And on the third day, she crashed (with apologies to Jesus and ELO)

No ruby slippers, no wonderful wizard; just terror and bright backlighting...

Well, talk about talking too soon. After the general 'I'm alive!' joy of days one and two, I plummeted like a burning, nervy, post-chop Icarus tangled in charred plumage and mixed metaphors. 

Wednesday morning I woke up, and suddenly all was not well. I felt anxious - really, really anxious -  I didn't want the operation to have happened, and I was almost fainting with squeamishness about the wounds on my body and the notion of what had gone on internally when I was not there to see it. It reminded me of my poor childhood cat when he had an abscess on his back - he kept on twisting and turning and shivering his skin along his backbone to try and slide it off and get out from under it somehow. I wanted it all not to have happened, and I wanted to get out from under it. 

I fell into a massive, familiar pile of panic and anxiety, and took a Lorazepam to try to dull the edges, but somehow it combined with the leftover anaesthetic and took me in a horrible way - all wide-awake crazy thoughts and palpitations and trembles.

I couldn't sleep, I couldn't sit still, I couldn't breathe. I couldn't listen to my post-surgery relaxation CD because it made me want to faint, I couldn't take a Lorazepam because I was frightened of making it worse, I couldn't lie still because I was petrified of clots forming in my legs, and I felt absolute, complete, suffocating despair. I tried all the old tricks, and they didn't work. I got disassociation - my whole familiar world started looming and stretching in sinister ways, and I felt trapped in a waking nightmare. It was like a big, fat, supersized Ecstasy comedown (apologies for mature references!) but without the ecstasy (with a small or a big e). All agony, no ecstasy?

I convinced myself I had post-surgery trauma syndrome, that I had clots in my legs and internal bleeding, that I had an infection, that I was going mad, that I would have to have another surgery to fix this one and this would all happen again, and above all - that I was a colossal, self-indulgent hypochondriac who couldn't handle a routine operation like the rest of humanity. My thoughts were just completely and utterly out of control - the horse was galloping away towards the inferno and the rider was just freaking out on the sidelines with wet jodhpurs and a frayed whip. 

Needless to say, it wasn't a vintage few days. It turns out that it's not such an unusual reaction after all - apparently the body's hormonal and endocrine systems go haywire after surgery - and couple that with the general anaesthetic wearing off and some anxiety about recovery and you have a perfect recipe for panic-a-go-go. I just wish I knew that beforehand! 

It, however, remind me of a couple of panic-related things that are worth repeating:

1. Nothing REALLY works in a panic the way you want it to - because the body is specifically designed to create terror that is virtually impossible to override.  The whole point is that you're not meant to easily cognitively disassemble it - you're meant to fucking RUN. So I was reminded, at a cost, that the best thing to do is to grab on to something and hold on, and wait it out. To weather the storm and try desperately to hear the tiny, squeaky voice a mile off that stutters 'this will pass' in the face of the terrifying succubus screaming 'IT WILL NOT' in front of your face.

2. It does pass. I felt like I was in a horror film last week, and I'm calmly typing this now after a relatively happy couple of days. Yes, I'm still a bit quivery, but that always happens for a while after a storm of panic - I know I just have to wait it out until it completely passes again.

3. Anxiety and panic don't make you weak. This one is thanks to my stepmother, who came downstairs and wrapped me in a tight hug when she found me sobbing uncontrollably on my own, and told me about her experiences with panic and anxiety (she's also hard as fucking nails, and you would never, ever characterise her as weak or even approaching it) and shook me back to reality and self-respect. Everyone is flawed. Everyone has their vulnerable moments. But that's not what people remember of them, and that's not what they should remember of themselves. 

So. That's it. I think I've earned a bit of a relax at long last, so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch Ingrid Bergman give weird, face bruising non-kiss kisses to Cary Grant - I've got a week's worth of recovery DVDs to catch up on...

Nope, that's still not it - we can clearly see your lips aren't touching, guys...

Surgical stockings and ruby slippers...

This outfit only needs some bottle green  surgical stockings to be complete...

