A few months ago, I put on one of those “relaxing scene” DVD’s featuring a beach with waves rolling up to the shore, complete with ambient sounds of breeze, gulls, and surf. Doré couldn’t stand it. “It stresses me out!” she said as she left the room. I thought she was crazy.

This morning was my scheduled stress-test with very-pleasant cardiologist Dennis Simpson. The nurse had just finished prepping me, and as I sat waiting with electrodes attached to burning skin on the dry-shaved patches of my chest, I watched my heart rate on the monitor.

At first it was around 90 beats-per-minute, normal for me at a doctor’s office.  I knew I could bring it down with my thoughts, I was just surprised at which thoughts they were.

First, I put myself at a beach.  96 beats-per-minute.  Not what I expected.

Next, I was strapped into an 800-horsepower American stock car getting ready to fire the engine and roll out on to the track.  Result:  81 bpm.

I sort of expected that.  There’s something comforting to me about having the skills to drive in a race and the perfect vehicle with which to do it, not to mention the state of meditation induced by the level of focus that race driving requires.

Then I tried table-tennis.  I was hitting forehands with Que at the WSUTTC.  That put me up a little, around 86 bpm.

Then I went on a Sunday evening walk.  Result:  97 bpm.

Now I understand.  Those quiet “relaxing” moments are the times when my mind races the most.  Planning and analyzing all the ways I’m going to solve all of my life’s problems.  It’s only the activities which occupy all of the mind’s focus which truly relax me.

This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind.  I still think Doré is crazy.

Just like me.

The nurse was wrapping the arm band around my left biceps last Monday to take the routine blood pressure reading.  As she squeezed the bulb repeatedly, she made conversation.

“So, you’re, uh . . . having an anxiety attack right now ?”  I could tell she didn’t believe me.

“That’s right,” I said.  “It started around lunch time.  I just figured I should come in after work to take care of it, otherwise it’s going to be a miserable night.”  It was 5:30 PM.

She finished the blood pressure reading.  Her eyes bulged.  Now she believed me.

“You must really be . . . uh . . . well, it’s 160/98.  Do you take blood pressure medication?” she wanted to know.

“Yes, and thank goodness for that, or there would be no telling what the B.P. would be right now.  Three days ago it was 118/74, but the whole anxiety thing messes it up just a little.”

I know I’m having an attack when I suddenly am unable to breathe.  Then come the headaches, fatigue, and the pain all down the back of the neck, and all of life suddenly becomes like 5:00 AM on a Saturday morning.

Since 1996 I’ve been asking doctors about what I thought was my breathing problem.  “It’s like I can’t get any air.  I breathe as deeply as I can but nothing helps.”  No physical tests ever revealed any problems with lungs or blood-oxygen levels.  Not until April of this year when I walked in to Palouse Medical Ready Care after a particularly miserable day at work, and decided that I wasn’t going to leave until I had an answer.  God is merciful, and Judith Turner was on call that day.

I never knew before that the body could react to erroneous panic signals from the nervous system without ever involving the conscious mind.  I say that the conscious mind isn’t involved, but I think that’s just because I’ve lived with it for so long.  I just assumed that everyone was nervous most of the time like I was.  It was just background noise to me.  It adds a lot of new perspective to my past experiences.  I don’t have a lot of achievement to reflect upon, but I can certainly feel some relief and even pride at the things I was able to do in life even as the cold, black talons of panic raked at my chest.

It might seem strange that I worked the whole afternoon whilst the anxiety tightened around me like an inflating blood pressure cuff, but now that I know what it is, now that the monster has been exposed and identified, there’s no need for me to, uh . . . panic . . . for lack of a better word.