Two of four fillings are in. I didn’t want to go to the dentist yesterday but I managed. I headed to the garage without saying I was leaving, and was a little surprised that Dan was waiting upstairs (he snuck around back) to help me after making my ascent on the stair lift.
Not that he would ever leave me without support. I was just trying to be stubbornly quiet about it. Mom was taking me to my appointment, and I figured bothering him would rattle me more than him.
Several times during the drlling, I tensed up severely. Not because of any pain. I was good and numb. But because the high-pitched sound of the drill was so disconcerting.
I stared at a ceiling tile while bits of spit and ground up tooth entered my line of sight. Repeating soothing mantras in my head, I relaxed the muscles I could control. (I have doubts sometimes my trapezius will ever relax. It’s been in flexion since 2014 and that tension only intensified in 2017.)
Anyway I tried to soothe myself several times in 30 minutes. I was very aware of the physical symptoms of anxiety as they were washing over me.
Awareness is key. Everything I’ve read assures me of that, and the progress I’ve made confirms it. The trick, however, is not spiralling once I know what’s going on.
With disorders like this, awareness at this stage means I panic about all the things I can’t control when I get panicked.
This GAD shit is just vicious.
Vicious.
On the agenda for next week are my outpatient PT, MRI, and CT scans. We’ll see how that goes. I was slow and unsteady yesterday. My right side did that whole “nobody move and nobody gets hurt” thing that happens when I’m stuck in freeze mode. I almost fell when we got home, but self-corrected.
That’s not nothing.