MandySlade
13-02-10, 17:56
I'd been doing good with my anxiety lately. Probably the best I've been in years, definitely way better than I was last summer when I finally sought out CBT.
That was up until Tuesday. I was involved in a major car accident and had to go to the ER. Chest pain, neck pain, arm pain, and a big nasty seat belt wound. Airbag deployed as well. They took Xrays of my chest and neck and sent me home with the diagnoses of:
Cervical neck strain
Chest contusions (bruising of the chest wall)
Chest wall pain
The second day I felt like total crap. Like a horse had run me over 6 times. I could barely move around without wanting to cry. Right arm was pretty much useless, moving my neck was slow going, bad chest pain, etc.
The third day was about the same as the second.
The fourth day (yesterday) I started to feel a lot better in the arm and neck areas, more movement.
Today (the fifth day) I have more movement in these areas that yesterday and generally less pain. the seatbelt mark is healing.. although I worry I'll have a scar.
So why the panic?
My chest feels pretty much the same as it has since the day after the accident. I can't sneeze/cough/LAUGH/hiccup etc without pain. I can't sit up real straight without it hurting either, or do anything that flexes my chest area. You know that feeling you get when you've been sick with a cough for a week or two? That point where your chest just starts to hurt every time you cough? It feels like that only 10Xs worse.
So of course I'm worried they "missed something" with the Xrays.. or I have a blood clot.. or something else severely wrong. My breathing *knock on wood* is fine.. it just hurts if I take a really deep or really fast breath or do any of the things I mentioned before (laughing is the one that frustrated me most... cruel irony).
So, I had been really good about googling and I only googled the second day for 30 seconds and then stopped myself because of the horror stories. Well today I F'd up again and started googling about chest wall bruising/rib bruising/chest wall pain and I found all these horror stories about ERs missing things and freaky complications and how a lot of people wind up getting PNEUMONIA from it. So, I'm phobic of that too now. I stopped googling..but it's getting hard. I feel like this is the brink of a bad anxiety freak-out and I'm trying to stop it. I just felt like my chest would feel better today.. I went to bad last night thinking "surely tomorrow it will let up some". So when I woke up and it hadn't, the panic started creeping in.
:(
That was up until Tuesday. I was involved in a major car accident and had to go to the ER. Chest pain, neck pain, arm pain, and a big nasty seat belt wound. Airbag deployed as well. They took Xrays of my chest and neck and sent me home with the diagnoses of:
Cervical neck strain
Chest contusions (bruising of the chest wall)
Chest wall pain
The second day I felt like total crap. Like a horse had run me over 6 times. I could barely move around without wanting to cry. Right arm was pretty much useless, moving my neck was slow going, bad chest pain, etc.
The third day was about the same as the second.
The fourth day (yesterday) I started to feel a lot better in the arm and neck areas, more movement.
Today (the fifth day) I have more movement in these areas that yesterday and generally less pain. the seatbelt mark is healing.. although I worry I'll have a scar.
So why the panic?
My chest feels pretty much the same as it has since the day after the accident. I can't sneeze/cough/LAUGH/hiccup etc without pain. I can't sit up real straight without it hurting either, or do anything that flexes my chest area. You know that feeling you get when you've been sick with a cough for a week or two? That point where your chest just starts to hurt every time you cough? It feels like that only 10Xs worse.
So of course I'm worried they "missed something" with the Xrays.. or I have a blood clot.. or something else severely wrong. My breathing *knock on wood* is fine.. it just hurts if I take a really deep or really fast breath or do any of the things I mentioned before (laughing is the one that frustrated me most... cruel irony).
So, I had been really good about googling and I only googled the second day for 30 seconds and then stopped myself because of the horror stories. Well today I F'd up again and started googling about chest wall bruising/rib bruising/chest wall pain and I found all these horror stories about ERs missing things and freaky complications and how a lot of people wind up getting PNEUMONIA from it. So, I'm phobic of that too now. I stopped googling..but it's getting hard. I feel like this is the brink of a bad anxiety freak-out and I'm trying to stop it. I just felt like my chest would feel better today.. I went to bad last night thinking "surely tomorrow it will let up some". So when I woke up and it hadn't, the panic started creeping in.
:(