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Medical again (long)
Aug. 2nd, 2005 09:03 amSo last night sucked.
One of the scariest things about the time I took too much Benedryl was the way it affected my breathing -- I felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen no matter what I did. I even tried the slow deep breaths they tell you to do to keep from hyperventilating and I still felt like it wasn't enough. More than that, the medicine depressed my breathing reflex -- if I didn't remember to breathe, I stopped. I spent the entire night awake terrified that if I fell asleep, I'd stop breathing and die. It was and understandable, but unreasonable fear -- I hadn't taken enough for that. If I'd fallen asleep and stopped breathing I'd have woken back up.
Even after the medication wore off, I still felt like I had trouble breathing for most of the following day. This time it was psychological -- I was obsessing over it, acutely conscious of every breath, afraid to relax. I worked myself into several mini panic attacks.
Since then, I've had a few mini panic attacks when something reminded me of that weekend. But last night was different. Last night, for no apparent reason at all, I got that oxygen-deprived feeling every time I started to drift off. The feeling triggered another mini panic attack, by the end of which I was right back in that conscious breathing mindset, once again obsessing over every breath and afraid to relax. This lasted until almost 2am, at which point, just as suddenly as it had begun, the feeling went away. I'd been up most of the night, but suddenly found myself able to relax into a normal breathing pattern, and finally no longer afraid to fall asleep, I eventually did.
Of course, my alarm went off about 4 hours later -- I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning.
The whole episode has me worried however. Unlike the previous times I've had panic attacks or felt like I couldn't breathe, there was no initial trigger. In addition -- librarian that I am -- a search on sleep-related breathing problems brought up all kinds of information on sleep apnea -- and it turns out I have other symptoms of that as well, such as frequent trips to the bathroom and night sweats.
On the other hand, people with sleep apnea are generally overweight (I'm almost underweight), have high blood pressure (mine's low), and snore loudly (last time anyone was in a position to tell me they said I didn't). In addition there are lots of other symptoms such as morning headaches and dry mouth that I don't have.
So once again I have some nebulous might-be-medical-might-be-psychological symptom that I don't know what to do with that my hyperchondriac little brain will spend hours imagining the worst.
I really *really* don't need another syndrome to add to the list.
One of the scariest things about the time I took too much Benedryl was the way it affected my breathing -- I felt like I couldn't get enough oxygen no matter what I did. I even tried the slow deep breaths they tell you to do to keep from hyperventilating and I still felt like it wasn't enough. More than that, the medicine depressed my breathing reflex -- if I didn't remember to breathe, I stopped. I spent the entire night awake terrified that if I fell asleep, I'd stop breathing and die. It was and understandable, but unreasonable fear -- I hadn't taken enough for that. If I'd fallen asleep and stopped breathing I'd have woken back up.
Even after the medication wore off, I still felt like I had trouble breathing for most of the following day. This time it was psychological -- I was obsessing over it, acutely conscious of every breath, afraid to relax. I worked myself into several mini panic attacks.
Since then, I've had a few mini panic attacks when something reminded me of that weekend. But last night was different. Last night, for no apparent reason at all, I got that oxygen-deprived feeling every time I started to drift off. The feeling triggered another mini panic attack, by the end of which I was right back in that conscious breathing mindset, once again obsessing over every breath and afraid to relax. This lasted until almost 2am, at which point, just as suddenly as it had begun, the feeling went away. I'd been up most of the night, but suddenly found myself able to relax into a normal breathing pattern, and finally no longer afraid to fall asleep, I eventually did.
Of course, my alarm went off about 4 hours later -- I really didn't want to get out of bed this morning.
The whole episode has me worried however. Unlike the previous times I've had panic attacks or felt like I couldn't breathe, there was no initial trigger. In addition -- librarian that I am -- a search on sleep-related breathing problems brought up all kinds of information on sleep apnea -- and it turns out I have other symptoms of that as well, such as frequent trips to the bathroom and night sweats.
On the other hand, people with sleep apnea are generally overweight (I'm almost underweight), have high blood pressure (mine's low), and snore loudly (last time anyone was in a position to tell me they said I didn't). In addition there are lots of other symptoms such as morning headaches and dry mouth that I don't have.
So once again I have some nebulous might-be-medical-might-be-psychological symptom that I don't know what to do with that my hyperchondriac little brain will spend hours imagining the worst.
I really *really* don't need another syndrome to add to the list.
