The worst day of my life

(This is a post I wrote years ago but never published. There’s so much talk about anxiety recently, that I thought I’d publish it)

The worst day of my life started when I was home alone up in my attic bedroom. It was one of the most painful experiences of my life but I remember that I didn’t scream. I was in too much pain to waste energy screaming. My face was contorted with pain and confusion. And I was listening for a snap, because my arms and legs were doing their best to break their own bones; bending into crazy angles totally out of my control. And the pain was unbearable.

Many years have passed since that night and there have been quite a few contenders for “Worst day of my life” but it’s right up there at the top of the list. I’d been sick for about a year. I had an extreme case of Social Anxiety. I had to stop working. I hardly left the house. I couldn’t use public transport. Interactions with most people was excruciating.  I was attending a Mental Health Clinic, and the doctors I saw, were unfortunately awful; terribly misinformed and part of a very flawed mental health system.

I was never properly diagnosed.  And I wasn’t able to describe how I felt with the mental health vocabulary I have today. And I made, what would turn out to be a terrible mistake, by using the word paranoia instead of  anxiety or self-conscious to describe how I felt. In turn they kept casually mentioning Schizophrenia and prescribing antipsychotic medication even though I had ZERO schizophrenia or psychotic symptoms. They were just chucking all kinds of pills at me. Each dose of medication had zero positive effect and many terrible side effects. Some were almost worse than the illness they were supposed to fix. One cursed me with blurred vision, stripping me of books, drawing, or TV; leaving me with little to distract me from my anxious thoughts.

Another pill counteracted the blurred vision but in turn gave me a sickening restlessness. When I sat, I wanted to stand and when I stood, I had to walk, and when I walked, I wanted to sit again and when I sat again I’d just rock back and forth. You’ve seen Crazy People doing that haven’t you? Well they’re not crazy people. They’ve just been given crazy medication which inflicts this horrid restlessness medically known as Akathisia.

Next on the list was an injection to counteract the Akathisia. But this one had a side-effect too. They don’t tell you that though. They don’t want to scare you, as it’s quite an extreme side-effect and only happens to rare individuals. The side-effect is know as an “Acute Dystonic Reaction” and is known to happen with Mellaril, an extreme medication for Schizophrenia!

So back to when the Dystonic Reaction started, up in the attic…

My hand was the first to go, it started to bend forward at the wrist and I couldn’t get it back, then my whole arm twisted backward. My other arm had gone around my back and was doing its best to break. All my limbs started twisting and contorting. I had to use all my strength to stop my limbs from breaking themselves. It all happened so quickly. I’d collapsed onto the bed in a fight with myself, suddenly in a terrible horror movie.

After the initial shock, I dragged myself off the bed and somehow got down two flights of stairs, which isn’t easy when you’re busy trying to break all your major bones. I’d got to the phone and managed to dial 999 somehow but by the time someone answered I was just on the floor, finally screaming, with the phone dangling on its cord and I couldn’t manage to ask for an ambulance. The operator eventually hung up.

After maybe ten minutes it began to ease up. One of my brothers arrived home. I told him what had happened. He didn’t get it. And just looked at me as if I’d two heads.

I went back up to the attic to gather myself. Then my hand started twisting again. I shouted down the stairs IT’S STARTING AGAIN. He ran up the stairs and when he saw me writhing around the floor doing my impression of Christie Brown going through an Exorcism, his jaw dropped and he turned white.

Our GP arrived very quickly. I was never happier to see a large syringe come out of a bag. Whatever he gave me stopped the side effect straight away. The next day, my medication was changed again. A month later, I voluntarily stopped all medication, and stopped attending the mental health clinic. Instead I started a very slow and long journey of accepting my condition and learning to cope with it. This acceptance led to a level of confidence that was enough to start my first job (in a phone printing factory) since I got sick. My confidence grew, I got better jobs, I got on with the rest of my life. Social Phobia never fully went away, it just grew more manageable.  And many many many years later I discovered things like meditation, exercise, journalling, good friends, mental health research, emotional intelligence and having a healthy sleep routine, all of which are a great help. Much better than being incorrectly medicated. End of story.

/trontsephore