And on it goes

When I last wrote, we'd been doing an unprecedented nationwide lockdown to stop the spread of COVID 19. We did slowly emerge from that state - I can't even remember when, now - and life slowly went back to normal. 

Personally, I had enjoyed being in lockdown. It meant quality time for my family. It meant no rushing. No two hours worth of commute. I had anxious moments (as per prior post) but mostly it was a positive experience. I found moving back into a workplace where most people had choices about being there or not when I didn't, somewhat challenging. I, and many others, experienced a kind of lockdown grief. My 13yo daughter said she cried because she had enjoyed the time she had spent (at her father's house) with her 18yo brother, and now he was headed back to work and his social and love life, she would miss him terribly. 

We ended up in what our government called COVID-19 Alert Level 1 - which mostly meant life as normal for most of us. We went back to our normal movements. Nyah and I even got in a roadie to Hawkes Bay. 

After 102 days of freedom, it all (sort of) came crashing down. Community cases were discovered, so Auckland went into another lockdown. I say 'lockdown lite' as, unlike the first time around, many businesses could still operate and people could still work in some industries. For us, though, it was working from home and kids home from school again. It was non-standard kids lunches, and again, the joy of sleeping an extra hour.

But it hasn't been so much fun this time around. The novelty has worn off. The rest of the country are cautiously business as usual (they are in "Level 2") and that feels a bit crappy to Aucklanders confined to home. Kids have had to cycle rapidly back into online learning, but will likely have to cycle rapidly out of it again. My 11yo son is in his first year at intermediate, and has spent nearly two months of it in various states of lockdown, doing online learning. Its tough for a kid in a new school trying to forge new friendships. He has found much solace in online gaming, where he can remain connected to the friends he cannot see while stuck at home. If I don't feel guilty about the online school work he isn't doing, then there's always feeling guilty about online gaming to fill the gap. Miss 13 has gotten taller than me, is cheerfully resilient, emotionally intelligent, and offers hugs readily. She is maybe doing the best of all of us.

Nyah's eczema and poor sleep betray her levels of stress, but she is calm and comforting in a crisis, and we can count on her to cook her way out of our malaise.

As for me - the bogeyman of anxiety is a constant companion.

This isn't 'feeling anxious.' It isn't 'feeling worried.' Its not the intense sensation of 'fight or flight' that marks an anxious moment, and then passes quickly.

Its an ongoing sensation of not just feeling anxious, but my whole body reacting to and pushing against it in a way that manifest physical symptoms. Its ongoing tiredness, the perception of breathlessness, the feeling of concrete in your shoes as you move through your day, the loss of interest in anything other than mindless scrolling through social media, the inability to hold onto snippets of information and the need to have everything written down, the difficulty focusing.

The worst part is the knowledge that the tight chest, the shortness of breath, the fuzzy head are not harbingers of any sinister health events, but they are nonetheless very real sensations. The worst part is knowing this, but that the reality is that it is still exhausting day to day work it to constantly affirm this to myself, leaving little energy to function normally in the middle of - in case we'd forgotten it was happening around us - a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in over 100 years. The worst part is that there is still a sense of shame that while there is 'nothing wrong with me' there is still something very, very ...well...wrong with me.

Today we learned that we are in this 'lockdown lite' for another six days. Then we move back into the steps of 'business as usual.' The steps loss and gain. 

Today I went for a skin check at a GP who is also a skin cancer specialist. He was in full PPE, and the site was managed to minimise contact between clients.

"What a year its been." He said. "Pandemics usually take eighteen months to work through," he said matter of factly. 

"It looks like we're in for another year of this."

Back for the pandemic

It's a strange place we find ourselves in.

We are in the middle of a global pandemic not seen since the Spanish flu of 1918. We are three weeks into a mandatory lockdown where we are not allowed to leave the house except to go for exercise, go to the supermarket or go to the doctor or chemist. We are working in our homes, and the kids are doing online learning. The supermarket has queues of people standing two metres apart as they restrict access in order for us to practice appropriate physical distancing once inside. People are wearing face masks. We are trying to protect ourselves from a respiratory illness that ravages the lungs and leaves its victims gasping for breath.

