Into Fear and Back
ONE WOMAN’S THIRTY YEAR STRUGGLE WITH GENERALIZED ANXIETY DISORDER (GAD) AND HOW SHE CONQUERED IT WITHOUT PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Susie Macomber
Copyright 2009
Published by Be eRead
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
To my husband, Randy, and our three children, Brett, Katie, and Curtis.
Preface
I have struggled for more than two years, trying to decide whether or not to write this book. It overwhelms me to think about all that led me here. It came down to two main reasons for going ahead with this effort. First, I am impelled to write to help others who suffer Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Second, I want to defend the character of all who have been maligned by the lack of understanding in the medical community and in their own families and friends.
Reliving the agony of the past four years and trying to make sense of all that has transpired has taken its toll. But it definitely had its rewards too. My case of GAD may not be unique, but it was certainly an extreme one. The fact that I sank to such great depths emotionally and physically in four separate episodes and was able to dig my way out has inspired me to share my experiences of the past twenty-plus years, in the hope that someone else might be helped.
This book is not about bashing the medical establishment, nor does it endorse one modality; rather, it is one woman’s quest to regain health by whatever means possible. This book does not engage in simplistic thinking, promoting a one-size-fits-all approach, but advocates finding your way back to normalcy by education and trial and error, just as I did. It is my sincere hope that I can shorten the journey for other sufferers.
Disclaimer
This publication is the personal experiences of the author who developed Generalized Anxiety Disorder, GAD.
The author hopes that the information may be of help for others who suffer from GAD. The author does not intend to replace medical, health, or any other kind of professional services for those reading this book.
Please contact your personal medical health professional prior to adopting any of the author’s suggestions.
The author and publisher completely disclaim any and all responsibility for any and all loss, risk, or liability, be it to a person or otherwise, which may come about as a result of, directly or indirectly, using of any of the supplements or substances or ideas referred to in the contents of this publication.
***** Some names have been changed *****
Chapter 1
THE GAD PUZZLE
I could not relax. My muscles were clinched, my stomach was in a knot, and I was so restless that I had to keep moving. My patience was wearing thin, and I had a short fuse with everyone and everything. Something was very, very wrong. Dread was my constant companion, and when I tried to figure out what I was dreading, I couldn’t put my finger on it. But there it was, relentlessly pursuing me, always pursuing, unremitting, inescapable, along with agitation and fatigue. I was uneasy, insecure, and distraught from daylight until I fell into a troubled sleep in the wee hours of the next morning. Persistent, disconcerting sensations of foreboding overwhelmed me and held me in a personal prison from which there was no escape.
The fatigue was getting unbearable again. I would lie awake at night, worrying and tossing and turning. Why was this happening? Our lives were going well on the whole, and I didn’t have anything, really, to worry about; but my mind was in a whirl. Fragmented thoughts bombarded me day and night. My brain was chattering continually. In the morning, when it came time to get up, I would be sick to my stomach, and the diarrhea was back too. My appetite was gone, I barely could get food down, and I was losing weight quickly. The exhaustion was pervasive, and I couldn’t hold a thought long enough to decide what to make for dinner.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) destroys lives. It can crush the very spirit of even the happiest, most stalwart, organized, and successful individuals and their families. I know because I lived it. Over a period of nearly thirty years, I suffered escalating bouts of severe anxiety that lasted from a few months to several years. I consulted psychiatrists, physicians, acupuncturists, and other practitioners and was hospitalized several times, always with the wrong diagnosis.
I feel impelled to write this story for two main reasons. The first one is to defend the character of all of us who have suffered mightily under the weight of this disorder. For some, the suffering is not too extreme. But for others, it rules our lives and makes daily living almost unbearable at times. The second reason for writing this book is to share with as many people as possible how I learned what to do so that I will never have to go back into that life of anxiety disorder again.
The road back to “normalcy” was not an easy one for me by any means. I had to use good judgment and self-discipline. I had to really tune in to how I was feeling. Everyone would not respond the exact same way that I responded to different medications and natural products. But we are all people with the same basic anatomy.
