Monday, August 21, 2006

Disaster Averted

I am proud to report that I sucessfully blocked a potential stroke today.

It was somewhat ironic. I was thinking about how focusing on the positive and accepting myself for who I am would decrease my fear of death because I would be satisfied with my life, when suddenly I got a sharp shooting pain through the top of my head. My first thought was, “Oh my god, I’m having a stroke.”

Instead of hyperventilating and running to the bathroom, I paused to think about how unlikely it was and tried to tell myself I was being unreasonable, (even though the statistics I looked up last night cite strokes as the second cause of death and number one cause of disability in this country).

The pain continued to shoot through the top of my head. It was more frightening than usual because I don’t normally get pains in that area, which fueled the part of me that wants to believe I’m constantly dying. I tried to figure out why I would be getting a headache when I was having what I thought was a relaxing day, and decided it was probably left over stress from my Mom’s surprise visit.

To sum it up, I was much calmer than usual and hardly freaked out at all.

2 comments:

yasser said...

have you tried any yoga or martial art as relaxation too?

Anonymous said...

Hi Leila....
Congrats on crisis diverted. *wink.
Today, when my hand started maniacally twitching (a sure sign of ALS) I did a little self talk myself.

Baby steps....baby steps.

Chin up!