The Painful Truths About Stress
At this point I think it’s safe to say I’m writing about topics in psychology this week. Yesterday I wrote briefly about suicide, the day before was about indefinite optimism, and today I want to explore the painful truths about stress. Throughout 2018 I ignored how I was feeling about a lot of things and allowed stress and anxiety take over. Through not taking care of myself mentally I started to experience physical pain.
That’s Not A Heart Attack
It was around one week after my 28th birthday. I went to eat cake from Portillo’s that my girlfriend bought me about a week ago. I don’t wan to get caught up talking about the merits of eating week old cake, but let me say, it was delicious. About fifteen minutes later I started feeling pain in my chest, my left shoulder and arm were experiencing some pain. After about sixty minutes of those symptoms I decided I was going to go to the hospital, however I didn’t want to use an ambulance and instead opted for a Lyft. Five minutes went by and the driver passed by the busy Chicago street I lived off of and my symptoms were starting to subside so I cancelled it and instead took a walk around the block.
When I returned to my apartment I started to get severe chills and was experiencing stomach cramps. I only talk about poop with my GI doctor so let’s just say I made numerous visits to the bathroom that night as well. I was miserable, and laying in bed waiting to fall asleep I wasn’t sure if I was going wake up the next morning. It’s fairly strange to feel so miserable that you just assume the worst and sort of acknowledge that whatever happens happens. Of course since I’m writing this article I’m happy to say I did wake up the next morning, still not feeling too great though. I believe I either took a sick day or worked from home.
Over the next week I saw my doctor and visited the immediate care office nearby. The latter did an EKG and confirmed my heart was perfectly fine and proceeded to prescribe me prescription strength antacids and told me to take copious milligrams of ibuprofen to help with the pain. I took the medication for several days and noticed the general pain and malaise go away. My problem was solved!
Let’s Throw A Brain Aneurism Into The Mix
This story doesn’t end at a fake heart attack though. As my chest pain subsided I found myself sitting at my desk at work one day around 4:30 when out of nowhere I had the worst headache of my life. It’s hard to describe exactly what it felt like, it was as if someone walked up behind me and hit me in the head with a hammer, I swear I could hear something crack. I sat at my desk immobilized by the pain. Around five minutes later I started to feel good enough to move and I decided to pack up and leave for the day. I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch with the lights off.
I had on and off headaches for several days before finally messaging my manager to let him know I was going to immediate care. As I was walking outside I decided maybe the ER would be a better place so I took the Red Line up to Grand and walked to Northwestern Hospital. The waiting area was packed but after only thirty minutes I was being directed to the second floor where they hooked me up to an IV and started pumping me full of that sweet sweet ibuprofen. They ordered a CT scan to check for cranial bleeding which came back all clear. I was discharged with a headache and received four pages explaining what exactly that was (it turns out a headache is when you have pain in the cranial region of your body).
I think the worst memory I had from this experience was wondering if I was going make it to my vacation to San Francisco in July. While the ER and my doctor said I was fine, I was still convinced my brain was bleeding and I was going to cease to exist at any moment. Alas though, eventually the headaches went away, and my trip to San Francisco was amazing. I found that avoiding painkillers altogether helped to ease the symptoms and my primary care physician believes it may have been a rebound headache caused by painkillers I was taking for my chest pain.
I Guess Appendicitis Happens At All Ages
You might be detecting a trend, and the summary of this section will ultimately be I did not have appendicitis. Shortly after returning from San Francisco I started to experience pain on my lower left side; this pain started out when I would bend over but quickly became unbearable. When this initially started to happen I worked from home a few days where the pain ultimately subsided only to shift to my lower right side. I found pain killers helped alleviate the pain a bit and made showing up to the office bearable.
After about three or four weeks of abdominal pain, mostly living on a couch, and one too many Google searches I found myself back in the ER. This time it took around two hours before I was being directed to a bed. They did the normal checks for appendicitis and while I wasn’t experiencing rebound pain I did have an elevated white blood cell count. They decided to order an MRI of my abdomen with contrast. The barium solution was surprisingly not terrible (it tasted like berries), and the staff were very friendly. While I was walking to the room with the MRI machine I was told I would probably feel like I was peeing my pants because of the contrast solution. I was laying on the bed of the MRI and the nurse asked do you feel like you’re peeing, to which I replied nope, but I feel like I’m pooping, we chuckled and then afterwards I proceeded to subtly make sure that wasn’t the case (for the record, it was not).
After eight hours in the ER I was discharged with non-infectious gastroenteritis. I followed-up with my primary care physician and he agreed with the findings. I followed-up with immediate care when my stomach pain still persisted, they agreed that I was fine and the doctor told me I would probably run through a gamut of tests only to be diagnosed with IBS. I went back to my doctor and we both agreed that it might make sense to try anxiety medication since we talked about about a year prior only for me to decline medication at that time. Over the next few weeks I noticed a drastic improvement in my overall symptoms and I was feeling much better. It turns out anxiety and mismanaged stress were probably the culprits.
Well, I Still Have Stomach Issues
While the majority of my stomach issues are long gone I do still experience pain from time to time. To make good on the urgent care doctor’s predications I’ve followed up with a GI doctor to talk about my problems. We’ve both agreed that a colonoscopy would be a good next step which will help check for the more detrimental causes like inflammatory bowel disease or colon cancer. January 18th I am excited to lay around the house while I drink my exam prep and then January 19th I’ll hopefully have some concrete answers. While overall this kind of sucks, the positive is I’m going to figure out if this is something more serious or just an incredibly annoying disease known as IBS (which is basically just a catchall for we don’t know what the problem is).
Seeing A Therapist Helps
I will say that seeing a therapist is incredibly helpful. I started doing talk therapy back in September and I have noticed a dramatic difference. I’ve learned about the value of meditation, I feel like I have been able to better identify when I start to feel anxious too. My therapist has helped me come up with strategies for reducing stressful situations such as understanding that conflict is natural and I should not get bent out of it. I’ve gotten closer with my girlfriend through having more intentional conversations. Honestly if it wasn’t for my stomach kind of bothering me and my head sort of hurting as I type this I’d say I did a complete 360 since starting therapy.
Even if you aren’t experiencing physical symptoms or you aren’t diagnosed with anxiety, depression, or other mental illnesses it’s still worth finding a therapist. I think I’ve had exactly one conversation about my family history, and the rest have really been general life coaching. So I guess what I’m trying to say is even if you think you’re fine, you should probably still give therapy a shot.
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