Feel free to panic, Mr Mainwaring.

Since I was taken to hospital back at the end of 2009 with a suspected heart attack with what was eventually diagnosed as Gastroenteritis – that by the time it had been identified had almost completely healed by itself – I have nothing but sympathy for those who suffer from anxiety or panic attacks. Indeed, having been a stranger to them all my life up until that fateful day they seem to be a regular occurrence in my life, mostly minor or sometimes (as I’m suffering at the moment) incredibly terrifying.

Now I’m no hypochondriac but one valuable lesson I have learned is that no matter how bad you’re feeling it’s never a wise move to look up your symptoms on the internet. Slight headache? That’ll be a tumour then. Stomach ache? Cancer. Bleeding profusely from your ears and head only attached to your body by a thin bit of gristle? Actually, ignore that last one.

I blame the wonders of Doctor Internet (but mostly myself) for my first panic attack back in October 2009. I’d been feeling fairly grotty for a couple of days – which, with hindsight, I now know was the gastroenteritis – but still went into work on the Monday. However, sitting at my desk and worrying and unable to concentrate, I decided to go to NHS direct and enter my symptoms – Lack of sensation and/or tingling in arms? Check. Tightness across the chest? Check. Clammy hands? Check. “Submit”.

Call for an ambulance, came the quick response. Seek urgent medical attention. No word of a lie.

I could hear my heart thumping in my ears and I felt faint. I felt like I’d just seen my own gravestone. And somebody had carved 'Always in our hearts' on it. Fuckers. I staggered to my feet and across the office and asked one of my co-workers to ring an ambulance for me. “I think I’m having a heart attack”, I muttered.

The ambulance arrived in double quick time and I was taken inside. I was shaking so much that they had trouble administering me a sedative, and my ability to relax even when sedated wasn’t assisted by the ambulance driver saying she’d put the siren on to beat the traffic and radio ahead so a medical team could deal with me as soon as I arrived at the hospital.

Now, the fact I’m still writing this a year and a half later indicates that I didn’t die. Unless the last eighteen months have been one hell of a fucked up afterlife and I’m not in on the joke. Since that day I’ve had all manner of tests – initially they were concentrating on my heart, which turned out to be fine – although opinions still differ as to whether I’m suffering from arrhythmia or not, depending on who does my ECG. My lungs were fine, as were my kidneys and pancreas. The only way they could have done any more tests than they managed would have been with a post-mortem. And I refused to sign the disclaimer for that. Eventually it was the last set of tests months later concentrating on my stomach where a camera shoved down my cakey foodhole found the remnants of gastroenteritis that had nearly gone. A tiny little healed rash where once was a nasty virulent mess.

Problem solved. Worry over.

But it wasn’t. I’d have weeks of feeling fine followed by weeks of what I can only define as anxiety attacks. The majority of time said attacks are just uncomfortable – the annoying feeling of being pressed in the armpit, a general length of strength (or general tenderness of the skin) in the legs or arms.

A lot happened in that time – from the awful event of my Mum dying, to my brilliant wedding, and a pattern began to emerge. If I was too distracted to think about myself, it didn’t affect my life. If ever I stopped to think “I think I’m getting a pain in my chest” you can guarantee said pain would indeed be there and would get worse until I was too distracted to think about it again. So, all in my head, therefore easy to resolve. Just man up, right? Pull yourself together, David. A case in point is a recent example; the anxiety was really bad last week but on Saturday I went around to Dads to do some more work on the home made armour. During that time (and the few pints of John Smiths I had with him at lunchtime) I was too busy wrist deep in fibreglass and resin to even think about being poorly. I remember in the pub briefly thinking about how bad I’d felt in the morning but how great I felt then, but the reminder of how I’d felt that morning was enough. Over the next half an hour the pains increased until they were as bad as they’d been all week.

Over time the normal periods have lengthened and the bad ones lessened, but the last week or so has been really bad so I thought it put it into words must as to strengthen my own sanity as opposed to anything else. And hopefully to enlighten those who don’t understand the condition.

The worst thing about panic/anxiety attacks, call them what you will (I’m going to start calling them “Sinister Colin”), or at least in my case – (I don’t claim to speak for all sufferers of this, everybody has their unique experience) - is that they’re self-perpetuating.

A slight pain in the arm that might just be from a knock or from having slept on it funny becomes a full blown ache because you’re constantly thinking about it. You’re so sensitive to changes in your body because of the adrenalin that’s firing your neurons into overdrive , and the nervousness tenses your muscles. Which makes your arm ache more.Which is the one of the signs of a heart attack, right?