Haven’t most of us who suffer this disorder been on the medication that is supposed to let us live life like a normal person? Sometimes, the medication works fairly well, and sometimes it doesn’t. There were times early in my life when the medication did work well. The anxiety disorder could be brought under control for years at a time. I was even successful in weaning myself off the medication rather quickly after the early episodes, with the doctor’s help. Then came a time when no medication worked. What then? Was I to live my life heavily medicated, but still suffering enormously? I couldn’t accept that. I had to find a way to get well! I had to find out what the real problem was. Why do people develop these disorders? Are anxiety and depression the same thing? What about bipolar disorder? Why do people suffer these things for a while, and then sometimes the symptoms seem to abate? Why can the symptoms come out of the blue on occasion? So through my own experiences with these things, and what I found to be the real problem, in my own case, I hope to share with as many people as possible what I did to get well.
“Mental illness” is a horrible thing to live with. There is such stigma associated with it. Although I don’t really know why this is the case anymore as it is said that one in five American women take antidepressants on a regular basis. So many people are suffering from the symptoms that it seems more research would have been done at this point. I had to start thinking differently about mental illness. Through my own experience, I realized that these disorders don’t necessarily start in the brain. Granted, a person’s thinking patterns can have an impact on this illness, but more is involved. Just as our brain plays a major role in our physical health, our physical health can also play a major role in our mental health. In my own case, I discovered that my troubles were directly related to the malfunction of my nervous system. Before you shrug that off as not correct, some experts in the field also concur. GAD and depression are very much related to a nervous system that has been damaged by any one of many causes. These causes I will discuss later in my book.
I have pieced together a puzzle of information and arrived at an understanding of what went wrong in my case and, more importantly, how I got well! But let me start from the beginning and relate the events that virtually shattered my tranquil life.
Chapter 2
YOUNG AND HAPPY
Randy and I had been married for almost ten years when our first baby arrived. I was twenty-seven years old and had eagerly anticipated the joys of parenthood and loved being pregnant. My prenatal term was uneventful, though my labor was prolonged, and the doctor gave me something to speed up the process. Nothing unusual there.
As the youngest of six children, I had little or no experience with babies, but being young and strong and of sound mind, I didn’t anticipate problems. Wrong! Brett was a healthy baby, sleeping most of the night from a young age, but taking only two or three half-hour naps during the day. All the other hours of the day, he demanded my full attention.
My problems began soon after bringing him home from the hospital. I found that the frequent interruptions to my sleep left me unable to go back to sleep, and I quickly became sleep deprived. I had little trouble falling asleep, but the two in the morning nursing left me agitated and sleepless. I would lie there, trying to quiet my mind and my body, hoping that sleep would overtake me, but no. Nothing. An hour passed. Nothing. Another hour. Nothing. It didn’t take too many nights like that to make me so wired that I could hardly think straight during the day.
GAD sufferers are all too familiar with the feeling of being wired. People who consume huge amounts of caffeine know the feeling.
Over-the-road truckers who take bennies to keep awake are definitely aware of it. It’s like wanting to jump out of your skin. It’s like your nervous system is in high gear while your body is in reverse, so fatigued you can barely move. The last thing you want is to be hyper-agitated, but there you are, stuck with your nervous system in fight-or-flight mode and your body needing rest. There is no peace for the weary. That cliché has never been truer.
GAD sufferers have much in common with over stimulated infants who can’t fall asleep. Sometimes dads come home from work and play with the baby, and everyone has a good time, but soon the baby must say good night and finds that sleep won’t come. The baby cries and cries and can’t be calmed. In time, the young parents learn not to over stimulate the baby right before bedtime. So everyone starts getting a good night’s sleep, and life gets back to normal. But not so for people who have GAD.
