Have a Hart...or Celexa

After arriving at Salem Hospital, I was hesitant about what was coming. Being only 14 at the time, I did not understand why I was being sent to a neurologist, and only considered the image portrayed by media and television of being fairly morbid with only patients who have had trauma, severe psychological disorders, and brain masses seeing a neurologist. The waiting room was filled with pamphlets about everything from A.D.D. to smoking cessation. When I finally got called, a nurse brought me into a small room with a bed, tv monitor, strobe lights, and wires everywhere. The nurse told me I'd be connected to an E.E.G while waiting for the doctor and proceeded to put a sticky gel all over my head and parts of my face and placed little pads connected to wires on the gel on my head. I remember thinking how awkward it was to have the shifting wires pulling on the different regions of my head while the nurse continued to attach the electrodes.

The neurologist finally walked in and introduced himself as Dr. Hart. He told me all about the procedure and how he would be conducting a bunch of tests to see my brains activity and how I respond to specific stimuli and to see if anything provoked similar symptoms to what I had been experiencing. The test involved a multitude of things ranging from fast flashing LED lights to me performing certain tasks. In the end, I hadn't experienced any symptoms and Dr. Hart was almost positive that, after hearing when the attacks occurred, I had panic disorder. At this time, I should bring up,  I was unable to make it through school without going to the nurse. I would only make it an hour or two without symptoms settings in and causing me to flee.

Dr. Hart decided it would be a good idea to go on an SSRI, a drug that inhibits the re-uptake of serotonin in the brain which normally acts as a neurotransmitter. I could stress the details of how anxiety and panic disorder is caused by the uncontrolled nature of serotonin in the brain, but this isn't biochem and at this point in the story I won't reveal how nerdy I am for the wonders of medicine. But, I digress.

This marked my first "experimentation", as I'd like to call it, with SSRIs. I slowly went up on Celexa, starting at the extremely small dose of .5, and I already started to see changes after about a week. The attacks felt more controlled and far less severe. I was able to stay in class longer and started to feel better. November 18 was the first time I was able to stay in class all day, and I couldn't have been happier. Occasionally, symptoms would come back and I'd slowly go up on the medication, eventually maxing at 30 mg in February at which time I was completely free of panic attacks! It was an amazing feeling to be cured of something that was so debilitating!

Weeks went by and then months...Nothing! I couldn't believe all of this could have been controlled by just a little pill every day, but it had. Things continued like this for the remainder of 7th grade, and throughout all of 8th grade. I successfully had graduated from middle school and looked back on the experiences in 7th grade as a distant memory. What did I need to be concerned with anymore? I was on a drug that completely cured me and I didn't need to worry about my academic career anymore.

At the end of 8th grade, my parents decided it was time to move out of Peabody and move to a new house. After looking around, my father picked out a great house in Rowley, just about 20 minutes north of where I lived. This meant I was leaving my old friends to attend a new high school in a town I hardly knew, but I was nothing but excited. I have always been thrilled to meet new people and interact with everyone I met. I'd miss my friends, but this was going to be a great experience at a great new school!

Jump to the first day of class, and I was enthusiastic about my classes and all the new people I was meeting. The school was small, but much nicer than the high school in Peabody. Everything was going great and I was loving it here. On the 3rd day of school however, I noticed I was getting extremely dizzy while sitting in one of my classes so excused myself and went to the nurse. Maybe I was sick? Maybe I had just ate something the night before that disagreed with me? I don't know. The next day...same thing but much more severe. Something was wrong...this wasn't supposed to be happening. I was happy to be here, loving the classes, and enjoying the people. What was going on?

Shit...It never went away...

3 pages, 5 years

Just got to my parent's house in Virginia and glad to be settled in! As I progress in my story, due to the ridiculous amount of medications I was on, a lot of the events mesh together and my brain is unable to organize them into a time line (This is probably because some of the medications brought on short term memory loss and the essential comatose state I was in). I have been struggling with what occurred from 7th grade on, so I brought this up to my mother. Being the amazing woman she is, she reminded me she recorded EVERYTHING that happened, including medicine dosages, large attacks, and important meetings. She came into my room and handed me three pages which provides dates of everything from the beginning in 5th grade, to the end of freshman year (When things got severe...we'll get there soon!)

