A Little Bit About Me and My Anxiety Disorder

I have an anxiety disorder and one of the reasons on my TOP 10 list for drinking every day was that the wine helped with my anxiety. And it did to some extent. But I do believe that over the years, it was causing my anxiety to increase when I wasn’t drinking. I started having lots of skipped heartbeats and tachycardia (heart racing) during the day. And my blood pressure, which was always normal, began to get higher in the past year. My anxiety is now centered around my fear of having a heart attack. There’s even a name for it – cardiophobia. A lot of people with family history of heart disease have this due to watching parents and loved ones suffer through or die from heart attacks etc.. My primary care doctor put me on a beta blocker to help with the palpitations and blood pressure and insisted I see a cardiologist since heart disease is huge in my family (And to see a psychiatrist for anxiety issues).

One of the things about anxiety is that it’s hard to rule out what is panic/anxiety stuff and what are actual real cardiac concerns. My friends and family joke all the time that my symptoms are all in my head and that I’m just a nervous wreck. And that is *mostly* true. But the chest pain and heart symptoms finally got the point where I went with my Dad to his cardiologist for an appointment, had a panic attack there in the office because I was so freaked out about being there in the first place, and managed to break out in hives while they took my blood pressure – which was 165/96. Now, no one knows what my blood pressure would have been if I wasn’t FREAKING OUT. But the Dr. heard a murmur and decided to do an echo-cardiogram and a stress test to see what was going on. Turns out, I have mitral valve regurgitation (MVR). MILD. Level ONE. NOT A BIG DEAL. But omg. I freaked. Blood pressure 148/92. (MVP is when the mitral valve doesn’t close all the way and a little bit of blood goes back into another chamber and the heart has to work a tiny bit harder to get all the blood through – many people have no symptoms. I do – which sucks).

Of couse, now, I’ve read ALL OF THE INTERNET on MVR. Apparently I’m not going to die. Well I am going to die, but not suddenly from MVP. They don’t *think.*

But what I do need to do is stay on my beta blocker and keep my blood pressure down. And anxiety doesn’t help – exercise and losing weight does. And limit alcohol (done) and caffeine (now THAT sucks). I’ve been afraid to exercise for almost a year because of the chest pain and palps but now I’ve been cleared to walk, run, swim … so anything but lift heavy weights. So today I started with walking 2 miles. And guess what? I DIDN’T DIE!

All of this stuff is hard. So hard. Removing alcohol and allowing all of my fears, phobias, and anxieties to all just hang out. Sitting in a room every day with strangers and considering all the ways that I’ve been hiding out behind bottles of wine and the lengths I’d go to to make excuses, DAILY, for my non-presence. Absence.

I cannot describe to you the difference just 11 days has made in my relationships with others (another post). I had NO IDEA how gone I really was until recently when I started being there. Here.

And I know there’s so much more being HERE to come. And right now that feels exciting.