I felt a weight of responsibility to record the experience of being on the inside of such a historic event. Pandemics like this have changed the trajectory of life on earth in the past, and now we have so many ways of recording our experiences of it this time, it felt like something I ought to do.

But I procrastinated. Where would I write these things? I felt like recording what was happening on here would be a divergence from my lane of grappling with panic disorder and queer identity.

Then today came the collision. The physiological manifestation of anxiety came to town, and it was time to write a Pandemic Diary.

I've always had health anxiety. At the beginning of the worst manifestation of panic and anxiety, I went to an A&E doctor who gave me a script for lorazepam and told me to get a hobby.

In the early 2010s, H5N1 bird flu reared its head, and I freaked out. Alongside an emergency kit I assembled a bird flu kit for a potential lockdown. There were vegetable seeds in there - I envisaged turning the front yard into a vegetable plot.

Then on 25 March 2020 we DID go into lockdown. As part of an email exchange with my ex-husband, I said "That bird flu kit doesn't look so whackadoodle now, does it? LOL"

Just before this, the anxiety was on the rise.

On Saturday 14 March, Nyah and I went for a trip to Northland. We saw the last cruise ship in the harbour at Paihia. Entry to the country became more restricted. On Monday we got onto a boat with a bunch of tourists and sanitised our hands and tried not to touch our faces. At Otehei Bay on Urupukapuka Island, school-aged children from Europe (presumably) frolicked in the still water on a late summer day. I wondered if they would get home, and if they did, what would await them there? Europe was being ravaged by this new and dangerous virus. It was bittersweet to watch their joyous play.

I woke up that day slightly dizzy and a little bit nauseous from the anxiety. That night I drank too much at a backpacker bar to try to release tension that had built up in all my muscles.

The Sunday after this I started to worry about a deadly virus on the loose, and we had possible exposure vectors through a kid working in fast food, an adult working with kids, and adult working in retail and kids at school.

My 13-year-old daughter wanted to go ice skating with her friends that weekend, and I worried about it. She assured me the skating rink was only letting in restricted numbers. The virus had no community transmission in New Zealand yet. I waited to see what the other parents would do. In the end, my daughter said that nobody was going to go, and maybe they'd go another time. My son kicked a ball around the park with his friend next door, but I wouldn't let him go to their house. As the boys headed back to their respective house, I was hanging out washing. "Two metres!" I yelled to remind them about our new physical distancing rules.

And then we were locked down and I cried with the relief. It's hard having all of us trying to work and learn and just cope in a small space, but I felt safe. We are mostly happily contained within our bubble, as the authorities to refer to it as. About once a week, I go to the supermarket. The first time was a disaster. We are only to have one person per household go shopping. I went to the New World, which is normally one of Nyah's happy places. We stroll the aisles, me pushing the trolley, while she creates culinary masterpieces in her head as she finds ingredients as she walks. But now it was just me, queuing to get in, lots of items missing off the shelves, the stressor of finding what you need as well as keeping a two-metre distance from other shoppers, messaging Nyah to check I've got the right meat, the right chia, the right tea, and paying with EFTPOS after someone behind a perspex screen scans your groceries and packs them in the trolley. When your EFTPOS card declines and you have to get your partner to rescue you by coming down with her card, the anxiety ramps up. It's a surreal experience.

Then you have to get your groceries into your house. Messaging in the public arena has indicated this virus lives on surfaces for up to 72 hours. So now coming home from the supermarket means you wipe everything down with a bleach solution, and the shopper puts their clothes in the wash and has a shower right away.

A glass of wine usually sorts out the tensions of the weird grocery shopping trip. Its a blip in a peaceful existence.

We are financially secure (for now) with nothing to spend our money on except for 'essential' goods we can get online. That means wine, fake booze, sweatshirts, hot cross buns and bread. We have a lovely outlook across a public park and can walk around our neighbourhood. Our Prime Minister is an exceptional leader who has been decisive and has, so far, made us successful in our fight against this brutal disease. We are doing ok and there wasn't much to worry about in our little bubble.

