Is that...anxiety?

I am going to admit something very dumb: I thought I really could not get afraid. I thought that afraid for me meant cold, flat, and distant, as the very few dangerous times I have encountered in my life caused that reaction. Every horse emergency aroused--or rather--flattened my emotions, so that I could not feel anything until well after the event.

Cue the computerized testing. Sans scratch paper.

Somehow this setup short circuited my brain, so that I am now intimately familiar with the depths of anxiety and the reality of panic attacks. There is some thought within the Lyme community as to how Lyme can affect the mood of its victims. Anxiety is one of those unfortunate things.

Add in all the stress of med school, having to deal with the whole scenario again because of illness, and you get a perfect storm. Of the anxiety sort.

Some compensation/comfort comes in pill form...I can feel when the drug kicks in, as if it almost physically turns back the dial on the white noise that accompanies the panic insanity.

Everyone always quotes that old saw to me about how doctors should be a patient for a week to understand what you have to go through. Honestly, though, I wish I did not understand this.

Uncertainty Principle

In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: it goes on.

~Robert Frost

A few weeks ago, a young man in the second year class chose to end his life. I knew him in passing, as I was part of that class until the Lyme woke up and knocked me down in the spring. I will never know what drove him to that brink, to the realization that it was better to end life rather than enduring it. Our demons are uniquely our own.

Today, one of the organizers of our clinical skills course passed away suddenly due to a heart attack. I think she was just 32. In lab I listened to how she and her husband walked their dog together every evening, and thought to myself of how those nows spent in her company may give her husband comfort in the future.

We all take for granted the plans we have laid out. However, life is finite--we were all born, and at some point, we are all going to die. In the meantime, all we have is this moment, this now, that we can do something with.

Given my never ending war with Lyme, I feel that I have a decent inroad on using my nows to the utmost of my ability. The events of the past few weeks have hammered this lesson into my mind even more. All we have is our collection of nows. It may seem easier to turn your head when dealing with something aggravating or unpleasant, but the bottom line is that this time is all we have. And if we choose not to experience it, not to live it, we are choosing oblivion.

Despite migraines, nausea, and overall high levels of nastiness, I rode three times last week. I am preparing for the 4 part Celebration of Learning on Friday with a clear sense of choice: I chose to live within the moments given to me. These endless stacks of papers, this coffee cup, that soft nose of my lamb: that is my life. And I will choose to continue living in my given moments until death and I meet.