Praise the lord or Buddha whatever hippy sprite you like (whatever gets you through the night), but it's over! Operation operation has taken place, and I am at home recuperating - languishing on my day bed like a Victorian lady with a bad case of TB (and sloth).

First of all - everything went really well, and I'm okay, so if you just want the headline news and not the garbled in-depth editorial, you have permission to stop reading NOW.

For those who are a glutton for punishment, stay tuned for Casualty - Viv style.

All went pretty well. I got wheeled into the pre-theatre room, and they had Jeremy Kyle up on TV, and his guests were screaming and hollering about aborted babies or something, so the woman kindly changed the channel and sat back down. I wasn't sure whether to say anything, but I was feeling a bit nervous and panicky about the immediate future, so I tentatively said 'uh, I think this one's actually a holocaust documentary?' as indeed the screen was full of sepia images of bunkbeds and corpse piles. She giggled and flipped it over to Frasier. Frasier's MILDLY amusing escapades did not entirely erase the DEATH DEATH DEATH images flashing across my mind for a few minutes.

Then I was wheeled into the Room of Doom; not what it said on the sign, but should be re-named, because it just felt like an ante-chamber of a torture clinic (do they do torture in clinics? Maybe if you go private...) or something - all tubes and breathing machines and metal trays of syringes in a row. Cocky anaesthetist and hard-nosed nurse are flirting over the top of my wobbly attempts at light-hearted conversation, and cocky anaesthetist suddenly says 'I've been having twinges in my gallbladder too, thought I had to have it out, but I don't. 'Oh' I said, 'if you did, would you have it done by surgeon x (my surgeon) and he said 'oh, no, I would never get it done by a colleague - if something went wrong he would never forgive himself, and besides, I know where he lives (cocky laugh)!' WHAAAAT?! IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING?! He would never forgive himself - so he WOULD forgive himself if he ballsed it up on a stranger, i.e. me,  but on you, he wouldn't?

And why the hell are you even putting my surgeon's name in the same sentence as 'getting it wrong' when I am literally being wheeled in to have him rifle through my insides with sharp knives? WTF? Just as these thoughts were racing through my mind and I was starting to feel like maybe I could just hop off the trolley and catch a bus home, I completely lost consciousness (he obviously went 'shit, that wasn't very reassuring, was it? Quick, force the anaesthetic in now, go, go...')

Anyway, next thing I know, I'm shivering and shaking like I'm in a bucket of ice, I have no idea what's going on, and I have a mask over my face that I keep on trying to rip off. They're soothingly trying to force the mask back on because my temperature is low and I need oxygen, but to my ragingly confused mind I am just being smothered by a bunch of people I can't really see. I'm crying that I'm cold, and they've got loads of hot fans underneath my covers on the trolley, and I'm so upset about what is happening that I ask one of the nurses who I can't really see to hold my hand. She holds my hand under the covers and I think I calm down a bit. God knows how long that went on, but eventually I get wheeled back to my room, and I can see my boyfriend there, but only just, because it feels like I'm just being drowned in unconsciousness - I swim up for a second and then get pinned back down again, against my will. That carried on for the rest of the day, basically. I guess we can safely say now that I'm not a big fan AT ALL of the old general anaesthetic, and will happily leave it a good long while before doing that again.

So apparently it all went well - the evil little stone-choking-fat-pinching bastard is out and languishing in medical waste somewhere, and I can move on with my life.

I've got some VERY fetching anti-embolism stockings on as we speak, and some actual ruby slippers on the ends of my tootsies for some Technicolour Garland glamour too. You can just imagine, what with the stockings, the infrequent bathing, the needing to be helped up to sitting position and the special surgical dressings for my wounds - my boyfriend is just out of his mind with frenzied desire and a urge to pledge his life to me for ever.

'Cocky Anaesthetist  just said WHAT ???!'

Operation Fawkes (aka Operation Operation)

''Ooooo-eee! Honey, you've got yourself a bad case of the SURGEON-GONNA-CUT-ME-UP-WILLIES - your anxiety temperature is th-rough the roof!'

Okay, I know my gallbladder has completely hijacked this blog, and I promise I will only write around two more organ-related posts. I'm sick to the back teeth of hearing about the bastard thing - so you guys must be begging for the scalpels too.

