I finally got cleared to shower last weekend!  Woo hoo!  After three weeks, I was ready.  I was so excited, in fact, that I actually gave myself a panic attack.  A full-on, cold-sweat, almost-blacked-out panic attack.  I’ve never had a panic attack before.  I mean, I’ve had panic creep in at the grocery store, and I’ll suddenly get the urge to abandon my 7-person-household full-to-the-brim cart and leave, but I’m always able to get a hold of myself.  Not this time.  This was a real one.  Over a friggin shower.

        Now, I do have to make a little side note here.  Though I’ve never had a real actual panic attack until this past weekend, I have almost made myself pass out before.  Totally by accident.  While driving down the highway, singing at the top of my lungs, I’ve made myself dizzy before.  Like an “oh shit, I think I’m playing the role of Freddie Mercury a little too hard while I’m driving” type of situation.  So I definitely have a knack for working myself up, but I had never thought a shower would actually do me in.

        Prior to the anticipated shower, I had started worrying about if it would hurt my stitches, my armpit, my drain site, the back of my arm.  Would I forget that I can’t lift my left arm and accidentally hurt myself?  I mean, sheesh, if I can forget I’m not Freddie Mercury while barrelling down the highway, how can I be trusted to remember that my left arm has extreme limits now?  I had worried so much that my FitBit notified me I was earning zone minutes.

        I started the shower and realized I had to remove my bandage from my drain site.  Cringe.  Another thing to make me a little light-headed, whooshy-headed.

        The shower itself was fine.  It felt good to stand under warm water, but a little weird on my left side.  I felt close to normal, though, and that’s worth a ton right now!

        When I got out of the shower, the panic started to creep in.  I thought my drain site was oozing.  I felt the world become unstable, and I started to feel woozy. I ran over to Chris with a band-aid, “Is it oozing?  What’s it look like?” But I couldn’t stand there–I was starting to become nauseated and felt like I was going to black out.  I ran over to the bed to sit down, but I couldn’t catch my breath.  I couldn’t open my eyes.  I could barely get my words out.  I broke out in cold sweats.  Chris said, “Are you having a panic attack?”  It was like floodgates opened up–I started bawling and pouring sweat.  Chris was able to help me regulate my breathing, but he said my pulse was hard to read because it kept going faint.  

        When I finally calmed down, I got him to put the band-aid on my drain site (which was not oozing–I had just convinced myself that it was).  I was able to get dressed and walked back into the bathroom.  I started crying a little bit–I mean geez, I just had a panic attack over a friggin shower, what am I going to do when treatments start??--and walked back into the bedroom.  Tearfully, I said to Chris, “How am I going to get through this?  How am I going to do this?”

        And without missing a beat, Chris delivered one of my favorite Derry Girls’ quotes in his best Gerry Quinn Irish accent, “There’s nothing you can’t do, Love.  Nothing.”

        I started laughing and said, “THAT’S how I’m going to get through this.  My husband is going to quote lines from Derry Girls to me!”

(And now you guys all need to go watch Derry Girls because it’s a friggin awesome show.  I recommend enabling the subtitles, so you can catch all the jokes.  In fact, I think I’m going to go put Derry on right now...)