The Most Wonderful Time...

I haven't written any updates for a while because there hasn't been much to report. I've been doing well, although there have been some minor issues at times. I'm still not able to sleep without trazodone, (tried it one night and gave up at 1:00 AM after being wide awake the whole time.) but that is easily remedied by continuing to take it every night.

We had a great Christmas, although I would have preferred a bit more sleep. I woke up at 6AM (right when the trazodone wore off) and was unable to fall back asleep. That actually turned out to be a good thing, as I was able to set up photography & video equipment, set the table and dig out the presents so everything was ready to go. Plus I had some much coveted alone time with some French press coffee and Google Reader. The kids were still asleep at 8:45 AM, so I took my guitar into their room and loudly sang 'Joy to the World' until they got up. We had Belgian waffles & sausage for breakfast along with some more coffee.

The kids got all sorts of space-taking items, so it was fortuitous that we spent Christmas Eve cleaning their bedroom & re-discovering the floor. This is the only year in the last 15 or so that I haven't led Christmas Eve services at church, and it was an amazing difference. Instead of being strung out and not wanting to be around people on Christmas, I was able to really enjoy the day and even cleaned the gift aftermath & vacuumed! Usually I'm in a sort of zombie state on Christmas.

By early evening I was starting to slow down a bit, and I was craving good coffee again, so I had another cup of French press brew. (You see where this is going, right?) Unfortunately between the time I decided to have some and the time I actually got around to making it, another hour had elapsed, filled with "Dad, can you open this?" "Dad, this doesn't work!" "Dad...", etc. I had my coffee around 5PM, which is a bad idea on any day, but it was Christmas and my mom wasn't there to tell me no.

By the time we got the kids into bed, Leigha wasn't feeling well and went to bed as well. (Did I mention she's pregnant? Well she is, and I did it on purpose.) I was anxious to start going through the pictures from the day, and got started looking through them. My stomach had not been feeling very well, but I thought it was too much Christmas cookies and that sort of thing. As I started processing images, my stomach suddenly took a turn for the worse and for a moment I thought I might throw up. Then I realized that this was a familiar (albeit unwelcome) feeling and that I was having a panic attack. It was severe enough that my first thought was to run and get some Xanax, but then I remembered to exercise & try to make it pass. I did some aerobic exercise until I became dangerously dizzy, then laid down and did breathing exercises to calm down. It did help, but not enough.

I told my wife I was having a panic attack and she asked "Why?". I hadn't thought about the reason, but as soon as she asked I realized that it was almost certainly from overdoing caffeinated coffee. I do have caffeinated coffee once in a while and do fine, but three sessions of strong coffee was really stupid. It's hard to adjust to the fact that I'm not like I used to be. In the past I could consume a lot of caffeine and be okay, but now my body can only handle small amounts. I realize that this is in fact better for me, but it's still difficult to get used to. I ended up taking half a Xanax later on because I wasn't able to calm down enough. Anyhow, I was able to finish processing most of the Christmas pictures and then slept like a rock.

Lesson learned.