Long story short: I'm going nuclear - going private, because I can't live like this any more, and all my relatives are going to all pitch in with a bit of cash to make this happen. Should I put up a JustGiving page at work? I get them ALL the time (lots of athletic, overachieving, worthy colleagues, puke) so why not put together my own...? 'Hi All. Yep, you got it, it's another request for a needy cause, sort of. Just give me your card details and I'll post pics of my 'marathon' later...'

So will be having operation on the 5th of November. I am now, predictably, terrified, and my anxiety bugaboos (isn't that a type of pram? I've definitely got the wrong word there) have flown in to roost beside me.

'Remember, remember, the 5th of November' just sounds bloody terrifying now - is it an omen?! Am going to go the way of  Mr Fawkes, but minus the plucky heroism and fireworks? Am I going to wake up from the operation and not know where I am and have the worst panic attack ever and vomit into my hospital gowned lap? 

But it can't come soon enough really. Today I had an attack in the middle of preparing a VIP for an event - I went all 'show must go on' and gritted my teeth, smiled, chatted and managed to get them out on the stage before hobbling upstairs and collapsing underneath my desk. I stripped down to my singlet, popped some codeine, writhed there with my headphones on for a while (had to keep tabs on the event, what a control freak), covered in sweat from head to toe, and after 3/4 of an hour it completely passed and I went back down, said I'd been watching from the booth and no-one was the wiser.  But enough! Lady Macbeth of the Gallbladder says 'out, damn sac'!!

On the anxiety front, I've been finding it difficult to breathe, randomly, here and there. I REALLY hate that one. Just sitting there quietly and then suddenly, wheeze, wheeze, 'is my chest tight? Why can't I breathe? Shit'. I know it's just anxiety, and if I ignore it, it goes, but it's so bloody unsettling.

Onwards and upwards, though, hey?! No more gallbladder talk soon - promise! Only one more update about the operation (and maybe one afterwards, what the hell) and then back on track!

Hope all of you guys are fit and well and anxiety-free (ha - are we ever?!). And if you're not - screw it - grit your teeth, get through it, wait for time to pass, and better things will transpire for all of us soon. I'm a faithless, hippie-raised heathen but I'm trying on a bit of hope and faith for size! And weirdly, it kind of works! 

V x 

Don't pretend to be cute. You're going down, bitch.

Crying in hospital corridors (good potential band name?) ...

.

Nothing has changed in British hospitals since this picture was taken, except that the buildings have decayed and the instruments have grown rusty. And I don't think you get nuns now, more's the pity.

I had my appointment with the surgeon today. 

Managed to hyperventilate as soon as I started wandering through the hot, claustrophobic corridors  - American and Australian (hell, anything but British) readers, I know you're picturing a clean, bright, modern hospital right now, but please know that British hospitals are still using equipment from the 1930's, in buildings from the 1800's, and that that is truly terrifying. 

Burst into tears as soon as I got into the waiting room as it was full of hundreds of geriatric people coughing their wet lungs out. Was sweating so profusely I had to rip off all my layers, so was sitting there crying, practically naked in front of 100 staring old person eyes. I googled ' cute kittens' and flicked through those whilst I cried and waited and chastised myself for being a ridiculous wuss.

Half an hour later I see the surgeon, who is twelve. I just knew I would get a bloody junior doctor. No joke, he then launches into his special nightmarish bedtime story about EVERY SINGLE complication that has EVER occurred to people who don't get their gallbladder out. Terrifying things. Things even Google didn't tell me. He then told me EVERY SINGLE horrific complication that could occur with the surgery. At one point, when he was mentioning perforated somethings, drainage tubes, pus explosions, deranged sphincters (really) and mistakenly cut livers - tears just started pouring from my eyes (as in, I was silently crying). He got me some tissues, said nothing and proceeded with his list - nothing was going to deter him from the list.

