[NY65912]

What I want to know is how the heck did we become this way?

For me it was extreme pressure at work, dealing with my mom's cancer and death and my own close call, post surgical pulmonary emboli. Every little strange feeling made me think it was a heart attack. The palpitations were almost constant. I was checked into the hospital in '03 for chest pains. They ran every cardiac test the could find. I insisted that there was something wrong and even went through demanding a angiogram to definitely rule out any heart problem. Guess what, the docs were right it was all stress induced.

Now how to learn to cope? Not an easy task but it has gotten better, a lot better. In the past few years I saw a psychologist and he was able to let me see that there ain't a damn thing you can do about it, if your gonna die it's gonna happen and it has helped immensely. I've seen a p-doc for the last 10 years and it's now basically a check in, get my script sort of thing. It has taken me a long time to come to grips with this problem, to accept this as part of me and not that I am fuched up. I hardly get palpitations, only when I am extremely angry or feel very threatened or trapped. I couldn't go to the dentist or have a procedure done. It took 4mg of Klonpoin to get me into the MRI for my knee surgery.

The point is we are all individual. For me I operate at 10/10 all of the time and it ain't where I want to be. Using meds has changed my life and allowed me to think clearer about my anxiety and that has in turn made it easier to deal with.