Stress Almost Got Me

Stress happens. Kind of like the reality that if you eat you will have to void. If you live you will encounter stress.

It almost got me this week.

I usually have really good coping mechanisms that tend to fight my stress battles for me and I go about my perky little way highly agitating people who think I live on an incessant sliver cloud.

That silver cloud turned into a thunderhead this week. My coping mechanisms either failed or were too overwhelmed from too much stress on all fronts to really just fix it so I could forget it.

I started getting tight muscles, my brain took over on its own, not letting me sleep by constantly repeating information over and over in this loop of insane activity moving at some ridiculous speed beyond light! Whew.

The stress had me cornered. My face was pressed into the floor beneath the foot of a whopper stress.

Last night I finally just let it go. I can’t tell you when I fell asleep, other then it was light outside still. I did not dream. I did not move around in my sleep. I just konked out and let the magic happen of de-stressifying.

I feel much better today. My clouds are white. They will be silver again soon I hope. That was a close one. Whenever I have physical symptoms to stress I know that I am in a critical mode and need to take evasive action.

The coffee this morning actually tastes good. The sun is shining, and best of all my sore muscles have relaxed into healing. My ears are not ringing. My head does not hurt.

I sent that whopper stress packing.

“Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it.”
― Jane Wagner

 

Surprised Myself…

You know that moment when you have a realization about yourself and you stand there dumbstruck, eyes wide and mouth hanging open? And you have to restrain your arm from using your hand to slap your own forehead? I had one of those last night.

The background is this, last year in April I noticed a growth on my face, yep my FACE. In May I was diagnosed with cancer and by June they had it all removed and I was recovering with a reconstructed nose because I lost over half of it to the tumor.

The nasty and chilling presence of Cancer had entered my life.

In the fall last year I got the “all clear” from the doctors that I could go about my life and just watch for strange growths in the future. Great, good, I am one of the lucky ones!

My moment of realization last night came when I realized that my anxiety was high for no reason. I have been running around my life in a whirlwind for weeks moving faster, and faster, and faster until last night it dawned on me I was tired.

It also dawned on me that even as I traveled the journey of grief that accompanies cancer I was having anxiety anticipating the year anniversary of the whole experience. Let me explain that I did not ignore a growth on my face for years or even months. This thing appeared, and started taking over my face within weeks. I think the idea that I felt I was being eaten by my own deviant cells was more horrifying then the surgery and treatment itself.

So this leads me to my point. I am conscious now of why I am anxious, and why I have been a whirling dervish the last couple of months. This awareness, and knowledge means I can work on it, hopefully slow down and wrap up the experience so I can move on with my life without the shadow of cancer trailing my every step.

News flash to myself, you cannot outrun cancer, but you can beat it into remission.