I then get sent to the other side of the hospital for blood tests. Get to the desk and there's no-one there. Finally someone comes and points to a handmade sign that says 'No more blood tests'. No more blood tests? When I explain that a surgeon has sent me to get urgent tests, another harassed nurse comes up and starts shouting at nobody in particular 'Look at all these people! We just can't do it! There's too many people! Enough! We're closed! It's impossible!' and the guy nods and says 'nope, we're too busy'.  No sorries, and that's it.

So I go back to the 'digestive diseases' ugh, department, and tell them that apparently the blood test department is shut down for the day. So a very camp nurse takes me into a storage closet (I'm not joking), tells me he hasn't had a day off in three weeks, and does it there and then. The 'room' was so small we had to put together a military strategy for both of us to get out.

Okay, I don't want to be the standard NHS moaner, and apologies to all those of you who've had good experiences (and who will be affronted by bad language), but WHAT. THE. FUCK?! Is this country trying to kill its inhabitants so as to save money on welfare? Is there a grand genocidal, money-saving scheme going on that I don't know anything about?  

I have to wait FOUR MONTHS for the surgery. 

And I feel so ashamed  and furious with myself for having an anxiety attack (didn't quite reach the level that it needs to be to be classified a bowel-shuddering panic attack in my book) simply from walking through a hospital. How am I going to stay in it long enough to have surgery?! I feel like I've let myself down. I feel like I'm not a properly functioning adult - like I'm too sensitive and soft to cope with the harsh realities of the world. I feel different, and not in a good way.  

But I also know that empathy and sensitivity are what make me ME. I think deeply about people's experiences (too much maybe) and care about them - even if I don't know them - and most people don't. Maybe that makes me cry when I see sick people, and freak out when I'm in hospitals, but I'd rather be that than oblivious to suffering. 

And crying doesn't make you weak - everyone over the age of 13 knows that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I might go off and do it some more.*

*NB. Since writing this, some beautiful, charitable genius commented below and snapped me back to reality - so no more anxious self-pity and self-blame going on any more! I'll let this post stand as a perfect example of how easy it is for us GAD sufferers (and really anyone who sets far too high standards for themselves) to blame ourselves unnecessarily. Apparently, sometimes freaking out is normal and justifiable - particularly when surrounded by dying people! That does actually make sense, come to think of it. Thank god for you guys - you are all absolutely AWESOME and amazing and fantastic and I love that we almost have a bit of a community going here. Bring your nervous friends!  V x

This is me, hugging all of you (a little bit too tightly and needily). Awww.  <3

Boils and burps and blues, oh my!

'No, I can't come out from behind the couch. No, I can't tell you why, because nice girls don't tell tales about their  hypothetical boils that aren't covered by their hypothetical stockings on their hypothetical legs'

Things I gleaned from the universe this week:

• I should stick to my day job. I get BBC job alerts (I love my job, but just in case), and one of them was 'Researcher on Silent Witness'. This actually made me laugh out loud. Can you think of a job that comes less recommended for an anxious person? 'Hmmm, let me just see how I can make this grisly murder look more convincing and true to life - *Googles real life murder details. Faints and never leaves the house again*.

• I should never again swallow peppermint oil capsules that are not covered in enteric coating. Basically they just explode halfway down your unsuspecting oesophagus, and create a burning lining of peppermint everywhere in your digestive system. Painful peppermint burps and blistering heartburn ensue - I feel like I've rinsed my intestines with industrial-strength mouthwash. And apparently now (I Googled my symptoms even though my family has tried to ban me from consulting Dr Google) I get to look forward to 'anal itching and burning' when said peppermint finally vacates my system. Fabulous.

• It's hard to feel glamorous when you have managed to harbour a BOIL on your leg (in the middle ages I believe they were referred to as carbuncles, arg) - in all likelihood exacerbated by a shamefully lax shaving regime. As I applied my Chanel lipstick and pouted in the mirror, I realised I was painting a very thin and insufficient veneer of artificial glamour over an angry body full of weird, stifled gallstone sludge and carbuncle pus (sorry chaps). Sexy!

• Having a doctor as your upstairs neighbour is a mixed blessing. On the plus-side, I find it ridiculously comforting hearing him padding around upstairs - essentially I know I can bang on his door and get an emergency tracheostomy STAT should I ever need one. On the downside, his ghoulish medical mailings are in the communal post area. 'Nasal-gastric tube errors: avoiding the risks' screams out from the latest issue's cover, with grainy black and white pictures of perforated lungs underneath. Shudder.

