The month of April.....

I think I have been pretty honest with this blog in describing my time here, explaining both the good and the bad, my emotional highs and lows.  So, continuing with this honesty, I’d like to share about my past month or so, which will also explain a little about why it may seem like I disappeared…

Four months in to a PCVs service, Peace Corps holds an in-service training called “Reconnect”, in which volunteers from the region gather together to catch up, exchange stories, give advice for the classroom and in the community, etc.  I left for Nampula mid-April, excited to see some friends and learn about how everyone was doing at site. 

Unfortunately, whether due perhaps to being the first time my body has had a chance to actually relax in a long time or perhaps caused by something else I’m not really sure of, I was eating dinner one night and began to have this feeling in my chest like someone was sitting on it and my throat began to tighten up like it was closing.  Needless to say, this was not a fun feeling and I started feeling light-headed and definitely a little freaked out. 

I do have a slight allergy to shrimp, which was served that night at the hotel for dinner (but which I did not eat) and thought maybe this was some sort of allergic reaction.  I went up to my room and took a Benadryl, hoping the symptoms would ease.  When they did not seem to be going away at all, we took advantage of the fact that I was in Nampula already and called the doctor to have things checked out because now I was definitely freaking out. 

Peace Corps came and picked me and Adam up from the hotel and drove us to the Peace Corps office to meet with the doctor.  He checked my airway, clear.  My blood pressure and heart rate, normal.  My throat, fine.  Everything seemed to be in order, which eased my mind a little and the symptoms started to abate. 

The following day, it happened again in the afternoon.  I skipped the afternoon training session, finding it better if I lay down and tried to relax and just watch a movie in my hotel room.  But the symptoms persisted and I made another trip to the doctor.  Again, everything seemed fine, but I went to a clinic to get an EKG done.

Now, almost two months later, I forget all the details that happened in between, but in short, the symptoms still persisted for several weeks.  They would come in waves, seemingly out of nowhere, sometimes just the chest tightness feeling like I couldn’t quite get a good deep breath, other times feeling like it was hard to breathe and as if someone was pushing on my Adam’s apple or had their hand wrapped around my neck. 

Thankfully, I never passed out and the feeling would always go away, either after a few minutes or after 30 or more minutes.  I tried and tried to find a trigger that set it off, perhaps acid reflux from eating spicy food or eating too fast?  But it was never consistent and would sometimes occur during eating and other times several hours after eating.  Perhaps an allergy to something?  But then the Benadryl should have helped.  Was it my heart?  But I did get that EKG done….it was exhausting!  My body was under constant stress, I couldn’t relax and always felt anxious.  For a little over a week, I was afraid to eat because I thought that maybe it was something related to food and I didn’t really have an appetite anyway, and so on.

The doctor was aware of the continued symptoms, but, to my own fault, I didn’t really explain to him about the anxiety and how it started affecting my everyday life until about three weeks after it started.  I have always been the type of person who hates people worrying about me, wanting to appear strong and able to handle whatever.  After the first week, when the symptoms didn’t get worse (yet still wouldn’t go away and weren’t getting better), I tried to just ignore it, trying to keep myself busy and distracted.  That helped for maybe a couple days, but then the feeling came back again, and mentally I got worse.  I knew how I was feeling was not me.  I was easily overwhelmed, seemingly couldn’t function on my own and was afraid to be by myself for fear that the symptoms would happen and I wouldn’t be okay. 

Thank goodness for Adam being there with me the entire time.  He would help me focus on taking deep breaths and little sips of water, listening to my paranoid thoughts that this was going to be the worst time and I would indeed stop breathing for a bit, or helping to distract me when I could not stop thinking that I couldn’t go to sleep for fear of not waking up again in the morning (this was definitely the lowest point). 

Finally, two weekends ago, I went back and saw the doctor who had discussed my case with the other Peace Corps doctors and had agreed that my symptoms were most likely caused by anxiety and the malaria prophylaxis medication I was taking, Mefloquin.

If you Google Mefloquin, you will most likely find that common side effects do indeed include several mentally-related effects like anxiety and depression and a whole slew of other fun things.  So the doctor switched me to a different prophylaxis and I have since, and I’m happy to report, been doing better and better every day.  Mentally, I feel more and more like myself, and was finally able to return to site and be back on my own again.  I still do have some chest tightness but can at least ignore it better (or try to) or distract myself and not freak out too much, knowing that it’s not some crazy, rare, life-threatening disease, that it always goes away and that never once, during this entire past month or more, have I actually stopped breathing or passed out.  I’m hoping that as the drug gets more and more out of my system, the symptoms will cease, and for now, I am trying to get back in to my routine.

I still want to do more, but am trying to take things slow and easy, one moment at a time and make sure I give myself time to relax and do nothing every now and then (trust me, that can be hard when it seems there is always something you need to or should be doing).  But, I am still teaching of course and the second trimester only has a few more weeks, I have begun work in organizing a local science fair for my schools, and I am soooo excited to go home in just a few weeks for my sister’s wedding!