Living with Anxiety and Depression

  Waking up in the middle of the night with the shakes, gasping for air, and drenched with sweat. This was me, for over 5 years. At first i didnt have a clue what was going on, i thought i was just waking up from a nightmare. As time passed these  feelings would come and do often. At first i thougt it was just the stress of everyday life. But as it became worse i knew that there was something wrong with me, it go to the point that i didnt want to leave the safety of my home.

 One day i was out shopping with my oldest daughter and i get this overwhelming feeling that something bad was about to happen, i start hyperventilating and sweating, i actually thought i was going to die. I pick up my daughter and ran out of the mall, jumped in my car and drove straight to the hospital. Once there i called my mother to come and pick up my daughter, when she asked me what was going on i told here that i thought i was dying. Right after i hung up the phone with her, the doctor called me back to the room, checked me over and said to me “Mrs Escobedo, you are not dying just having a anxiety attack”. I was in shock, how could i be having a anxiety attack? I had never had a problem with this before. The doctor decided to run some extra test just to make sure that i didnt have another medical problems. Well about a hour later he came into the room and said, that i was pregnant! I was excited. I couldn’t wait to get home and tell my husband. But my excitement was short lived, before i knew it i was having another anxiety attack. I asked the doctor to give me something to help, but he said that the only thing that they could give me was benadrly, that the medications given to people for anxiety would cross the placenta.

  Well as time went by during my pregnancy, my attacks got worse to the point that all i wanted to do is sleep so that i wouldn’t fell anxious. It was the worse 9 months of my life. Once i had my beautiful little girl i decided to start taking the medication. For the first month i felt no change, but soon after that i started to feel better. For over a year i had no attacks. I thought i had beat this horrible disorder, but again my happiness was short lived. After being off the medications for 4 months they came back, so there i was again with taking two pills twice a day. I thought that i was never going to get better.

  I was at my witts end, i didnt want to take medication for the rest of my life. I wanted to be normal and enjoy being a mother and a wife, and being on these medications was preventing me from doing this, when i took them all i would do is sleep. So i decided to help my self, i didnt know how, but one way or another i was going to get off these medication. As time passed i would try to find ways to prevent these attacks and ways to treat them when i did have them. It was awful.

  Finally three or four years after being told that i had anxiety and panic attack disorders, i had found a way to help myself. I started exercising on a regular basis, took vitamins, and i also went to therapy. At therapy i learned how to calm my self down and breathing exercises, that would help me from hyperventilating. Its been along road for me. I still have a attack every once and a while. But its much better. I have learned that no matter how healthy you are, you can still me ill and not know it. My journey continues. As time goes my i will add to my story. So look for the second part of my story in  which i go more into detail of disorder.