That pain in your chest that started just as a little bit of tightness, probably just indigestion? You can’t stop scratching it or rubbing your hands over it for reassurance which is irritating the skin and making it sensitive. Which then makes you aware of every bit of discomfort that little bit more. And chest pains? They’re the killer, right? And the pain has probably spread to your back – and that can only mean there is something wrong with your pancreas. You read the symptoms on the internet.

If I sit back and think about my symptoms for a second - which oddly enough won't appear until I do think about them, here they are in order:

1. My back is aching.  Not until I mentioned it here, but I can definitely feel the chair is uncomfortable against my back.
2. My right wrist is sore - It feels as though somebody has been scratching at the skin.  Oh hang on, somebody has.  It was me, worrying about my sore wrist and rubbing at it.
3. My right arm feels inflamed, like it's been sunburned.

The odd thing I could do this until I ran out of body parts - which would make for a lengthy blog post, just not a very exciting one.  For every single part I concentrate on, I can find some kind of pain in it.  But only because I'm thinking about there being some pain in it.  I fucking hate my brain at times.

I’m not daft. I know I had a full MOT less than a year ago and it’s hardly like my body decided to suddenly atrophy and fall to bits the second I had my last doctors appointment out of spite, but the mental signals are very, very strong and very, very scary. And no matter how reasonable and logical I try to be about it, when the signals hit I have very little control over reason and logic any more.

You’re desperate to forget about them and think about something else, because that’s the key to getting better. While your blood pressure is elevated through fear the pain will always be there, but it’s so difficult to ignore it because these are very real confusing signals your brain (which is in turn incredibly confused from the mixed messages your body is hitting it with) is firing out.

I’ve gone through most of my life with a perfectly clean bill of health with very few visits to the doctors needed, but it seems that I’m become a semi-permanent fixture in my local surgery. Admittedly most of my visits had been for their (eventually successful) attempts to track down what was actually wrong with me, but my last one last week was simply, I feel, for reassurance. That I’m not going mad, that I’m not seriously ill.

Funny – I’d intended to write this as a guide for coping with anxiety but the more I write, the more I realise how badly equipped I am to do that. I’m not coping with it. I’m living with it, and it’s an unwelcome and evil house guest. At times it’s completely overtaking my life and threatening to overwhelm me, and I know it’s stupid and I’m worrying my life away over absolutely nothing but when you’re woken up by pain at 3 a.m. and you’re left with nothing but your own thoughts in the darkness it’s a genuinely terrifying thing.

Oddly, having a bath helps me.  The second I get into a hot bath the odd signals stop almost instantly.  Same with sitting on the toilet.  Odd, but there you are.  I've never been as clean, on the inside or outside.

So, there you are. Soul bared. Take it as a lesson in how not to cope with anxiety at best, a rant for me to vent my own frustrations at worst. I’ll be the first to admit I coped very badly when my wife was first diagnosed with depression a while back – I was the first to say “Pull yourself together” because I just didn’t understand it. And now I realise how harmful, naïve,cruel and futile a thing that is to say. You can’t just pull yourself together. The brain is a stupidly complex and ridiculous thing, and I struggle to convince it that we’re not dying. You'd think it would be back me up every now and then - we're in this together for the long haul, after all.

Stupid brain.

The Miracle Cure

Rejoice - you can happily disregard all my previous emails about chostochondritis. In a moment of blinding clarity, I have in my possession the miracle cure.

It all began on Sunday night; I'd had a relatively pain-free day which involved only two baths. I was sitting watching Being Human on BBC3 and suddenly began to feel terrible. The left hand side of my chest felt as though it had locked up, and I could feel a huge pressure on my sternum - as though somebody was pressing down hard on my heart. I tried to convince myself it was another panic attack, but simply couldn't calm down - every passing breath caused the pain in my chest to flare up. The sensation was unlike any of my previous attacks; my breathing was laboured and I felt terrible.

I rang NHS direct. The atrophied sensible bit of my brain suspected this was a panic attack, but I thought if I could describe the symptoms to somebody qualified, they could at least put my mind at rest. If it was a panic attack, it was definitely the worst one I've had yet.

I spoke to somebody on their helpdesk who in turn put me through to a nurse. I described my symptoms; that I'd felt like this for a good 30-40 minutes and that my arms were clammy and there was a huge pressure on my chest. The symptoms weren't passing with time - in fact I was feeling worse than I did half an hour ago. They said they'd get my doctor to call me back, but it was our local walk in centre that did so. They told me to get along there so they could check me over, just to make sure everything was okay.