Anyways, with her help, I can get cracking on the continuation of the story. Expect a new update in the coming day or two!!!!

Short break

So..with finals Friday, Monday, and Tuesday, I'm stressed beyond belief and having a hard time studying. In addition, I have a 102 fever and haven't been able to start studying for my exams so I'm gonna take a break from blogging until I go home for winter break. Thank you everyone for supporting this blog and being an amazing support to me and I'll continue my story soon!

It's not okay

This post has been half written for a bit due to me stressing over a long string of tests, and finally (At 4:11 am on Monday morning...) I wanted to finish it.

Although 5th grade is really where problems started, things slowly worsened from there.

In sixth grade, I was completely asymptomatic for the majority of the year, with an odd "attack" occurring every now and then, but to a manageable extent. I thought at this point, it was still my previous diagnosis of Cocksackie. Whenever I had a spell of feeling lightheaded or dizzy, I'd ask to be excused and go to the nurse, but that was very rare. I still had never witnessed anything like that attack in fifth grade...until a day towards the end of the year.
I was sitting in Social Studies with one of my favorite teachers. I remember we were mapping regions in Africa and nothing was any different. Suddenly, the room began to spin. My heart began to race, my breathing was labored, and I began to shake violently. I raised my hand quite panicked and asked...or rather demanded... I head to the nurses office. As I got up to leave the room, I started to stumble and clearly couldn't walk in a straight line. The teacher noticed and immediately ran to my side to make sure I didn't collapse and brought me to a desk sitting to the side of the door. She stopped the class and ran for the nurse. The nurse came down and prodded with questions and, not knowing what to do, called my mother to come pick me up from the classroom. When she arrived, I was dazed and still wobbly, but improving. We ended up heading straight back to my doctor whom dismissed it as a recurring symptom. I still didn't understand, even at that age, how something from a year ago could have the same debilitating effect on me now. The year ended with only one or two additional small attacks.

Then 7th grade began...Probably the most significant point in my story so far, and the most difficult.
Again, the school year started out as normal as any other year. However, now those "small flare ups" were happening much more often. And when I say much more, I mean starting from 2 a month to 3-4 a week. The symptoms were the same but now the attacks would last much longer.
At the beginning of the year, I'd probably go to the nurse's office about once a week and lay down until the symptoms passed. After one week, the attacks would become more severe and eventually becoming exponentially more difficult to bare and culminating with a total of 102 days in the nurses office in a single year (I sadly remember this number when I asked one of the nurses the number of times I was in their log). However, this was far from the real issue. The real issue was I had no idea what was going on with me and the previous diagnosis held no merit. I didn't know what to think, but I know I couldn't take it any longer. Even worse, the teachers no longer believed I was truly having these symptoms. I was told on more than a dozen occasions I could not be excused to go to the nurse. Eventually, they ended up having a meeting with my parents and claimed I was making up my symptoms and I was simply trying to get out of class.

Looking back on this, I can't blame them. As anyone who knows me today is aware of, I am quite loud and outspoken. I hardly ever can be seen without a smile on my face or cracking some smart-ass remark, and the teachers would see this side of me daily. The problem with this was, the second I'd have an attack, that Jesse would completely disappear and I would go into panic mode. How could anyone expect someone to go from one extreme to the other in such a rapid manner and not be faking it? Oh, right, panic attacks! Because they stopped allowing me to go to the nurse, I become afraid to confront the attacks any longer (Which at this time were only happening in the school). I made up every excuse I could to get out of school...Constipation, saying I vomited, claiming I was sick and becoming VERY good at acting like I was. Eventually, my parents no longer accepted these excuses and when the attacks continued, we returned to my pediatric physician, who decided there must be something else going on...And finally referred me to a Neurologist at Salem Hospital.

