My Nightmare

I'm going to brief you on my history of health and go back to last summer.. when my worst nightmare began to creep up on me. I'm not quite sure what month it started, but I'm going to say July since that is when my world changed. At the time I was 27 and I think anyone who knows me would say that I was very fit and healthy. I do pilates 3-4 times a week so my bones are extremely strong. I love to cook and focus on eating healthy. I love taking walks with my boyfriend and going on 7-12 mile bike rides around the new city we had recently settled into. Every 4th of July my friends and I head up to Northern Michigan to my best friends parents house on the water. It's my favorite place to be in the world. The air is fresh and crisp, the evening bonfire flame crackles twelve feet high and the night sky's are full of shooting stars. Memories from this place is what molded me into who I am. This trip however was different. The heat of summer 2012 was brutal and my body did not like it. My anxiety suddenly heightened in heat which I had never experienced before. My skin would burn to red in just minuets. And for the first time, I noticed I wasn't eating as much as I usually do while under the roof of an Italian family. None of this made sense. Which left me feeling like I was a crazy person because of my anxiety once more. About two weeks later is when my left knee began to hurt in a way that felt like I needed to deeply stretch the back of my knee. The pain worsened so I stopped working out and started elevating my leg at night since it would swell throughout the day. Then the pain grew so strong and I'm not kidding when I say, I was living on liver killing doses of Advil and drinking straight alcohol before bed to sleep through the pain. This all happened in about 3 weeks... and I was in the emergency room at 2 am screaming in pain. An infection known as Ostiomylitis, (an infection in the bone) which I contracted at age 5 from a brake in my femur bone had come back. It also came back when I was 12. So this was nothing new, however it was by far unimaginable to ever return. Cracking my femur open to clean out the infection was the only fix. The symptoms I had when I was 12 were a blurr to me so everything this time around was new to me. Along with having to stop my busy, athletic, healthy life.  I'm not going to write every detail of my nightmare but I was "crippled" as I refer to it for 3 months, at home on my couch helpless. Followed by a year of "getting my strength back" and oral antibiotics to kill the infection. This brings me to today... I have noticed that when my anxiety kicks in my heart starts to race. My therapist has told me this is another form of being anxious. The doctors have run tests to conclude that it's my anxiety as well. I couldn't help but to think that maybe it's because of all the drugs doctors have running through my blood in the past 5 months to rid this infection. However, this past Wednesday something wasn't right. My heart would not stop racing for 5 hours, so I finally went BACK to the emergency room. I swore, I never thought I'd have to see this place again. After many tests, they concluded that my heart is super healthy (yay!) but that it was racing faster than it would if it was just from my anxiety. They also said it was very smart for me to come to the ER because it was serious. Your heart isn't supposed to race that long or fast even with anxiety. So like any doctor or hospital would, they gave me some meds, told me to cut down on my sugars and caffeine (which isn't much at all) released me and told me to follow up with a cardiovascular doctor. Which gives me a great idea for my next post! It's been a few days, I haven't had any racing heart moments and I see my doctor Wednesday. For anyone with anxiety or anyone who knows anything about Ostiomylitis, perhaps this story might help in some way.