I will start this post with a little bit of a back story.

I am a very anxious and worrisome person, and it comes naturally I assume, as my mother and father both suffer from anxiety and depression. My mother is on disability due to how debilitating hers got. 

When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of vomiting. I hated it. I am sure most children do, but I was obsessive over it. I would literally get on my knees and pray every night before bed so that I would not get sick. I hated getting sick, but it was honestly relatively rare now that I look back at it. I remember having a stomach virus in 2005 when I was about 12, then I was problem free until around 2011 when I vomited due to indigestion. After that, I was problem free until March of 2020 when I contracted a 12 hour stomach virus. As an adult, I was able to tolerate it really well actually and it was not nearly as bad as I remember when I was a kid. 

Now is where my new story starts... Around 6 weeks ago, my sister in law that was living with us came home from her work at the local day care with a stomach virus. My wife tried to hide it from me and told me that it was something she ate, but I knew that someone else there had the stomach virus earlier in the week so of course, that is right where my mind goes to. It was a Friday night, and I shut down. I stopped eating, and I stopped drinking. I thought that if I did not eat or drink, I could not get sick. I stopped touching my face and started washing my hands like every 20 minutes. She was sick for less than 12 hours and was feeling fine by Saturday morning. Then my little one started throwing up Saturday night, and I panicked all over again. I went 7 whole days without eating or drinking. I was constantly nauseous and just had no appetite. I finally went to the ER on the 7th day because I knew I was so dehydrated that I needed help. 

They admitted me and put me on IV fluids and an Ativan drip for my anxiety, and I was able to leave there 4 hours later, and eat and drink like normal. They prescribed me Lexapro and Ativan at the ER. 10MG of Lexapro daily, 1 MG Ativan as needed three times daily. I started taking the Lexapro and noticed that my appetite was terrible. I could eat in the mornings, but then lunch and dinner were a toss up. I would get anxious and when that happens, I can nauseous and can not force myself to eat because my brain tells me that it is going come right back up, even though I rarely do vomit. 

I took Lexapro for 27 days and those 27 days were almost worse than what I dealt with before. Constant nausea, panic attacks daily, no appetite. I was taking 1-2 Ativan a day just to make it thru the day. I went to my primary Dr. and he put me on Buspirone, and told me to stop taking the Lexapro. I stopped taking it last Monday night, and started taking Buspirone twice a day. I felt great all week last week. Tuesday-Friday was the best I had felt in months. 

Then for some reason, yesterday, I had a panic attack and an anxiety episode, and it happened again today. I do not understand. I know vomiting is one of my triggers but I obviously have triggers other than that. I can be in the middle of working on something or a conversation and it just hits me. I am over living this life. I need advice. I need help. I have an appointment with a mental health doctor this week to express to her how I am feeling but I was hoping to find some advice here.