It Began

I want to emphasize that this blog is about my journey to become a doctor from a difficult and confusing past. When I explain my story to people, it's hard for people to realize what I have gone through, and am currently going through, so I felt it was important to begin this with a trip into the past to explain how I got to this point. I'm going to split the story up into a few parts until we get to current day. I promise I won't bore you with all the details but here we go.

Back in 5th grade, I had my first experience with what I eventually found out was a panic attack. I was doing a dress up biography on Abraham Lincoln, which I was psyched for! For the beginning of the school year, I was in a wheel chair and leg brace after I broke my femur falling off of a razor scooter. Being a 10 year old boy with the energy of a golden retriever puppy who had been let out to run free in a wide open yard for the first time, I went overboard with my presentation. Top hat, beard, coat...The works.

I remember my teacher telling me it was almost time to go on so I headed to the bathroom to put on the costume. Me and a few other class mates got ready and laughed at each others silly interpretations of famous historians and athletes whom we read about the weeks prior. I put on my costume and beard and headed back to class, ready to make the class laugh at my funny getup.

When I came back, it was my turn. I was smiling and laughing at everyone while I took my place in front of the classroom. I began to talk about who I was, Mr. Abraham Lincoln. I wish I could recall the rest but immediately I started to feel weird.

The lights were bright all of a sudden. I started to sweat. My speech began to slur and I stumbled over lines I had practiced every day for the week leading up to this day. What was happening? I started to feel lightheaded, something I had never experienced before. I couldn't walk straight but I stumbled back to my seat and immediately put my head down wondering what was happening.
One student yelled from the side of the room, "What about question and answer?".
"I don't think Jesse is feeling well, let's go on to the next student."
"It's stage fright!".

That's the last thing I remember before my teacher got me and took me down to the nurse immediately. From there things got a little hazy, but I remember thinking... How could it be stage fright? I loved being in front of people and garnering the attention of my peers. A month or so prior, I had been in the school's lip sync, doing the song "The Wanderer" . I was surrounded by 4 girls in my class and everyone in the audience was cheering me on as I took the identity of a pseudo-10-year-old-pimp. The fact of the matter was, I was happiest surrounded by people and being the stand out person of the group!

The nurse called my mother, who immediately made an appointment with my pediatrician. We went in and I described my entire situation. She was the same doctor I had been seeing for years and knew of my high energy personality, and thought it was nearly impossible it would have been stage fright. She assumed I may have had an allergic reaction to the glue on the fake beard of my costume. We retrieved the beard and tried to see if I had an attack when wearing it in the doctors office, but nothing happened. When that failed, I was then diagnosed with "Coxsackievirus", or more commonly Hand-Foot-Mouth disease. The acute nature of the symptoms matched and my parents accepted the diagnosis as an explanation. I spent a few days home and returned to school, completely asymptomatic despite some dizziness only when I entered the class room the first panic attack occurred in. Little did I know that that mild dizzy would be an important clue in what was really going on later in my life. I finished 5th grade normally, with the exception of graduation, where I had a feeling of dizziness again and had to leave the graduation and go to the nurses office. I attributed this to nerves but it turns out nerves were just the start.

Outlet and motivation

For the past 9 or so years, I've been on a complicated and difficult path dealing with generalized anxiety disorder, it's complications with treatment, and my long term goal of becoming a doctor. After a lot of struggle, the road is not getting any easier and I felt the best way of dealing with some of the issues was to create a blog and discuss them. Hopefully, through this, I can encourage myself, and possibly others, to not give up and that it IS possible to do whatever you'd like, regardless of inconveniences that arise. Over the next few weeks I'll share my story through the beginning up until current day.

 For those I already know, I hope you'll see a different side of me and realize what I'm struggling with and get a better understanding of me from this. For everyone I don't know, I hope you can empathize with me and maybe find some encouragement from the stories.

Let's get started.

Quick note...I've never done blogging before and I'm gonna take a day or two to set it up so it looks alright. If you have any tips, please don't hesitate to contact me! And don't pay too close of attention to the looks until I'm done. Thanks everyone!


J