Night terrors

To be honest, in one of my earlier posts... I mentioned I started having weird side effects from the result of very strong antibiotics to cope with my gallstone issue about a month ago. In order to let the antibiotics work, I have to stop all my other vitamins, iron infusion (I'm anemia), calcium etc till I finished all the 3 weeks plus of meds.

Then towards the 3rd week, I started reading texts wrongly and experiencing some type of mental problems... like waking up with night terrors... having a dread sense of anxiety, like the room is closing on me or I'm going to faint anytime... my heart beating weirdly... so I goggle to see if night terrors is caused by any deficiency? I know my latest blood results show a further drop in all my nutrients, especially calcium, protein, iron, etc.

From goggle, I found this:

Night terrors can be caused by deficiencies in certain vitamins or minerals, such as magnesium, calcium, iron, zinc and Vitamin B6. Deficiencies in these vitamins and minerals can lead to low levels of serotonin in the brain. Serotonin is a chemical that helps regulate sleep and calming responses.

Even just now, I woke up in the middle of the night again... that dreadful feeling of isolation that I am alone... even though my Hubby is sleeping soundly away next to me... but I felt the room is suffocating me... I can't breathe normally as my heart is pounding away... so I tried to do the breathing tactic to calm myself down. Breathe deeply through the nostrils and hold it slowly to exhale through the mouth widely... do this a few times till I felt sleepy by yawning... that way it calm me down a little.

But that anxiety dread of being left alone... I did have nightmares the past week that what if my Hubby passed away... I realised I cannot live if he's no longer with me... I don't think I can cope with the grief of losing another loved one. It made me relive the days after I lost my Dad at 16... being orphaned by 16 was the first deepest pain in my life... I will prepared his bowl of rice as I eat alone at the table, thinking he's there with me. I was left alone in that small room for months until I decided to move out to forget the pain and went to stay in a church family so I don't feel alone.

Until now, I'm scared to be living alone. Well, I do admit the older I get, I don't fancy big parties or noisy socializing that much. I do like the house being quiet and peaceful. But I still want humans around me.

Yet being stuck in this non lift level home for so long, I realised going out to public events the past month is causing me some social anxiety too. I find the bright lights out there too striking and hurt my eyes... or when I join a senior brunch in a small packed restaurant, the noises seems overwhelming as the crowd buzzes away exciting with their catch up. I felt my senses overload, like PTSD mode... everything just triggered my senses. Even when my kind church couple fetched me in their car to go for bible study a week ago, I cannot stand the wife's shampoo smell and just keep coughing in their car. It seems like everything unfamiliar to me triggered something in my weak body system.

These experiences frightened me... what is wrong with me? Am I not able to adjust to the outside world anymore... is my body dying? Why am I reacting so weirdly to normal life out there? Am I still able to commit to my promise to go for Bible school next year in this state of health? All these worries, fears came upon me... and I started to have nightmares... and then night terrors where I woke up in cold sweats... and that sense of dread keep coming upon me. Am I going to die soon?

I also received another bad news 2 days ago... one of my community managers contacted me to do a welfare check every 6 months... she asked how I was and then told me she just came back from her bereavement break of one month, just back to work. Her husband with heart problem has passed away. I still remembered her telling me to go for that ICD heart implant surgery as her husband did it too. But later she told me the device didn't detect his heart attack by thinking it was just a false alarm. So it didn't start the CPR to revive him.

After putting down the phone, I wondered her husband had the device but it didn't work. Was I correct to reject that same surgery in August earlier when my heart surgeon also told me it don't work well for dialysis patient like me so I decided NOT to do the surgery. The heart surgeon was surprised I rejected and said his schedule is full till next year. Then he also reminded me my weak heart can stop any time.

The problem is, I am not ready to go back to THE LORD yet. I still wish to spend more time with my Hubby and fulfilling my Bible school dream to minister to others. But these days, I just felt so full of dread and self doubts at my ability when all these health scares triggered me. I felt no peace as waves of limitations keep hitting me in the face when I tried to get back to the world out there.

As these waves keep hitting me and started me questioning of my own sanity... I longed for peace... and calmness back into my life. Yes, I want to live... maybe I need to really think through if I want to keep fighting against the reality that I'm not that strong or healthy to do what normal people can do.

Yet, it will takes a lot of my self stubbornness to accept my own limitations and letting others judge me as not good enough to be like them again. I'm struggling to make sense of what's going on with me these days. A part of me cry out to THE LORD for healing... yet the other part of me get so disappointed that my body is not healing the way I am wishing for... and will I still be able to follow my heart desires to do the normal things a person can do, like going for Bible school?

Sigh, now my soul longed for peace... I really do not want to be in this state of anxiety all the time.