• Tomorrow is another day. The hardest thing to cope with at the moment (ironically) is my endless fretting about how I will cope with this for a possible five months until the operation (worst-case scenario of course - this is me we're talking about). But the fact is, I AM coping. I AM getting to the end of each wretched, crappy day, so all I need to do is carry on with what I'm doing, and inevitably the days will snowball and roll into weeks, which will turn into months, and I'll arrive at my promised surgical land of manna and scalpels in the end. *  

* Check me out, being all Buddhist and accepting. This is a blatant lie, of course - I hope you spotted it. Inside (and outside, to be honest) I am screaming 'HOW THE BLOODY BEJESUS AM I GOING TO COPE WITH THIS FOR MONTHS ON END???!!!!' but I'm trying on my beatific monk's robe for size. Fake it 'til you make it, kids!!!        

I tell you what, they'll keep you 'aglow' all right...

                                                                             

Half-full?! There IS no bloody glass!

'And THIS ONE'S CLEAN TOO?! Is there no end to the gifts and blessings God will bestow upon me?!'

ARGH, HELP - I CAN'T DO POSITIVE THINKING!

I realise this statement is ironic in itself. I can sustain the bright, sunshine-y thing for about half an hour, or during the day, but by the time I get home from work, I'm back in the land where everything is awful, where nothing will ever be right again, and where I am a dysfunctional, horrible poison wafting around the house and emptying vitriol over my boyfriend. 

If something is wrong, I just find it really hard to believe that everything isn't 100% terrible and an utter catastrophe. I re-tread this miserable little neural path over and over and over again, and I despair of anything ever changing it (which itself is completely catastrophic and further grist to my specially patented self-pity mill). I get myself tangled into a net of woe and anger and fury about the situation, and about my inability to change it, and about how horrendous the whole mess is, and end up so beyond exhausted I can't even comprehend what exhausted means.

I have spent at least half an hour sobbing every day since about two months ago. I can never believe it when I read those twenty question interviews in the Guardian and they ask the person 'when was the last time you cried?' And they say 'oh, ten years ago when I watched Free Willy' or something. I would be like 'oh, five minutes ago in the taxi on the way to the interview, and before that, ten hours ago in the shower, and before that five hours ago when eating my dinner' etc etc etc ad nauseam. Will I ever get to the point where I can't remember the last time I cried? Can you get repetitive tear duct syndrome (RTDS) or early-onset blindness from too much YSL mascara in the retinas?

I've been googling positive thinking, and all I can find are these blogs with people who've got fibromyalgia and cancer and two amputated limbs and lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and a heart condition and a drug addiction and an abusive childhood - and they're all UNBELIEVABLY F*&KING POSITIVE! Which makes me think I'm a horrible, ungrateful, twisted little self-pitier with a black steam of smoke for a heart and Eeyore for a God.

(You can tell I'm desperate by the following sentence, which actually hurts me to type out) Do any of you have any mantras or sayings or prayers or anything that keep you upbeat and out of the asylum? I'm running through depressive treacle here and could do with your advice.

So far, the only one that has come naturally to me, was when I was curled up in the foetal position in the corner of my open-plan office, being watched by my colleagues, and crying with gallstone pain this Tuesday. It was 'This will soon be over and I'll be watching the Great British Bake-off with my boyfriend this evening, this will soon be over and I'll be watching the Great British Bake-off with my boyfriend this evening'

Which, I think you'll agree, needs some work.

'THE TOAST IS BURNED! My life as I know it is over. I might as well throw myself into the bin with it now and wait for the dustmen of doom to take me to the scrapheap of suffering'

It's my self-pity party and I'll cry if I want to...

This is actually a photograph of me, taken only yesterday

Hi guys. I'm throwing a self-pity party today and you're all invited (apart from my boyfriend, who has been attending the pre-party for the last few weeks and needs to go have his own one now)

Here are the facts:

1. My vertigo/labyrinthitis symptoms have come back. Having labyrinthitis was the thing that triggered all my panics in the first place, so I'm really freaking out. It's been three weeks now, and it's not going away.

