A biscuit, Brian and acupuncture save the day

Leave it to me to experience a full-blown anxiety attack…in my sleep. Thanks a lot, Weird Cancer Guy. When I woke up at 3 am, I was claustrophobic and completely freaked out. The feeling of being a trapped kid with zero power was all-too real. That’s just what I need – cancer dredging up the past. At a more normal hour, Brian bought me an egg biscuit and talked me off the cliff.

“This was bound to happen,” he said. “You’ve been sucking everything up.” That’s true. I did jump straight from shock to: “Okay, what do I need to do?” We rolled the whole thing out and analyzed what to do next – call the hospital’s resources. In the process of working through it, I realized AGAIN what an amazing husband, best friend and stand-up guy I have in my corner. I told him how bad I felt that he has to go through all this, too. Then, I thanked him for always being there. Always. I’ve never liked it when people said how “lucky” I am that I have Brian. Like I got the candy, and he got the hallowed out piñata carcass. But okay. You win. I am lucky. And smart. I picked the nice guy and will be forever grateful that he picked me, too.

THREE POSITIVES:

1- Legacy hospitals has resources, and lots of them. A nurse navigator got me in to see a nurse practitioner. So now my options to deal with anxiety aren’t all pharmaceutical. Happy for that.

2- Horrible is an understatement of how I felt when I dragged myself to Tracy Andersen, my longtime acupuncturist. She brought me back from the dead. Afterward, I actually ate dinner, walked the dog, finished laundry AND wrote a pile of headlines. Thank you, Tracy.

3- I learned that always picking the harder road is stupid. Life is going to go that route automatically, why jump ahead? Brian and I marveled at our ability to always make things harder, as if the pay off will be greater. We’re going to stop that now.