But then an old friend came to visit.

On Tuesday I went for a walk alone. I walked up a hill and pushed myself. I hyperventilated, and remembered that one of my issues was a form of agoraphobia...which isn't a 'fear of open spaces...'
- its a fear of something awful happening in the open spaces and nobody being around to help me. What if there really is something wrong with my lungs? What if I actually can't get enough breath? None of these are rational things to think. A few months ago I'd gone back to work too soon after a cold, and felt out of breath after a walk down the hill to get lunch. I had freaked out, so Nyah picked me up and took me to A&E, where I was diagnosed as having perfectly healthy and functioning heart and lungs, and my main issue was simply going back to work too soon after a viral illness.

Today I finally hit the wall. The full physiological effects of panic disorder all came out to play thanks to an earache. I periodically get an earache on the right side of my head. All my logic tells me this is an otorhinolaryngological issue. My anxiety tells that I am going to die of a brain aneurysm. It takes nearly all the energy I have to keep the latter in check.

So here's how it feels. Tight chest. A feeling that your breath is restricted. Pain in the side of the head. Fuzziness behind the eyes. Tight throat.

It is actually impossible to put into words just how this feels. Its fake impending doom that feels real because it's actually happening in your body. I've never fainted in my life but spent plenty of time worrying that I will. It's irrational and I know it, but it feels very real. It's exhausting and it takes focus to manage it.

And then there's a level of shame. I am a pretty healthy, if a little bit overweight, adult. I have nothing wrong with me. Nothing. Ok, maybe a slightly elevated heart rate that my doctor attributes to the "little bit overweight." But nothing else. So to be struggling to get my work done because I'm focusing on getting every breath into my lungs is ridiculous. Ridiculous.

I feel like past trauma has made me more resilient generally. I have been through some big upheavals in the last ten years, and I've gotten through and been ok.

But anxiety (and its black dog brother, depression) is a sneaky bastard and will catch you in the unguarded nooks and crannies.

Its the middle of a global pandemic, and I'm not afraid of getting a horrific respiratory disease. Oh no. I'm terrified that my mild earache is a harbinger of something that will strike me down at a moments notice. Today. And all the manifest symptoms to accompany that and support that diagnosis.

I got through to the end of the day, and I'm not dead. I pushed myself to go for a walk as I know I need cardiovascular exercise. In fact, I got further than the light stroll around the park I thought my tight chest would tolerate, and ended up walking over 2kms.

If nothing else, my age has given me the perspective to know that what my body is telling me isn't always the truth, because sometimes its shit my brain has made up.

Which kind of sucks, though, at an age where people are starting to know their bodies and understand them. Sometimes I find it hard to separate the manifestations of anxiety from actual physiological events.

Just something else to be anxious about, I guess. And the spiral goes on. Or is that sucks you down?

See you for the next episode. Tomorrow? Next week? Next decade? Who knows.

Get that woman into therapy now...

This was a jokey line that my husband and I used to use when we watched The X-Files.  Agent Scully was always finding her way into a jam...and you know, stuff like being abducted and probed by aliens would likely cause many psychological problems.

At that time, it never would have occurred to me that one day it would be me in therapy.  But today I graduated from it.

Right after Mum died, I didn't really feel I needed counselling, but later, even before my breakdown, I knew things weren't quite right, and I started a search for a good therapist.  I had recommendations from friends, from family, from someone with insight into which therapists were best trained in cognitive behavioural therapy.  I had numbers, I had names.  But I didn't do anything.

Leaving things in my own hands doesn't always work well, and I found I had to wait until I was pushed to crisis point before I could make that step.  Once I had the breakdown, I went to the GP and told him point blank that I needed to be referred to someone.  I needed to be told what to do, where to go and who to see.  I received six funded psychotherapist sessions and was on my way.

Enter Linda.*  With appointment duly arranged, I turned up at the unassuming offices that made up the substantial practice that Linda was a part of.  Linda met me at reception, and led me up to her office tucked away upstairs.  She was a striking looking woman in her early 40s with big green eyes, who walked like a dancer and always had grey regrowth showing at the roots of her long brown hair.

