phew, its over.

yep the appointment went okay. the procedure was a tilt table test. not very pleasant when you cant stand up for long, or sit up straight for that matter.

and thanks to a couple of bloggers, i think it went better than i imagined. nechtan(sorry i still cant link the blog to your name), said in his last post, thoughts=words=judgements=illusion. i just kept remembering that the two days running up to the appointment. thoughts, turn into words, turn into judgements, due to anxiety your judgements are wrong anyway because you always make out that its much more awful then it really is, so that in turn leads to the illusion. a couple of other things, i thought perhaps the appointment maybe cancelled at the last minute so i would of spent days worrying over nothing. i imagined the appointment like a wound on my arm, everytime i thought worrying thoughts it was like i was scratching the wound and making it worse, so i stopped the thought and distracted myself. and steph said your in the best place if you do panic. which i must remember. as my all time phobia is hosptials.

i wasnt as bad as i usually am, i must remember these tips too. until i arrived, right outside the door, i began to clench my teeth, tongue at the top of my mouth. i knew i had to do this, if not i will only not get better, but this condition will last longer.

i asked for somewhere to lay down when i got there, something i would never of done in the past no matter how bad i felt. in this case i had too. then waited 20 minutes. i really was dreading the test. you are laid on a table and your head is tilted lower than the rest of your body. at first they said for 3 minutes which scared me enough. however they had tied some sort of blood pressure cuff to my finger, so i felt the beat of my heart in my finger and counted to sixty, three times, thinking that that was three minutes up, it was a good distraction. i must of been in the position for 15 minutes. and it wasnt that bad i must say. i had to squeeze a metal cylinder, blow into a tube, and stand for 10 minutes, in which case i came over nauseous and wobbled alot. hour and a half later the test was finished and i was ready to go. slightly off balance, and not really with it.

today im extremely tired, in bed with two dogs at my side. a sad story to tell. my sisters terrier(she has three others) has lost control of his back legs. hes nearly fourteen, and shes off to the vets. im hoping and crossing my fingers he will be okay. he was the dog that helped me overcome my phobia of dogs. i was petrified, i actually cried when i was around him as i was so scared. my sister would put him in the garden when i visited her house, then in the kitchen and slowly i became aware that dogs arent threatening. for me to have two in the house let alone on my bed i have come along way, from ten years ago. it was very much like graded exposure, the process took around three years but i did it. heres hoping he will be fine.