After sitting in the waiting room for around half an hour, the symptoms were passing. The pain was still in my chest, but wasn't half as bad as it had been. My breathing had almost mostly returned to normal.

I went in to see the Doctor and this is where the moment of clarity happened. He asked me what the problem was and I explained that with hindsight I'd just had a very bad panic attack. And this is where the key to my entire problem was revealed in one short sentence;

"Perhaps in future you should just take a few deep breaths and don't waste peoples time by ringing them".

Mystery solved. As a solution, it's perfect. It's clearly way up there with telling people with depression to snap out of it.

And now, as if by magic, I'm magically better. Well, all except for the terrible pressure over my heart and the shifting pain that moves between my shoulders, side and back. And the awful headaches and horrible imposing feel of dread that accompanies every waking minute. I know the symptoms are made worse by panic - but try telling my body that when it's busy firing all the adrenaline it can and kicking off my fight or flee response.

Roll on Friday when I go to see my GP about getting an appointment for councelling to see about pain management, where I'll hopefully speak with somebody a little more understanding.

License to Ill

This blog is slowly in danger of becoming a "Living with Chostochondritis" one. After my chipper "I'm all better again" one from the end of last year, it would appear I may have spoken too soon. I started feeling rotten again on Christmas day, heart rate pounding and another pain in the left hand side of my chest. The feeling didn't go after a week or so, so last Tuesday saw me making another visit to my GP - this time insisting I didn't go to the same one I saw last time, the one who made everything much worse by terrifying me with other potential causes.

I'm stuck in a vicious circle; the pain (centred over my heart as it is) gets worse and I panic, which in turn makes the pain worse and slows down the whole healing process. In order to break this, the GP has prescribed me beta-blockers, Propranolol to be precise. (Hell, it's got LOL in the title so must be great - Propranorofl and Propranolmao can't be far behind in development). I've been put on a months worth of these and the GP has said that if these don't work, the alternative will be anti-depressants.

One word of advice for people taking these for anxiety; do not - and I repeat do not - read the leaflet that comes with them telling of potential side effects. This, I guarantee, will make your anxiety considerably worse. History of wheezing or hayfever? Propranalol might be fatal. Headaches and nausea? Par for the course.

Are they working? I don't know, but I've only been on them for a week. Do they work straightaway or will I notice results over time? Again, I don't know. I was even wary of taking ibuprofen at the same time for the pain until I got confirmation that this was okay, and this seems to be helping a bit. The good thing about them is that its enforcing a healthy regime; I'm avoiding caffeine completely and can't touch alcohol whilst on them, so that's the first time I've gone a week without a drop of booze touching my lips for a long, long time.

Are they helping with the anxiety? Unknown. I had a really good day yesterday with just a little bit of chest pain so ventured into town with Tara. Towards the end of the day she wanted to go into a sewing machine shop, so I said I'd meet her later. I tried to call her on her mobile, but wasn't getting an answer. I tried again, still nothing - nothing overly stressful, right? Try telling my heart that. I found myself getting stressed and angry for no reason whatsoever - my heart started beating faster and faster until I could hear it in my ears. I knew it was a panic attack, but didn't know what to do. I started walking home but the feeling was draining from my legs - my ears were filling with white noise and I could feel my heart thudding in my chest. I made it home and into a warm bath (this seems to be relax me better than anything; I've never had so many baths. Interesting that an illness has the side effect of keeping me much cleaner).

To those of you who know about panic attacks, I have complete sympathy for you. Until last October I would have just told you to pull yourself together, but now I know what it's like. You literally feel out of control - you're panicking that you're going to die, and this just makes the situation worse. Your heart concentrates on pumping blood around to recover, but this just increases the ferocity of the panic attack. To those of you who have never had one? I wouldn't wish one on my worst enemy. What's terrifying about them isn't just having one, it's the fear of having another one. You're no sooner out of one when you're worrying about what's going to trigger the next one. I was supposed to be going out for a good friends birthday last night, and had been really looking forward to it, but the attack of yesterday afternoon put paid to that.

I'm going to see about getting some counselling for dealing with the pain and stress this week; the moods I'm going through indicate that I'm just not coping. It feels like I'm going to have this chostochondritis for ever, and it's affecting my mental state - Sleep is difficult, and my work is suffering accordingly. If it is a chronic condition, I need something to help me cope with it on a permanent basis. If it's not, my body simply isn't coping well enough to let itself heal.

Forgive the indulgence; As I said in the opening paragraph, this seems to be becoming a chosto blog. Writing about it helps though - it's good to put these things into words. Hopefully (fingers crossed) normal blog service will be resumed shortly - that being months of nothing and then a flurry of film/game review related nonsense!