Five more days
I couldn't find a mood icon for "petrified beyond belief." I wonder what my little dino friend would look like under that icon. You'd probably see his whole body, so you could see him shitting his pants...and he'd probably be white. With all the fear I'm experiencing right now, it's enough to fade the green from anybody, dino included.
Another sleepless night last nite and my mind is racing today. I had an anxiety attack at 3 a.m., and a mini-nervous breakdown over the phone with my mother. I saw R today and managed to dance around the paralyzing fear that has gripped all of reality for me over the last week. I don't know what's wrong with me! What I do know is that this fear of having my wisdom teeth extracted is consuming me day and night. I can't study for my boards during the day, I can't even read. I try to do little, meaningful things throughout the day so that I can say that I've accomplished something, but I can't even perform my basic ADLs because my mind wanders and then tortures me. Yesterday, I busied myself for the morning with an oil change and a nice trip to Westfarms, but struggled through the rest of the afternoon aimlessly channel surfing, cleaning my room, listening to music, and attempting to read. The reading fell through and I found myself pacing the house before I went to work. At night, I toss and turn and end up surfing the web for surgical advice and horror stories, intent on hearing the worst of the worst to be as prepared as I possibly can be. I think that what really scares me the most is the unknown. But of course, in this very next sentence I will tell you that I couldn't be more sure that there's a heaven and a hell. So maybe, I should correct myself and say that what really terrifies me is the power of the human mind. We have the ability to crack codes, discover new things, rationalize, and even create things that, in reality, do not exist. The mind is such a powerful, complex organ that we can make ourselves sick, give ourselves ulcers, and even create a reality in which the fictional people we interact with are tangible (think "A Beautiful Mind"). I haven't driven myself crazy (yet), but my mind is creating a situation that I seriously cannot physically deal with. Despite the positive advice and statistics I have heard, it's the negative that erases all existence of the positive. We thrive on gossip, drama, and tests of human emotion. So, of course when I do my google searches, the results are going to read: "Man dies in chair while undergoing dental procedure;" "Dentist rapes woman while under;" "Face paralyzed permanently resulting from procedure." Blah blah blah. It even highlights the negative right from the start: "Wisdom teeth are...risks involved include..." I have yet to see the headline: "Wisdom tooth removal: Quick and beneficial" (because that is what I've also heard).
Close your eyes and think about looking over your shoulder from this computer screen and seeing a masked stranger standing in back of you with a gun pointing at your head. At the hospital, gunshot victims often talked about "time standing still" during the seconds before they were shot. Others said their hearts stopped beating, they couldn't speak, their bodies were paralyzed, or they were incontinent: all symptoms of fear. If you were able to successfully visualize this situation in your mind, you may not want to sleep alone tonite, but the fear that you felt for that split second is how I am feeling towards this procedure. This can't be normal...
I think the real feat here is not the procedure itself (though being in the medical field has greatly tested my faith in the human ability to practice medicine), as so much it is getting over myself. How do I do this?
I think I need an Ativan...