In my case, during those first few days and weeks home with Brett, each night it was more and more difficult to get enough sleep. I would go to bed and sleep for about four hours, then lie there the rest of the night, too wired to sleep any more. By the time the sun came up, my nerves were shot, and dealing with a baby who wouldn’t nap nearly enough was making me desperate. Randy would come home from work, and all I could do was cry. There was such a feeling of agitation in my body and mind that I felt scared. I had no idea why I would feel this fear. Every morning I felt a bit sick to my stomach and couldn’t eat much. Since I was nursing Brett, I needed more calories than I could get down. It didn’t take long for me to lose an excessive amount of weight. My friends thought I did a great job of losing those sixty pounds I had gained during pregnancy, and all I could think was “I’m going crazy!” Thankfully, after this first episode of GAD, I was able to get my body somewhat regulated, the symptoms diminished, and I was able to fall asleep after being up at three or four in the morning.
Chapter 3
A SECOND BABY ON THE WAY
Randy and I had moved into our first home about one week before Brett was born. We were so excited to get a place of our own. Being in the home-decorating business, we had many ideas we wanted to implement into our new abode.
About that time I started taking a multivitamin-mineral supplement from General Nutrition Center, which contained calcium, magnesium, and vitamins A, D, and E; and it really improved my sense of well-being. Everything seemed to be going quite well in our lives with our little house coming along nicely. We were also able to buy a new car that year. Randy had hung grass cloth wallpaper in the living room and installed pine flooring in the kitchen. What more could anyone want?
It seemed appropriate to me to add another child to our little family, so twenty-four months after Brett’s birth, we welcomed baby girl Katie into our world. As before, my labor was uneventful, until her birth. Shock! Katie was born with a unilateral cleft lip and palate. When the doctor held her up for me to see, I could hardly believe my eyes.
I had grown up in a small town of about one thousand people and had never even heard of a cleft lip or palate. I knew of an older woman that seemed to have a slight speech impediment, but didn’t learn what caused it until after Katie was born. When I first saw Katie in the delivery room, I was terrified. My mind was in a whirl with many questions. What’s wrong with our baby? Is she going to die? Can anything be done? How am I going to feed and care for her?
Fortunately, the attending doctor was somewhat helpful. He told me about surgeries that could be performed and speech pathologists that could help her to speak properly. He warned us that some babies with cleft palates fight constant ear infections and become hard of hearing. What a blow! Thankfully, Randy was there to share this terrifying experience with me.
Later that night I went right to sleep due to the fatigue of the previous night’s labor, but the next day was overwhelming. This development was incomprehensible to me, and all I could do was worry. I was bewildered and sad—very, very sad. I didn’t think Randy and I would be up to the task of caring for such a baby. She would need so many things that were totally unfamiliar to me. I had no knowledge of speech problems, or hearing problems, let alone all the suffering she would experience. That night I slept for just a few hours.
The next day, a plastic surgeon visited me, and the nursing staff began training me to feed my sweet girl from a cup. The exhaustion and excitement of the previous day left me limp and wasted. My nerves were frayed. I was so very fatigued. Then the agitation I had felt briefly after Brett’s birth began coming back.
The nurses were reassuring and thorough. This was no big deal to any of the professionals assigned to my case. The surgeon was explicit in his description of just what went wrong and how he could fix it. As the day wore on, I was able to feed Katie enough for us to be released from the hospital. But soon, my joy disintegrated into fatigue and anxiety.
Randy and I left the baby at home with his mother and sisters while we picked up a breast pump to enable me to provide the best possible food for Katie. As soon as we returned, Katie was awake and hungry. No one was brave enough to try to feed this tiny baby from a cup, so it fell on me, and rightly so. The first feeding at home was successful, and I was thrilled that this little person could drink from a cup at just three days old. But the thought of going through that first night at home, and not getting much sleep, was really unnerving. Randy wasn’t up to feeding her yet, so I knew I had to rise to the task.
Randy’s mother could see how distraught I was, so she suggested that her daughters spend the night to take care of the baby and help with two-year-old Brett as well. I was so grateful. Thinking about actually being able to sleep that night was a welcomed feeling. I had not had the sleepless nights long enough to have preconceived notions that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep. I thought I would simply be able to go to sleep and wake up feeling refreshed enough to do whatever I had to do the next day to make things go smoothly. At least, as smoothly as things can go, with a new baby in the house.