2. I've now completely tapered down off all my anti-depressant (still on Lyrica, but needed to rekindle my libido which was brutally exterminated by the Citalopram soldiers). Forum on the web suggests the vertigo is a symptom of coming off the SSRIs, so maybe it's that. Lots of frantic Googling later, and I still have no idea if it is or not.

3. I'm meant to be going on holiday with my boyfriend to NY, LA then Mexico in two days time (the wedding of one of my best friends in the world), and it looks like I'm too dizzy and sick to go. It took 6 months of 'will I, won't I' , some weird hypnosis, and a handbag full of benzodiazepines to be comfortable enough with even TRYING a long-distance flight again, but when I finally did, I felt brave and was looking forward to it. Now I can't go and I feel utterly bereft.

4. I booked non-refundable flights

5. I had an ultrasound today to see what was causing my chronic indigestion, and it turns out I have gallstones. And I need to get my gallbladder cut out of my body. With a scalpel. And rummaging in my insides. And general anaesthetic. 

There are no words to describe how much this freaks me out. Having lived in Britain for almost ten years now, I said 'oh, really? Well, thanks, thanks so much, yes, wonderful, great, okay then - thanks again' to be polite, and than ran outside and cried and had to sit down outside the hospital so I didn't faint. And then I started worrying poor expectant mothers would freak out at the sight of me thinking I had lost my baby or something, so I had to move myself along. 

6. I have cried every single day for the last 3 weeks. This may be down to coming off my pills, which may mean I need to be on them FOREVER and will become a female eunuch and lose my boyfriend and have to live somewhere as a panicked, atheist nun.

7. I'm scared my stones are going to explode.

8. I'm scared my boyfriend is going to run away with a beautiful, healthy Mexican lady who never panics and doesn't have gall-related-belching.

9. I'm scared and sad about being scared and sad and I'm driving myself and my poor boyfriend CRAZY. I'm trying to find it funny, but sometimes it's just not. Now I'm crying again. I'm like a strange, leaky, worried, burping, dizzy, bilious beast. 

Okay, some of those last ones weren't facts.*

Vx

* This is what CBT teaches you, to be able to distinguish between facts and thoughts. Pah. Go away sanctimonious CBT - I'm having a pity-party, and you're not invited.

'I really loved my gallbladder. It was my favourite innard'

So, you're having the worst day of your life...?

I just thought I'd put together some emergency self-care steps for those days/nights when you really have been wrestling with the hideous dark panic demons, and you feel so anxious and bewildered you could chuck yourself under a truck. You can't do anything, you can't leave your house, you're having panic after panic, and you don't feel capable of even the tiniest thing. You're terrified, sleepless, and at your wit's end.

These are basic, emergency care steps that will help you back on the road to normality (and most of them were told me by my therapist when I was in crisis, so have official psych sanction).

1. If you have one, take a tranquiliser. Just take one now. Don't overthink it, just do it. This is an extreme and horrendous day - and they are specifically made for occasions like this. They will give you a small window of peace so you can collect yourself a bit, and give you a few hours away from fear, which will break the vicious cycle of fear-panic-more fear-more panic etc etc. You probably haven't slept very well, and these will give you space to do that as well (which you desperately need).

2. Drink a huge glass of water before you do anything else. You've probably been crying (which apparently dehydrates you more than you think), and dehydration makes anxiety (and everything) a lot worse.

3. Have a warm shower, rub yourself down with some nice lavender moisturiser, and get into some fresh, clean, soft cotton clothes (pyjamas etc). These tiny things you would never normally notice can mean so much when you're at rock bottom. Sometimes the pleasure of clean skin and clothes is all you're going to get in a day.

4. If you can't eat, try and drink a Complan (Ensure) or a smoothie. Just get even half of it down. The body produces adrenalin when your blood sugar drops below a certain level, so getting anything down will make you feel so much less jittery.

