#Y'all tell me if I missed any content warnings my meds are still wearing off

[technecat]

Uh, buckle up, it's a long one.

I got an upper endoscopy today. That's the one where they stick a camera down your throat and look at your esophagus and stomach and you have to do a full fast (not even water) beforehand. I can't tell you much about the procedure part because I was so exhausted that at the first hint of sedation, I was OUT. What I can tell you is how badly I messed up preparing for this thing that went perfectly, smoothly, 100% fine.

I have Anxiety. I like to give it the capital A out of respect, but also because it's part of GAD, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which is my official diagnosis. Those of you with GAD probably know why I'm specifying, but those without are probably confused at why I'm specifically mentioning GAD instead of just anxiety. Pack in because we're talking about brain feelings and emotions for a sec.

So, GAD is a funky thing because it basically amounts to: A Low Level of Anxiety All The Time: But No Reason, Just Because. It's just like having a layer of anxiety on everything all the time, no triggers required (but things are still triggering! Trust me!). I take medication for it and have been for the past 20 years. It helps a lot! I live a pretty low-anxiety life with meds and the tools I've gained from therapy over the years. If I may toot my own dang horn, I am pretty good at handing my anxiety.

What I'm not good at handling is unknown experiences. I like to have trial runs of things. I like to practice. I also like to know as much as possible about a thing before I try doing it, so that I can have some modicum of control over my emotions and actions when I do it. Now, this isn't to say that I am not extremely adaptable to new situations because- whew- I can adapt to anything as a new normal in about a day, no problem. I'm great at mentally placing myself in a new situation ahead of time and getting comfy.

Which is why the sheer amount of anxiety that I endured in the 24 hours before my procedure was strange. I had already read up on the procedure, talked over the phone with the nurses, and planned out my preparation phase. I was not worried about it going poorly and I was only slightly concerned about being uncomfortable. "Normal people" amounts of anxiety over a new thing. NBD. Really, I wasn't nervous about the medical procedure at all.

What I was nervous about was...the fact that I should be feeling nervous about the procedure. And here's where GAD really gets ya'. The only anxiety trigger was that I was feeling too calm about the whole thing. And again, anxiety folks probably get me here, but it's freaking wild to realize that you are anxious because you feel like you have to be, and not because you have a reason to be. Like my brain was kicking me for slacking on my fight or flight.

Yesterday, the day before the procedure, was a fairly normal Monday for me. Back to classes, back to reminding students that it's not time to relax yet because our final project starts next week, trying to get them to critique each other's work even though it was Senior Skip Day (no one warned me) so a quarter of my students were gone. I was busy with grading and planning out next week, so I didn't really have a chance to think about being nervous for more than a few minutes. I even talked to a coworker at lunch who'd had the same procedure and walked away unscathed and unable to remember any of it.

By the end of the school day though, I could feel it setting in. I was getting a pretty bad migraine (unusual for me on a Monday; my chronic migraines are on a Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday cycle right now) so I guessed it was probably stress and went home right away to lie down.

I did not get back out of bed until this morning. My migraine attack got so bad I was nauseated most of the evening, which really isn't what you want when you can only eat solid food until 8 PM that night, but my brain and my stomach were fighting each other tooth and nail for no reason so I managed a few bits of a tortilla with cream cheese in it, some pear-apple sauce, and 4 oz of oat milk with a little protein mix in it. I topped it all off with a liquid antacid right at 8 so my efforts would not go to waste, and then was only allowed water until midnight.

A little aside here to say that I don't eat a lot but I take small meals quite often. I generally do: liquid breakfast, second breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, and sometimes another snack/light dessert if I can squeeze it in. I'm not able to eat solid food in general before 7am or after 8pm. All of this is a result of having a very fast metabolism and what I'd always been told was borderline hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). I always wake up extremely hungry and thirsty and sometimes even dizzy and cranky and can rarely wait more than an hour to have breakfast. If you're following along, you might guess what my next big problem was.

