Before the 2004 Presidential election I saw some online polls where a majority of participants said this would be the most important election yet in their lives. I certainly felt that way. Never before in my life had I cared so passionately as now about the question of who would be the next President of the United States.
It wasn't that I was passionately in favor of one candidate. No: I was vitally, obsessively against one of them. I had strong reasons for this stance: personal and ethical reasons, deeply held beliefs and essential moral convictions.
I know many people on both sides of the election had similar deep feelings about one candidate or the other, whether for or against. Whether you were for or against Kerry, for or against Bush, or didn't care at all, in order for you to understand what I experienced as a result of the election, imagine, if you will, that the result of the election was NOT the result you wanted.
When George W. Bush was declared winner of the election, I was stunned, shocked and outraged.
Now don't get huffy if you love Bush. That's not the point. If I had feared Kerry as passionately as I fear Bush, and Kerry had won, undoubtedly I'd have experienced the same aftermath that I'm about to relate. Strip away the politics and just understand that there was a critical election in my country, that I firmly and passionately believed one of the candidates was unfit for office, and that candidate was declared the winner.
When the election was over and the results were in, I was devastated. My friends and I had developed a false sense of security because we knew hardly anyone who was going to vote for Bush, and our state went solidly for Kerry - we just had not believed Kerry could lose. When Kerry conceded, to say I was angry would be a tremendous understatement. I was furious. I was outraged. I know I was incredibly rude to a couple of Republican friends who gloated in my presence. I was caught up in a maelstrom of obsessive fear of what was going to happen over the next four years. I couldn't let it go. There were too many issues that I cared about on a personal level that I foresaw being damaged, led astray, gutted or stopped dead. Day after day the anger and the fear were there, bubbling under the surface, waiting for the next opportunity to spill over into helpless conversation.
A few days after the election, I started having chest pains and heartburn.
I just knew it wasn't my heart. It wasn't constant pain. It hurt to tie my shoes, to drive, to type for too long ... things that pulled my arms forward. I have fibromyalgia anyway, and stress is the worst thing for it. And then, too, I have a rib in my mid-back, which affects the pyloric valve of the stomach and sets off heartburn when it's out, that has been going out almost daily since the first of March. I found I was now having to stretch-pop it back into place two or three times a day. There was a lot of mid-back pain along with the cramping chest pain and heartburn. I started taking Tagamet routinely. I was getting extremely irritable. I never really got short of breath, but I would start panting when the pain was bad. My pdoc put me on 1.25 mg Zyprexa, cut Wellbutrin down to 150 from 300, and boosted Lorazepam back to 2 mg nightly. It didn't help enough.
In spite of all the obvious signs, I was so upset that it took me ten days to figure out that the chest pain was coming off my back. I had worked myself into such a state of tension over the damned election that I'd apparently done physical harm to myself.
When I realized that, I went to see my chiropractor.
Well. Yes. Thanks to my strong opinions about George Bush, I really was bent out of shape. Not one but THREE ribs were out, and the entire ribcage was twisted to the right and tilted with the left side high. The chest muscles were so contracted that the front ends of the ribs were knocking into my breastbone. No wonder I was in pain!
I had eight chiropractic treatments before the long Thanksgiving weekend, and then finally began to have some pain-free days.
My pdoc recommended an EKG to rule out any cardiac involvement; this came out clean, but the internist said I'd better have a stress EKG just the same because there are so many risk factors for heart disease in my family. That's coming up in a couple of days. I can't begin to say how much I'm looking forward to it. <--- irony.
And that's the story. A person really can get so wound up about something that the tension does mechanical harm to the muscles and skeletal system. I find it very depressing that I've gone my whole life without ever having anxiety attacks before, but now that my body has learned how to have them, it seems to be going, "Oh, boy, another weapon in my arsenal!"
Maybe I should just bury my head in the sand in 2008... you think so?