5. (This one's courtesy of my Dad) Do something small that gives you a sense of control and mastery. It can be absolutely tiny - doing the crossword methodically is what I did when I was beside myself with terror. It's something to do, it's something you know you can do, but it's manageable.

6. If you're on your own, call someone - family or a good friend. If you're with someone, explain what's happening - don't be ashamed - and get yourself a big-ass hug.

7.  Do whatever you need to make you feel good, and don't censor yourself. Watch gentle comedies if you can sit still. Hug your favourite soft toy (and don't feel stupid about it). Read your favourite kids' book. Call your mum. Leave the light on if you're scared and you need to. Don't judge yourself for regressing a bit - you're at rock bottom and you need these things, but you won't always.

8. If you're at this stage, go for a little walk. Round the block is fine, to get a magazine from the newsagents is fine. Don't worry, you'll be travelling to amazing places soon, but for today, a walk round the block is all you can manage, and it's enough for now. If you can't - DON'T WORRY. You're not going to end up housebound - you are just looking after yourself indoors for a couple of days, and that is OKAY.

9. Know that THIS WILL PASS. I know exactly what this feels like, I've been there, but I also know that I'm not there now, and it passed. You have to hold on, you have to be patient, you have to grit your teeth and BEAR IT, just like you would have to bear some sort of physical pain.

10. Check out the anxiety heroes here, and remember how many brilliant, beautiful, brave people have suffered with anxiety and depression, and remember that you are not alone. You're amazing and courageous for dealing with this, and you will come out the other side stronger. YOU CAN DO IT!

What is it about the dreaded sickness?

'Is that a raven? An OMEN OF MY IMPENDING DEATH? Oh my God...'

I hate to get sick. I fear getting sick. And I fear being sick. And I'm really not sure why.

I mean, I know it's unpleasant and all that, and noone WANTS to be sick, but I start to get really depressed and twitchy if I feel a virus or something coming on, and if, godforbid, it develops into something proper, I get hit with a massive wave of anxiety that sits on the sickness' shoulder like a nasty vulture.

If I have a bogstandard cold, a little nervous voice inside me says 'your nose is so blocked up that if your mouth were to somehow get smothered, then you would die'. Which is patently absurd, but the little voice is persistent.

Or if I'm about to be sick, the evil bugger comes back again and says 'what if you try to breathe and can't, and end up choking on your own vomit? Then you'll diiiiie.' And 98% of me knows it's ridiculous, but the 2% is weak and confused and starts to freak out.

All of my major panic breakdowns have happened when I've been ill. I've either been in pain, or had a gastritis, or had a bad flu or something. And my anxiety has built and built upon the illness and exploded all over the shop in a spleurgh of panic and freakout. There's something in it - there's a connection - but I don't know what it is. I want to pay some super-duper therapist a huge lump sum to just wash out my brain and investigate all the dark corners, and flush out whatever it is that's lurking there.

And do you know what? There's nothing I would hate more, than to be the kind of person who freaks out about getting ill. Like Melman from Madagascar crossed with the sickly bitter boy from The Secret Garden who used to screech about the spores. Noone likes that person, and that person doesn't like themselves. I want to be the person who laughs and says 'Oh that? Pah, just a smattering of smallpox. No worries at all. Few days of antibiotics and I'll be right as rain. And in the meantime I'll watch a ton of Columbo!'

'I'm allergic to vitamin D and spores and breeze and human touch and my Daddy doesn't love me but the love of a young girl and a special garden will liberate us all (and my legs will start to work again, phew)...'

Well, to be accurate, I am the kind of person who SAYS that, but it's not remotely what I'm thinking. What I'm actually thinking is 'Oh my God, I'm getting sick. I hate getting sick. What's wrong with me? Is it CANCER? Is it chronic fatigue? Will I have to be fed on a drip for the rest of my life? Will my boyfriend have to be my carer? Will I be able to go to that party? Will it ruin my holiday? Can I take these pills with these pills or will I do a Heath Ledger? Will it make my panic attacks come back? Will I have to take time off work? Will they hate me and not believe me? PLEASE GOD don't let me get sick' etc etc etc etc 

Anyone else? Tumbleweed...

Replaces misplaced organs?