Damn!!! So THAT'S What A Panic Attack Is Like

  I've had a rough few days. I've felt terrible, been in more than my average pain, been on the O2 more than I like, and even today, I've got the damn shakes in my hands. I've slept a lot, more than I like, and I've been lethargic in about every direction I turn. It's not fun, it's unlike me all the way around, and it makes me feel like the fucking cancer is shortening up my time. Doing that all the while skipping the massive bleeding I've been expecting. Some of it may be a slight case of dehydration. I know I've slipped a little on fluid intake, although it's still close to half my body weight in ounces. Like 80-100 ounces of liquid a day. I'll work on that for certain. The Lymphedema therapy has really lowered the swelling in my face and neck on the left side. Something, though, is making the right side, along the lower jawline get larger and more firm. The therapy hasn't helped that, I suspect cancer. I can't look down at things like I could have two weeks ago, just by looking at the floor. When I do that it feels like my ability to breath is cut off a bit. And, strangely enough, I panicked.
   Yep, last night I had a complete panic attack. I felt like I couldn't get enough of a breath. I yanked off my trach tape and pulled  the tube out of my neck, I ran around in circles. I was able to tell Sarah, in a note, that I was panicking. So I knew what was happening,  just couldn't stop it.  I had her go get Liz to help, although I am not sure what Liz was going to do for me, I know I wanted her there. I also knew that I had to get the trach tube back in place. Leaving it out would solve nothing. It was running through my head I might have to go to the hospital. That wouldn't  have been the coolest thing I've done in the last few weeks. I was scared. How the fuck did that happen? I don't know, I'm not a person that gets scared easily, and I panic even less often than I get scared. Weird. So that's what it's like to have a "panic attack". I had no idea, it was something I'd never experienced before, and don't want to experience again. It's a waste of time and energy. It started to happen again this morning, but since I knew what was going on, I managed to get myself under control, and skip that part that is breath sucking and heart rate blasting, attack. I had a minute to catch myself. Get my breathing back under control and not once felt like I needed to run around in circles. I'm not certain what caused either one, the full blown attack and the start of one again. I'll get is scoped so I know what to expect and be able to head off the behavior that brings it on. Or even if there is a behavior that brings it on. I'm wondering if it's an action, or just a feeling that brings the things inline to start the attack. I know that running short of breath, and having my heart race ain't happening. That kind of shit isn't good for me when I'm healthy, let alone now. I'm going to do my best to stop it dead in it's tracks.


    I've had a lot of dreams, but not many I remember. That's odd for me, since I generally remember the  dream like it happened and crystal clear, for at least a day. I've forgotten more dreams than I remember. That's odd for sure. I did remember in a dream, the actual story Kathy told me years ago about a guy at the Cleveland Indians home field. She and a friend had gone to a game. Some ass wagon was pestering a black woman  in front of him. She said a  black guy came out of the group, stabbed the guy in the inside of one thigh up by his balls. Blood sprayed badly, onto her program and her cloths, and ruined those. The guy that got stabbed bled out in minutes, propped up upon a light pole. EMT's couldn't get there. Weird what dreams stay with you. Like one when I was taking Chantix. I dreamed Liz and the kids and I were running around a bowl of soup, along the edge of the bowl. It was huge, or we were tiny, I'm not certain which. The last thing I remember was yelling at them if the fell in, to try and swim for the oyster crackers in the soup. WTF???? I'm not sure about that one, weird all the way around and happily short.


  I've had a more than normal amount of pain on the right side of my face. It's been getting progressively worse over the last two to three weeks. Culminating in keeping me from resting or concentrating yesterday. It lasted nearly all day and into the night, and if I look at it, may have been part of the reason I had a panic attack. The pain was pretty strong and I took the morphine at full doses during the afternoon. That kind of slowed it down, and by the evening I couldn't hit my ass with both hands. That may be part of the panic attack, I don't know, but it was as weird as I've felt in about a year. So it's not been a fun week or so for me at all. In fact, since the last time I did a blog, I feel like I've slipped a bit. Nothing really to prove that out, but I feel like it. I hope it's a passing feeling, since the sudden  change in weather can do weird things to me as well. I fear, though, that it's a lasting feeling. Like the pain that comes and stays. I hope this is not the right feeling, I've still got a few things I want to do, and I'd like to hope that my procrastinating forces my body to hold on a bit longer than it would like. That'd teach the damn thing, wouldn't it?

 
  Back when I was a kid we lived in a small town. One of those really small town with maybe 300 people in it tops. It had a highway that ran through east and west, and since I was small I couldn't cross it by myself, so I didn't know what was on the north side of the highway. We moved across the street when I was in second grade. Probably 8 years old. Then, I was pinned between the house and the railroad tracks on the north. Shit. Now I only had a block to dick around in. I could go to the service station since it was on my side of the high way. I just had to cross two regular streets, that was okay. I had to hustle down an alley too, but that wasn't a big deal. At the service station I could get a full size coke for 15cents, buy a nickel bag of planters salty as hell peanuts and pour them in the coke. I've not down that but once or twice since I was ten years old, but I remember it was different to taste a salty 18coke, and have something to chew up while you drank a soda. I could get one of those every day. If I hunted up enough empty bottles to pay for the coke and Planter's Peanuts. It took eight empty full size bottles (the little shorty bottles weren't worth anything) to get a coke and peanuts. At the time you got  3 cents a bottle for turning them in. If you bought pop for the house, they charged you the 18 cents as deposit. You brought the six pack back full of empties, it cost you 18 cents less. As long as you had the bottles,  you got a bit back or they paid for the bottle deposit. Funny now, how the environmentalists bitch about recycling all the plastic we bought, but back in the late 60's we were already recycling the glass bottles. Isn't that going at it about ass backwards? With the price of glass now, I'm sure it would be cost prohibitive. But that taught me how to work for things I wanted

Y'all have fun