Why Do I Feel So Spaced Out?

Wow… what a night…

Yesterday afternoon, I started really feeling worn out for no good reason. It’s not the first time. In fact, it’s almost right at a decade since that first time.

The first time was equally scary. I had a week of just feeling tired and like every step was dragging. Not like I ran a marathon and was tired, but I was just tired as if I had done one. It seemed so mysterious that it set the mental wheels to turning and I made a doctor’s appointment. I had all sorts of tests. Tests to check my heart and lungs, blood-work, etc. In the end, the answer was mundane enough. It had been a very rainy couple of months and it turned out even though I wasn’t sneezing and wheezing or anything like that, I was having a reaction to all the mold and mildew that permeated the air. Yay, another allergy to add to the list! The doctor advised Claritin which I already used when my pollen allergies flared up and sure enough, that did the trick.

I’ve had inklings of that feeling again in the years since and every time I connected the dots, I would start Claritin and it would knock it out.

Well, we’ve had a very rainy few months here. Considering the drought conditions of the past several years, no complaints from this corner, but it has been very damp. So when I started feeling worn out yesterday I made the mental connection between how I felt and the weather and popped a Claritin.

That’s never been an instant cure, but it has always worked eventually. Later last night, I was beginning to think seriously that I had misjudged the situation. In addition to feeling exhausted, I was now feeling what I can only describe as spaced out or disconnected. I heard everything around me, but it felt like it was taking place at a distance. What if it wasn’t the weather? What if something else was going on? Visions of all sorts of ailments begin to dance in the old noggin. At first I just tried to write it off to paranoia, and I went back and forth on it, but I was not feeling a bit better and I couldn’t help wondering if the mental fog was a symptom of something worse.

Sigh… Cut forward an hour or two and I finally ended up at the hospital. One part of me wanted to wait until I could just see a doctor during daylight hours. The other side wasn’t convinced that was wise. I had worked myself up into quite a lather by the time I followed the voice that suggested waiting might not be such a great idea.

I’ll save the litany of tests and checks they ran, but it appears that I am congested (which is probably the mold and mildew problem again). They think the mental fog was a reaction to the Claritin. I love how I can take a medication for years and suddenly my body doesn’t like it so much anymore. But considering I wasn’t allergic to pollen until I was in college, I’m well aware that the body can be fine with something one minute and decide it’s an invader the next.

I could have done without the late night EKG and blood tests, but happy the reports on both fronts were good. Even my blood glucose was quite good and it was not a fasting test. I had literally had something sugary less than an hour before.

The only test of the evening that found something that needs watching was my blood pressure. That was unexpected as despite having had too much weight for my size the great bulk of my life, my blood pressure has always been good. Last night it was not call the fire wardens high, but it was high and beyond any numbers I’ve charted before. Some of it may have been down to the panic of having to go to the hospital at night. I was in a poor state by the time I went in not knowing why I was feeling so incredibly out of it. And the numbers had come down a good bit by the time I left, but it still bears following up. Unfortunately high blood pressure runs in my family. Either way, time to try to get back into my old walking habit.

By the time we left the hospital last night I had a breathing treatment and a steroid shot, and while I waited for all the test results, I had transitioned from feeling spaced out and anxious to a general feeling of just wanting to curl up in my bed and sleep. And I’m so glad that was what happened next!

Considering how keyed up I was by the time I got to the hospital, this feels like a happy ending to me. I had conjured all sorts of not so happy reasons for how I felt! Curse of an active imagination or the norm for times like that? Whatever the case, I’m breathing a sigh of relief at the start of another day.