Fortunately, I had been pre-warned by a friend that I might wonder what was being achieved in the beginning.  There was a bit of knitted eyebrows, nodding, 'Hmmmm..' and 'tell me about your mother.' 

But over time, we managed to get to the bottom of how deeply my loss had effected me.  Linda helped me understand the gravity of what had happened, and helped me deal with how my body was processing what was going on in my mind.

But not only that, she helped me get to the bottom of other anxieties that had plagued me for years.  Health anxiety was a major one for me.  A headache or pain anywhere on my body would set me off on a spiral of anxiety about having a brain tumor or a heart attack.  Linda helped me understand that this was likely a physical response to what was going on in my head.  Not only this, she taught me about how to stop pushing against my feelings, and start accepting them and working through them, rather than shoving them in the closet and pushing the door shut...even if all my baggage wasn't going to fit in there.  Banging up against a brick wall doesn't get you very far.

Today I started our session by saying that I was thinking of ditching her, but how would I know I was ready? So the hour became a retrospective of the last six months, and what I had achieved.  Linda has the skills to get into my head and to come up with something pithy that perfectly describes what I am thinking but fail to articulate, and many of our breakthroughs will stay with me for life.

In 'Serendipity' my mother talks about the profound effect her psychotherapist had on her life in 1972-73.  She considers him her lifesaver - to the point that she was still contacting him periodically decades later.

Going to therapy is interesting, because you develop a very intimate relationship with someone over time, yet of course that relationship is always one sided.  Mothers often talk about the relationship they have with their midwives.  Perhaps these sorts of professional relationships are unique because those particular practioners are present in our lives at times when we are going through great change.

With Linda's help, I am able to understand that I have been through a life changing experience.  Something in me is different, and something in me is missing.  As Linda said to me today, loss finds a place to settle.  That feeling is never gone, but finds its place in your new life - the new life you have without that person.

After this debrief session, Linda said 'You'll be fine.'  And you know, I think she's right.  There will still be ups and downs.  But yes, I think I'll be fine.



*Not her real name.  And it feels really weird calling her something else.

Freakin' out over four decades

Today I got the bad news that a health professional that I respect and admire had committed suicide.  This was a real trigger for me, and prompted me to finally put this post in writing...

Much of the body of  'Serendipity' was Mum's story of her journey though her mental illness and treatment.  The details of this journey were always hidden from us, although my brother had been told some of the story - hence we had a term for this period of her life - 'The Freakout of 1972'  I never talked to Mum about it, because it had not been her that had told me.  I felt she would tell me if she though it relevant or necessary.  It turns out that she only felt it to be either of those things after she had gone.

In an earlier post on this blog, I talked about what grief looks like.  It turns out that was simply the air punches leading up the the whammy that would knock the wind out of me. 

For most of 2011, I managed to hold myself together remarkably well.  Friends would express sorrow about Mum's passing, and ask how I was.  "I am fine...really," I would say.  And I believed it.  My brother and I sorted out Mum's affairs and tidied up loose ends, and I was fine.  I carried on my paid work, my unpaid work and I was fine.

November 2011 loomed - the first anniversary.  But I was going to be FINE, right?

Enter the surprises that grief had in store for me. 

Right after Mum had passed away, I had been to see my doctor about chest pains and increased anxiety.  See a counsellor, he had suggested.  Because I lived outside the PHO district, this was tricky - he couldn't refer me to anyone, and I was left to my own devices.  My own devices aren't particularly reliable, so despite gathering some phone numbers, that was as far as my actions proceeded.

Having suffered from chronic hyperventilation syndrome for ten years, I had noticed this was becoming increasingly hard to self-manage, and decided to take myself to see a physiotherapist at Breathing Works .  But, before I did that, I wanted to rule out any physical reasons for my feelings of shortness of breath, so went to a new GP in my local area.  He was great, and we talked about lots of possibilities around what might be aggravating my condition.  We talked about anxiety, and different approaches to handling it.  I'll get around to that, I thought....

