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Two months ago I had the wind knocked out of me both literally and figuratively and since then, things haven’t been quite the same. It shouldn’t have been a surprise when after four years living with my ICD (internal cardiac defibrillator) it finally had it’s first go at “thumping” me.

I was on a photo shoot, I was playing with a kid getting him to smile in spite of his instance not to, he was good but I was better. Sure, that smile only came as my physical comedy got more involved but it came and once I had it I was determined to keep it going, my body however had another plan.

Silence. That is what I remember, it was just so quiet. All the noise of cars going by, and the kid laughing at me, and my fellow photographer talking, it all faded to nothing. My vision went from bright white to deep black, and then at once came back with a tremendous thud in my chest. It hurt, it hurt like nothing I’d ever felt before, not the worst pain of my life kind of hurt, but a hurt I had never experienced and couldn’t describe to you accurately if I had unlimited time and words. The best I can come up with is hitting your funny bone, with a sledgehammer, while grabbing hold of an electric fence, while licking a nine-volt battery. It was impact and electricity at once.

For a moment I wasn’t completely sure what had just happened, for one I’m pretty sure when a pulse of  electricity like that goes through your body, nothing is left unaffected, including your brain. My poor brain had just, in a matter of seconds, experienced a lack of blood (that stuff was just staying put while my heart quivered it’s self senseless at 296 beats a minute) and immediately followed that up with an electrical impulse. I’m cutting myself some slack on the fogginess of my recollection of the immediate aftermath of the whole experience. When I started to put it all together what felt like ages later but I am assured was only a few seconds, it didn’t seem right.

“I just got defibrillated?” I said to Tommy the photographer I was working with and the now very confused clients. It was a question, not a statement because what had just happened and what had been described to me when I got the thing were two very different scenarios. For one, my doctor told me it was likely I would pee my pants when I defibrillated. I focused my thoughts for a moment and realized that my pride and my dryness were still intact. Second, I was still standing and I was lead to believe that when you experienced the “donkey kick” that is a defibrillation you don’t remain standing. Two for two, this was not going how they’d described, but I’ve never been one to follow standard operating procedures or expected outcomes, no I’m more of a head scratcher than a trend setter.

The next two weeks were a blur, starting in the ER and ending at my doctor in St. Louis, an inpatient stay at the hospital and upending every last bit of my old treatment plan. Needless to say the last two months have not been my favorite. Changes in medications mean feeling sick, anxious, out of sorts. In addition to my heart condition, I am diagnosed with OCD, PTSD, and the rest of the alphabet, not to mention my overall anxiety disorder. All of my medications have been changed and while I can say I am physically feeling better most days (it ebbs and flows), mentally I am currently having one of the hardest times I have ever had. The medication that was working beautifully to control my OCD and anxiety is not an option with my new heart treatment. The replacement medication I am on really only sedates my anxious brain and when it wears off I find myself in what I call “the loop” again. My brain gets loud in the loop. It’s like trying to think in a room with 50 different conversations going on, many of them completely nonsensical. Imagine trying to get a complete thought out of a slurry of incomplete ones. Imagine trying to get EVERY thought you have out of that. It’s not easy, and it is starting to take a real toll. It is exhausting.

It is getting harder to hold things together.  I’ve been “white knuckling it” as my sister says for the last couple of months and my grip on the wheel is loosening with every passing day. The medication that I take is a sedative. It is not a fix for the chemical imbalance in my brain. Medications that fix that don’t play nice with my heart meds.

Here’s the circle. I have a heart condition. The heart condition has caused PTSD and OCD, as reactions to the lack of control I feel over my own body. That lack of control gives me anxiety, why am I feeling this way, what does that feeling mean, is that beeping my ICD or is it something else? Anxiety causes my heart to race, the heart racing causes my pacemaker to pace and my heart to think it should go into crazy fast rhythms. The meds I take to combat those crazy fast rhythms make it impossible for me to take the meds that will help control the anxiety. The anxiety I feel because of the crazy fast rhythms.

Hearts aren’t meant to beat at 296 beats a minute. I’m pretty positive brains aren’t meant to have 296 thoughts a minute. The circle is real and frustrating and heart breaking. The struggle to get the help to fix it is only made harder by the jumbled mess in my mind. I promise you I am looking for solutions, and I am writing just a few more words to get to 1000 even. OCD.