The girls said they would take care of everything, so thankfully I went off to bed. But when Katie awoke, there was no calming her and no feeding her. In our small house I could hear everything, so eventually I came out of the bedroom and did what I could to soothe her and feed her. It has been a long time since that first night home with Katie, and I don’t remember all the details, but obviously, everything turned out okay.
Right away, I began to read about cleft palates in the booklets that the hospital provided and found that there are a number of things that go wrong during gestation. At about seven to nine weeks, the three parts of a baby’s mouth are supposed to come together. A special sticky substance develops and the parts are supposed to close and form the palate and the nostril floor at the same time. In babies with clefts, however, all the parts do not combine. If the parts of the mouth or lip do not come together when they are designed to do so, they do not come together later. There are numerous ways the parts may partially connect, so some babies have only a cleft lip but their palates are completely formed. Others have lips formed completely but have part or all of their palates incomplete. So surgeries have been performed for many years that, over time, get all these parts functioning more or less normally.
I was very fortunate to have my mother-in-law come to help most every day. She would be working in the kitchen, and I would be pumping breast milk and reading and worrying about Katie’s cleft and what the outcome would be. Despite the help I received, I felt my life spiraling out of control. I was totally engulfed by worry and fatigue from lack of sleep.
I started to cry a lot. That was not the normal “me”. I wondered if I would ever get back to my old self? How could this have happened to Randy and me? He tried to be brave for both of us, but I could tell he was scared too. When I would lie awake for hours, he would tell me to just close my eyes and go to sleep. “You can’t go to sleep if you lie there with your eyes open,” he’d say. “I can’t go to sleep just because my eyes are shut,” I sobbed. I had the most unnerved feeling, as if electricity was surging through my limbs. I was so agitated. How could I get rid of this terrible sensation? It wasn’t like me to be so nervous and upset all the time.
For some reason, I remember October 26, 1982. Katie was just over a month old, and I was totally exhausted. Every morning I’d throw up and have diarrhea, and I could barely face each day. That particular day, I remember feeling really bad. Randy was about to go to work, and I was crying hysterically. I started shaking uncontrollably. What was wrong with me? I was totally miserable, and I could tell his patience was wearing thin. We both knew I was a total mess emotionally.
Later that day, one of my relatives told me to get a grip. What was my problem anyway? Other people have babies with birth defects, and they don’t go all to pieces. They suck it up and get on with life. That made me feel totally worthless. Was I such a shallow person that I couldn’t face having a baby with a minor defect? What if I’d had a baby with a life-threatening illness? Other people have a lot worse adversities, and they don’t come all unglued. I couldn’t understand all this agitation. I could not think. It was hard to make even the simplest decisions. All I could do was cry. All of this was so unreal. I had been healthy, capable, and decisive all my life. This was not me! This person I had become was someone I did not like at all.
Chapter 4
KATIE’S FIRST SURGERY
Katie was three months old when she had her first surgery to correct her cleft lip, and she did very well. With both arms in cast like contraptions, she still was able to show interest in a cute mobile the nurses had placed above her in the hospital crib. The cast like contraptions were put on both her arms up to her upper arm just below her shoulder. Their purpose was to keep her from bothering the stitches and bandages all around her mouth and nose. I can only imagine how uncomfortable and irritating wearing something like that must have been. Her appearance was improved immensely, and it made feeding her easier. However, in my ignorance of the defect, I had hoped for better results than this first surgery provided. I still felt sad and scared. All I could do was cry over the whole situation.
Two relatives decided to stay with Katie the first night after surgery so I could get some sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. I was so fatigued that I would go to sleep fairly quickly, but then wake up a short time later. It was like someone had flipped a switch. Bam! Totally awake. I would get really hot just as soon as I woke up. I thought that if I would lie very still and not move a muscle, I could get back to sleep. I was so desperate for sleep and rest. The agitated feeling was especially strong when I would awaken at two or three in the morning. I tried getting out of bed on occasion and reading something soothing, but that didn’t work either. By the time morning came and it was time to get up for the day, I was so tired and unnerved that I could hardly function.