I started seeing an osteopath about the tension in my back - although rather than it causing the hyperventilation, it was a symptom of it.  I also saw the physio at Breathing Works, which was great in terms of reinforcing some of the knowledge I already had, and providing practical exercises to do to help things improve.

So far, so good.

November rolled around, and I was off to two day meeting for the volunteer organisation I sat on the Board for.  Everything was fine for the first day, but I severely underestimated the impact the location and timing of this meeting would have on me.  The last time I had seen Mum was immediately after the same meeting the previous year when I had dropped by afterwards on the way home, and even over that weekend she had come to take my toddler son away for some respite from boring adults sitting around talking.

On the Saturday morning I began hyperventilating, and needed to lie down.  I decided I needed to leave the meeting, and managed to get myself home by singing along to the radio to stop myself panicking and hyperventilating.  Once home, I went to bed.  Later that afternoon I had an episode of uncontrollable shaking.

I decided I probably needed to see the GP about the hyperventilating again, and after reading some info from Breathing Works, figured I had better get my iron levels tested. (It turned out they were low, but I didn't find this out until a bit later - low haemoglobin is a trigger for hyperventilation syndrome)

I went to work as normal on Tuesday.... but I felt anything but normal.  I had another episode of shaking when I woke up.  Something was just 'not right' - I felt a sensation of constant built up tension that had no release valve.  I lasted at work until about 11am, when I decided I needed to 'get out of there' and see a doctor.  I didn't even try to get into my regular GP, but went to the local Accident and Medical clinic, where I spoke to the doctor on duty about what had happened over the weekend.  He gave me a small prescription of Lorazepam just to 'take the edge off' and provide some support while I sorted myself out.

The next day I went back to my GPs clinic again, and saw a different doctor.  I explained what had happened, and said that this time I think I needed outside help at setting myself on a path to recovery.  Leaving it up to me wasn't working, so could he please refer me to a therapist and give me some medication. That in itself was quite a big deal, as I had resisted the idea of medication for a very long time.  It is a credit to the doctors at this surgery that they do not treat medication as the first or only course of action, but recognise it as part of a package of treatment options.  The doctor gave me a three month prescription for citalopram and put through a referral to that PHO's psychological services. 

That night I took my first dose of citalopram, and overwhelmed by my anxiety about taking drugs for my brain, had the mother of all panic attacks.  I felt my body going hot and prickly, it was hard to catch my breath.  I was so terrified I was going to die that I got my husband to call 111.  I couldn't even tell the operator how I was feeling because it was so hard to catch my breath.  The first response paramedic arrived and took all my vital signs...which were all good.  Terrified of this happening again, I went into hospital for observation for the night. 

This was a turning point in terms of my anxieties and panic attacks.  Panic attacks produce frightening symptoms that the sufferer can interpret as life threatening - chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness.  Having been in the hospital and having my vital functions as assessed as all normal is possibly the best thing that could have happened.  I can feel reassured that chest pain does not mean I am going to die.  My heart and lungs are all fit and healthy.

My subsequent work with my therapist has revealed that I had seriously underestimated the gravity of my loss, and that I spent a year essentially 'in denial.'  My body couldn't hold in that tension and raw emotion any longer, and reacted with panic, anxiety, and I now think, depression.  I needed help, but I had to reach a crisis point before I would admit it and before I would really push to ask for it.

Anxiety and depression are such difficult beasts to tame.  Mostly the problem is in recognising them in the first place.  Then getting to the bottom of why they are lurking in that corner in the shadows.  If you leave them there long enough, eventually they will turn into the monster that becomes bold enough to step into the middle of the room and roar!

I could recognise my anxiety easily - depression, less so.  And although I thought I had grief pegged - how wrong I was.

I realised later that the first pages of "Serendipity" describe Mum's early encounters with the psychotherapist that changed her life, and enabled her to achieve all the things she dreamed of. 

In March 1972 she began that journey.  Forty years ago. 

I am Serendipity's Daughter, indeed.