Where the cracks show

I’m afraid of insects.  Any type of creature with more than four legs that can be detected by eye is on my list of things I’d rather do without.  I live in a basement apartment and I take a lot of measures to make my home an unattractive place for a bug family, but there’s only so much you can do.  Eventually one of them is going to come scrambling towards you, waving its antennae around, while you are on the toilet. 

The amount of panic I feel when this happens is a little absurd.  Last week, I was getting into the shower when I saw a spider on the shower curtain.  I stood several feet away, watching it creep closer to the floor, while formulating a plan on how to manage the situation.  If it had been possible to avoid showering, I would have just left. 

I wasn’t always this scared of bugs.  I was never a huge fan, but I just thought they were creepy.  If a child is with me when I’m confronted with an insect, I am fine.  I kill it or capture it calmly. It has only been in the last few years that I have been actively afraid.  It is worst when I am alone.

Falling is also terrifying to me now.  I discovered this in 2009 while rock climbing in the Quincy Quarries.  Rappelling is a nightmare for me.  I understand technically how the system supporting a climber is both safe and redundant.  I do not logically distrust the gear.  I just can’t convince myself that free fall, even if controlled, is not going to be fatal. 

I have some other fears like these.  With a couple of exceptions, they mostly surfaced when I was an adult and after I got sick.  They are manifestations of my internal loss of control.  It is easier to be afraid of insects than of the insidious malfunctions damaging you from the inside.  I can't live in fear of my disease so my mind finds safe things for me to be afraid of.  This is where the cracks show.

I went to a presentation by a drug company years ago to get continuing education credits to maintain my license.  It was on some diabetes drug.  I honestly don’t remember which one.  What I do remember is the following exchange:

Presenter: “Are diabetes patients more likely to let themselves get high (blood sugar) or low?” 

Someone shouts out: “High!”

Presenter: “And why is that?”

Same person: “Because when you’re low you feel like you’re dying!”

I remember thinking how horrible that must be, to have a condition where you could regularly feel like you were dying, even if you aren’t.  Since that’s pretty much my life now, I can attest to the fact that yes, it is horrible, and that I will take extraordinary measures to avoid that feeling. 

Every time I anaphylax, there is a good five minutes where I feel like today might be the day.  When I feel it starting, if I sit down immediately, I have enough time to draw up and dilute IV Benadryl and lock the syringe into my PICC so I can slow push it after I use my Epipen.  Knowing logically that I have appropriate meds to control the reaction does little to mitigate the fear anaphylaxis brings.  Every time I come out of it, I can’t shake the feeling that I got lucky.  And that feels risky, because I’ve never been very lucky.

One of the symptoms of anaphylaxis is called “sense of impending doom.”  It seems absurd to include this feeling as an indicator of a terrifying, life-threatening event, but anyone who has experienced it knows that it does not feel like regular fear.  This “impending doom” feeling is a physical symptom of anaphylaxis, and is improved by epinephrine.  The fear that lingers is not a reaction from my body.  It is a reaction from my mind.

I handle them all day long, but these fears resurface when I am in bed at night.  Darkness has a way of drawing out our real life nightmares.  Invariably, my heart starts pounding, my skin gets hot and my mouth goes dry.  I close my eyes against the shadows in the room and the rhythmic drumming of blood pulsing through my body drowns out everything outside of my body.   Every heartbeat whispers, “Luck, luck, luck.” I reach to my right and feel for my Epipens on the bed.  I can’t sleep without knowing they are there.

A lot of us have gotten good at pushing this looming specter to the edge of our minds, but it’s still there.  On the nights when it comes slinking back, I remind myself:  Insects are likely not going to kill me.  Anaphylaxis probably won’t either.  And I never really believed in luck anyway.