It's now 10 PM the night before and I have sipped a bit of water and taken my normal medication, but nothing else. I've been lying in bed reading WebToons for about 5 hours. Normally, I would already be asleep as I get up at 7 for work, but my appointment wasn't until 8:45 the next day so I decided- bear with me reader, I'm sorry, hindsight is 20/20- I decided to stay up as late as possible so I could force myself to sleep in until the last moment and not have to deal with feeling hungry.

I should count myself extremely lucky that I have had the great fortune in life to have forgotten that hunger makes it hard to sleep. I went to bed at midnight out of sheer exhaustion and woke up...at 7am when my alarm went off. I managed to fall back to sleep until the 7:30 "you're about to be late, leave now" alarm went off and my brain said OK, it's Tuesday let's go. I could not fall back to sleep and what sleep I had was not quality (you never get really good quality sleep from exhausting your brain into it).

So now I'm: hungry, dehydrated, about 3 hours underslept, and extremely, extremely tired and sore from the migraine I had the night before. (Another small aside: the last phase of a migraine attack is the postdrome a.k.a the hangover phase. It feels exactly like a bad hangover and mine usually last around 12-48 hours.)

I am so pissed off and exhausted I have tears in my eyes. I have royally screwed this whole thing up for myself already and it was only partially my fault (partially just bad migraine luck) which made me even angrier. It took me 10 minutes to get dressed because my postdrome brain fog + drowsiness + hunger meant I couldn't focus on anything, let alone finding clothes to put on my body. I kept snapping in and out of being nervous and being too tired to be nervous.

The 20 minutes in the waiting room is absolute torture on my migraine-fried brain. They have a morning news station on the TV that is blasting political attack ads and local news. It switches to a morning talk show with a lady who screams every word she says. Someone nearby is letting their kid play an iPad game with the volume all the way up. I have literally curled up on a chair shielding my eyes from the florescent lighting. My partner is there with me, but he can't do anything to help my brain stop being a stupid baby. I can't sleep because I can hear every damn noise and conversation in the room and see the lights through my eyelids. I was, as they say, extremely overstimulated.

When they call my name I hear it but my body refuses to move. My husband shakes me but it's still impossible for about 10 seconds. I mentally note that my blood sugar must be extremely low-- while simultaneously my partner mentions to the nurse that my blood sugar is low. I have trouble standing and have to lean on him until they get me a wheelchair. They take my blood sugar and it's fine. "It's actually very good! It's 93", chirps the nurse. I don't know what that number means because, like it mentioned, I was only ever diagnosed with borderline hypoglycemia and just always assumed my blood sugar was the problem.

The rest of the stay was uneventful. Like I said at the beginning, everything went smoothly, I don't remember anything from the actual procedure beyond being hooked up to an IV and told to lie on my side. I very briefly spoke with the doctor who apologized that I had a headache from my migraine and when I told him I was used to it he frowned and said, "I don't like that you have gotten used to it". Me neither, bud. But what I remember saying aloud was "it's fine, I'm fine".

I woke up back in the room I started in with my husband sitting in the same place and the nurses popping in and telling me to rest as long as I needed, but also I was good to go whenever "and eat soft foods for a while". I don't remember getting home, only that I had a smoothie and took a 4 hour nap immediately. I am hungry but otherwise unfazed.

Except...the blood sugar thing is still bugging me. And it was bugging me the whole time I was lying in the bed trying to let the IV do its job and chill me out. If it's not my blood sugar dropping that causes me to be so sluggish in the morning, or cease functioning properly if I don't eat every 2 hours (4 maximum) then what the heck have I been dealing with for 20 years?

I've only been diagnosed with chronic migraine since 2019 and they only started being chronic in my 30s; before that, attacks just happened occasionally. I had them misdiagnosed them as food poisoning and sinusitis several times. (If you get sinus headaches a lot, look into seeing an ENT and Neurologist, you might be surprised. And yes, migraine attacks can cause nasal congestion!) So, migraine doesn't seem like the long-term answer even if it may have been the reason why I had issues today. So I guess once we figure out what's wrong with my stomach, I'll need to go to the doctor again and figure out what's wrong with...whatever is wrong with me.

Anyway, I don't have a fun way to wrap up this story, I just wanted to share it with y'all.