Call 911

June 13th- I had Travis take me to the ER, where they prescribed me sleeping medicine and anti-anxiety medicine.

June 14th- I began to have trouble tracking audibly.  When anyone would speak to me, what I would hear is not what they were saying.  The only way I could understand was if they wrote down what they were saying.  To say I was freaking out would be putting it mildly.  I asked Travis to take me to a hospital in the city, as I didn't think our small hospital was equipped to figure out what was going on.  Half way to the city I regained my ablitity to track and we decided to turn around and give the medicines one more try.

June 15th- Even though I was again having trouble tracking, I was still sound enough to realize I needed to contact my insurance and find out what I needed to do in order to get help.  They put me in touch with a therapist and we were able to get an appointment for that day.  Again, I carried on with normal things, like cleaning the house.  But then I could feel it happening again, so we left for the doctor early.  Everything went well with the doctor.  He was still thinking it could be anxiety and set us up with a followup appointment.

Travis and I went for an early dinner.  We ordered our food and then it progressed severly.  Not only could I not understand what he was saying, I now was behaving erratically, talking to strangers, saying odd things.  I begged Travis to call 911.  I was taken to a hospital.

Now this is why I am doing this blog.  The hospital, because they were not familiar with my illness and to their credit, all my symptoms seemed to resemble a mental illness, sent to me to a psychiatric hospital.  I do not blame them, however if they knew more and what tests to run, I may have healed faster and avoided what I will call "10 days and almost dead."

No Sleep

Starting around June 9th I began to have trouble sleeping.  This carried on for two nights.  Thinking this was a result of too much caffeine and taking dayquil do to a nagging cough, I stopped drinking soda and stopped taking the cold medicine.  Unfortunately those two things did not help and by June 11th, things had rapidly gone from bad to worse.  I began to hear music and people talking when there wasn't anyone around.  I will be completely honest when I say I was extremely scared.  My paternal grandfather was diagnosed (at approximately 40 years old) with paranoid schizophrenia.  Also, my dad's only other child (my half-sister), was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia at approximately 20 years old.  I contacted my Aunt to find out what symtoms that they had exhibited.  My husband was very reassuring and promised me we would figure things out.  Keep in mind it has only been 3 days.

How it all began

In May of 2009 I was wrapping up my year of teaching Title I math.  I had just finished my Master's degree in March.  My daughter had turned 2 in April and my son was going to be 4 in July.  Everything was going well.  We were moving in to our new house we had just built.  My sister came out to help us unpack somethings and we were generally settling in.  No one could have known what was in store for us.

Family Photo Taken in April of 2009