Anxiety

For a solid two years of my life, I suffered from occasional anxiety attacks.  It would start as a tightening in my chest that hurt, like a clamp that stung, and then the inability to breathe correctly would begin. The attacks weren't filled with any sort of fight or flight panic, but they'd last about 10 minutes and I'd just sit there, focus on breathing, and try to make sure my heart was still beating.

The first attack happened when I was on my way to SFO to fly home.  My father was driving and my one year old daughter was asleep in the backseat.  It was about 5:00am.

Looking back I realize that my anxiety was over never seeing my mother again.  I'd spent 6 weeks in California on a trip that was supposed to be a lot of fun, shopping with Mom, swimming, and giving my husband the time he needed to study for the Virginia Bar Exam.  Instead, Mom had spent the entire summer in the hospital, very ill and with no end in sight. As I prepared to fly home, I was rather convinced that I might never see my mother again.

When I began spotting with a miscarriage in September 2011, my anxiety attacks were almost on top of each other.  On one day, the attack lasted a full 4 hours and I was within moments of calling all the daycare parents to let them know I needed them to get their children now so I could go to the ER.  The attack was long enough for me to finally call a doctor for some testing.

She and I discussed what was going on, how it felt, and then she ran an EKG that showed my heart was perfectly normal.

After that, if I felt the tell-tale signs of the start of an anxiety attack, I could just breathe my way through it and they slowly became further between.

Wednesday night, as I completed preparations and paperwork for my appointment with Dr. Hamersley, I was blindsided by an anxiety attack.  It was my first in almost two years.  Even when we lost our little girl and with all we went through with Jackson, I never once had an anxiety attack. I came close when I got the call that his cremains were ready, but it never went beyond needing to focus on breathing.  My chest didn't get the vice/clamp feeling.

But Wednesday it did.  And it was unnerving.

The anxiety seems to be back.  I had to sit and breathe again after taking an hpt yesterday.  I hadn't even seen the results and I couldn't stand up straight, couldn't breathe.

Today marks 9dpo.  It was also the 3rd injection of my new dose of Lovenox.  I'm continuing to have some uterine cramping and the occasional sharp pains in both my ovaries.  Those sharp pains may be small cysts--I get those sometimes with the corpus luteum.  But the uterine cramping is very reminiscent of the cramping I had that led me to testing when I found out I was expecting Jackson.

With all my other pregnancies and all of my non-pregnant cycles, I never had that kind of cramping. My temps weren't impressive in November, but the cramping was new, so I tested.

I tested yesterday in the afternoon.  Definitely bfn.  Tested again this afternoon.  Bfn at the 5 minute mark, but before the test was dry, something started to show up.  I obviously can't call it bfp, but I will be testing again in the morning.

Here is the picture I took of the tests from yesterday and today.

The line may very well be an evap (evaporation line), but you can see that I didn't get an evap on yesterday's test.  In fact, I haven't had evaps on any tests from this batch of Wondfos, which I ordered back in September.

Someone told me to go get a FRER--First Response Early Result, however 1) I don't shop on Sundays and 2) they're expensive.  So I will simply test again tomorrow and see what happens.

I was 9dpo when I found out I was expecting Jackson, based on temps. I'm 9dpo now and 62 days postpartum.

So the dilemma I have been arguing with myself has been whether or not we'd share a bfp right away or wait like we did this last time.  Clearly, I've decided to share any-and-all test results simply because I'm trying to keep it real.

REAL.  That's how I live my life, it's how I share my life.  And because there are emotions I'm experiencing that could help someone else, someone who has been here, too.  Or someone who may be in my shoes in coming months.

So am I pregnant? Don't know!  But I guess I'll find out in a day or two.