Love that they put “a sense of impending doom” as one of the symptoms of a heart attack, like girl, that’s just how it is to be alive these days, you’re gonna have to be more specific
This made me chuckle but after scrolling away I felt the need to come back to it.
Because as someone who has felt this I can not stress how different it actually is from anxiety. Which is saying a lot because I have a massive anxiety disorder.
I’ve only felt this twice in my life - once when I was going into kidney failure due to an infection and again when my body was going into shock due to dehydration and malnourishment due to GI issues - and I can not stress how much it saved my life. It’s hard to even put it into words. It’s not like a panic attack, or anxiety. It is a horrific gut turning feeling of absolute dread.
Especially if you have anxiety you’ll know the difference honestly. It’s so much worse. It’s every cell in your body and your brain screaming that there’s something horribly wrong in a way you’ve never felt. It’s your brain screaming out that you are going to die in a way no panic attack has ever done before.
I can not stress how important it is to get yourself to the ER if you feel this way. Especially if your having other physical symptoms.
This is amazing and incredibly helpful, oh my god. Thank you.
Seconding the above : I was going into shock from internal bleeding, and that sense of “something is gravely wrong” was entirely different from my day-to-day whirlwind of anxiety.
For me, it was very quiet. For me, there was a deep sense that I could just lie down on the floor and not have to ever get up again, no effort required.
That combined wrongness/relief was so weird and so unsettling that I drove myself to the ER.
The “impending” part is really key to that symptom, I think, based on my experience. It’s not the existential dread of late-stage capitalism grinding the world into nurdles. It’s a ghost crow on your shoulder whispering “it’s here, it’s now.”
Impending doom is also a feature of anaphylaxis, something I’m intimately familiar with as someone with mast cell dysfunction.
For me, its the overwhelming, near calm certainty of doom that distinguishes it from the jittery panic of “but something could go wrong.”
There’s no “what if?” There’s no room to question it. It just IS. And it’s very different from the “calm” of disassociation too. I’m not disassociated from myself when it happens. I’m probably actually the most present ever.
I’ve turned to doctors and told them calmly and with utter certainty “I am going to die” and the reaction that calm certainty gets is immediate intervention because doctors also recognize that stillness as the body not bothering to waste any time on fight or flight and just going straight to “death is imminent due to some internal failing, act accordingly.”
When I was lying in bed recovering from a hit to the head, I remember a moment in the middle of the night where I went from a sorta half asleep state to being instantly wide awake and feeling, with absolutely certainty, that I was about to die. It was dead silent in my head other than that thought, screaming at me that Something Is Wrong, something is Terribly Wrong. It was like I could feel the dread seeping into my bones, my chest, like I could see it in the back of my eyes, sense it around the corner. Everything was going haywire, like a train was blowing its whistle and I was on the track and my body was trying to get me to Move Dammit.
I called emergency services and tried to explain what I’m feeling. I thought I would be written off, but when I started describing the feeling, immediately the dispatcher sent paramedics to my apartment. Good thing too, as I had a stroke in the ambulance.
Impending doom is real, and a defense mechanism created by the brain to get you to get medical help for something that you cannot handle by yourself, and as someone with panic disorders, it is wildly different and arguably even more terrifying than any attack I’ve ever had.
y'all ever get bored but like in an angry way….like you keep picking things up and putting them down bc none of them is The Right Thing and you have like pent up manic energy but absolutely nothing is holding your interest long enough to release it and you’re just >:(
Your mom and aunts aren’t on tumblr. Please warn them about this as well.
[Image description: Two smartphone screenshots of a Facebook post by a person named Sheila Toll posted 2 Sep. It is black text on a white background and the post is public. The post reads:
I am a Family Doctor and I want to keep a promise made to a patient.
Julie was a healthy, post-menopausal woman in my care who came in for a periodic health examination. One of my routine questions, in what is called the “Review of Systems”, was to ask if she had experienced any vaginal bleeding.
She said “No” but then laughed and added, “Other than when my period came back for a few months last year”.
All health care professional are taught early on that ‘vaginal bleeding in a post-menopausal woman is Cancer of the Uterus until proven otherwise’. This comment by Julie was, therefore, a red flag (no pun intended) prompting further questions, an examination and an ultrasound of her pelvis.
Julie was surprised to see me so concerned, especially since the symptoms had not recurred over many months.
Sure enough, a pelvic ultrasound and tissue sampling confirmed Cancer of the Uterus.
Julie underwent a hysterectomy and radiation therapy. She is now healthy, cancer-free and is expected to stay that way.
After all this was done, Julie sat ME down for a talk. She told me she’d had no idea a ‘short return’ of her period after menopause was a danger signal. Furthermore, she addressed the topic with friends over coffee and discovered that, out of 20 women, NONE of them knew this symptom was abnormal! She admonished me to “Tell women this! Don’t assume we know it!”
From that day on, I have kept Julie’s advice in mind when talking with post-menopausal patients. But recently my wife suggested that I should take this to a wider audience.
So, Julie, this is for you:
If you are a post-menopausal woman and your period ‘comes back’ or you have even one episode of vaginal bleeding, TELL A HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL and insist on having it investigated!
Wishing you all good health and long lives. End image description.]
I'm into a lot and my huge wealth of otps reflect that. If you get me started on my many pairings I'll never quit so beware! But talk to me anyway, I want to hear from you all!
