at LabCorp and LabCorp don't care what's in your pockets or concealed under your belt. Nor are there metal detectors to be set off by hand warmers. There's only one way an employer gets my actual piss, and they won't (well, might not, let's not kinkshame) like it.
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Apr 28, 2024 14:46
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 02:20 |
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I'm clearly structuring my life to maximize disappointment.
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May 1, 2024 02:38
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