The Grand Freakout

Good morning you happy denizens of the interweb tubes.  It is the beginning of yet another week, one which I have numerous meetings and projects to hopefully wrap up.  In fact I guess you would say I am stressing out over them a little bit.  Additionally this coming Wednesday is my grandmothers birthday, and since we did not make it there yesterday for cake… we are planning on taking a trip up in the evening of the 11th.  Essentially… I have a pretty busy week ahead of me.

Quest for Relief

As I have said in the last handful of posts… my allergies are in complete and total overload right now.  It literally feels like my head is full of concrete, and breathing has been various stages of difficult throughout it all.  As a result I have been trying to find something over the counter to help with the symptoms.  The first attempt was Alka-Seltzer allergy sinus… and it most certainly worked… just a little too well.

Twelve hours after taking a doze… both myself and my wife were still experiencing the drowsy haze that it induced.  We figured that was not a medication we should ever use again… so while out running errands yesterday we picked up a couple of other options.  DayQuil is something we had taken many times in the past for colds, so as a result we picked up some of their Sinex daytime sinus relief formula.  The first dose seemed to work like a charm without any mental fog.  So when the first dose was seeming to begin wearing off I took a second one around 8 pm last night.

The Grand Freakout

Everything seemed to be going fine, and around 11 pm I decided it was time to go to bed.  Upon laying down… I started having a fairly major panic attack… or at least what I have determined is a panic attack.  I was having constant heart palpitations, and the general feeling that my pulse was just running away insanely fast.  However upon taking my pulse it was both steady and only around 76 beats per minute which seems okay for a resting, albeit freaked out heart rate.  So after tossing and turning in bed until 12:30 I decided to get up and try and take my mind off of it.

Normally I would have logged into an MMO and played a bit… but my phone was on the charger upstairs… and I was feeling entirely too lazy to do the walk up to get it.  As a result I was stuck doing something that didn’t require an authenticator.  As a result I surfed the web a bit, and caught up a bit on both my RSS feed and some forums I had neglected.  Towards the end I even played some Minecraft, which seems to be my usual go to for calming down.  I was getting extremely drowsy at this point.  So I started wrapping things up.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

As I was starting to wrap things up… I kept noticing that Allie my calico cat kept acting pecular.  She was moving around the other end of the living room in a stalking manner.  The finally settled down on curiously examining my sandals.  Every so often she would reach a paw out and bat the sandal and then return to her contemplative watch.  I knew this was generally her behavior for stalking some form of a bug… and since crickets and June bugs are both epidemic right now I was wondering if one had managed to sneak into the house.

I lifted one sandal and nothing was there that I could see.  I lifted the other sandal… and then with much shock unfurled this roughly 3 1/2 inch long grass spider.  Without thinking I used the shoe I had in my had and thwapped it.  Yes I know… spiders are good critters… but I have always had a life long mixture of fear and hatred of them.  I guess it comes from growing up in a house full of brown recluse.  The problem is… having had the shock of seeing the spider… and the action of instinctively whacking it…  my heart was back to pounding mercilessly.

Insignificant Sleep

At this point it is roughly 2:30 in the morning… so I returned to bed desperately trying to find a direction or orientation I could lay and not feel like my heart was trying to jump out of my chest.  I finally decided upon laying on my back.  I know at some point I fell asleep, because I startled away at roughly 4:30 in the morning for some reason unknown to me.  I spent the next 45 minutes trying to get back to sleep… all the while fighting the sensations I had fought all night.  At  5:15 I decided to just give up and go take a shower.

So at this point I have maybe had an hour or sleep… sitting here still in a mildly freaked out state.  Upon waking my wife had a suggestion that it was potentially some medication I had taken.  So upon reading the Sinex warning label I see the following phrase “Upset stomach, nausea, dizziness, trouble sleeping, or nervousness may occur. If any of these effects persist or worsen, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly.”  So here is hoping as the drug fades from my system that all the negative effects will go with it.  I definitely think my night seems like a textbook case of that warning line.

Struggling Through

So now at this point… I am hoping I can make it through the day on only a tiny bit of sleep.  Had I not missed part of Wednesday and Thursday due to a pretty big asthma attack… I would take a least a half day.  I know at some point… I am going to crash and crash hard.  I might try and take a cat nap over lunch.  I have several things that I need to take care of today… so here is also hoping that I can remain clear headed enough to take care of them.  When I have had a night like this… I generally tell my immediate coworkers to fact check whatever I tell them… because I may or may not be lucid.

Thankfully these nights are somewhat rare… and this is the first panic attack I have had in a good while.  In part it might be due to the fact that with the start of the school year… our nightly exercise routine has fallen to shit.  I think the exercise was helping out the panic attacks, so we need to find a way to be able to return to doing that regularly.  However I think the bulk of last night can be directly attributed to the medication.  I took my pulse a few times last night, and each time the rate was something I would expect as normal… and the beat itself was regular… so I feel as though more or less it was “all in my head”.

Wrapping Up

I hope I can make it until at least 4 pm and home safely before the big crash happens.  If I am too drowsy to drive… I will likely try and take a cat nap in one of the conference rooms before coming home.  I feel like at this point I need to psyche myself up… because ultimately I know today is going to be pure hell.  Having a second cup of coffee this morning, to hopefully act as jet fuel to start the day.  I hope you all had a much better night than I did… and I hope that you have a really good start of the week.