3 Furry Ativan Please!

Furry ativan is the running joke in my support group.  we talk about how calming our animals are for us and how under circumstances that normally would have required medication to get through, we have discovered that our animals can take the place of the medications and act alot faster on our anxiety than any medication on the market.  For me this is 100% true and always has been, whether it has been for depression, anxiety, pain, or an OCD flare up.  Looking back to my childhood it was the guinea pigs that would pick up on my anxiety and when i would sit with them they gave me a strange sense of calm while it seems they relentlessly bit my sister.  Flash forward to us getting our dog, a normally active beagle, who would sit quietly with me while i had a panic attack and would follow me around when i would check all the doors throughout the house and then again and again during the middle of the night.  The dog was a god send to my mother who suffered and then succumbed to colon cancer in the summer of 2001.  My mother would sit with the dog for hours just petting her in bed and would refuse pain medication saying that she didn't need it when the dog was cuddled up next to her. 

In my case, my furry ativan are my three rabbits.  Each with a different ability to pick up on what is distressing me in the moment.  It is very interesting to me, our newest addition, a baby sable point holland lop, is the most intuned to my high anxiety and my episodes with psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES).  It is almost like she knows that i am gong to have one and will sit very still in my lap and start to lick my face or hand and will wait with me until the seizure is done, she then perks up when i come out of it and looks at me as if saying see it is ok i was here the whole time.  when i sit with her it is like my anxiety and panic just drains out of my entire body and for at least a moment my mind is quiet.  My older lop, is admittedly my favorite of all three.  She was my first ever rabbit and when i got her i had no idea how interactive rabbits could be and how much of a personallity they could have.  it is astounding to me.  over the two years that we have had her i have relearned that i can't control all of the situations that life brings to me, i used to hover over her and she was for a while completely free to roam around the house.  Not any more thought, a genetic defect is taking her from me and we have reached a point where she can't reliably use her litter box, it may seem cruel to keep her around but the lights in her eyes haven't gone out yet, when they do it will be time.  when it comes i don't know how i am going to handle it.  after my diagnosis she is the one that got me out of the house more, i would carry her around with me when i would go to weightloss meetings, got me to go outside period.  she is always my friendly face in a sea of faces that are strange and sometime bewildering.  these days our relationship is less about me and more about her, and that is ok with me.

which brings me to our third bunny, a mixed breed chocolate brown male that we adopted almost two years ago from our local rescue league.  he is an odd character, he has formed a strong bond to my fiance and it seems will only occasionally give me the time of day.  he does redeem himself though, he is my second favorite rabbit to take with me when i leave the house to go to the store or bank or mall.  you name it he goes everywhere, and when he is out with me he is a completely different rabbit.  He checks in with me as if to say look down at me, i am not scared why should you be?  and everytime i tell him you raise a good point, pet him and feel my anxiety levels go down. 

when i am in the middle of a panic or anxiety attack i look to the bunnies, the only rational thought that will go through my mind at that point is well the rabbits aren't afraid so my fear must not be real right now, they are living in reality every moment of their lives and some how they pull me back when it seems nothing else will.

I should go back an explain what psychogenic nonepileptic seizures are events superficially resembling an epileptic seizure, but without the characteristic electrical discharges associated with epilepsy. Instead, PNES are psychological in origin, and may be thought of as similar to conversion disorder. It is estimated that 20% of seizure patients seen at specialist epilepsy clinics have PNES.  Shamefully i cite wikipeadia with the definition however the definition is surprisingly accurate.  For me the seizures feel as real as real can feel.  I was hospitalized in 2009 for "seizures that were not responding to conventiational treatment".  At the time it was terrifying, 30-60 seconds of sheer terror running through my head, i was having cyclical convulsions of my upper body, i couldn't breathe through my mouth, i blinked in time with the convulsions and would loose control of keeping myself upright (though i never fell).  it is such a strange thing to endure, i can/could hear and see and feel everything that was going on, but there was absolutly no way of getting a message out of help me i am scared, help me i can't breath, just help me.  for a good episode it was just 2-5 sets of the seizures, if it was a bad episode it could go on for 30 minutes.  the neurology team seemed baffled by the condition and it actually turned out to be a brand new MD and the head of the neurology department that put the pieces together.  I had an EEG with video recording, the only way to definitive way that i am aware of to diagnose psychogenic noneplileptic seizures.  I forget where i found the statistic but something like 2-3% of people with OCD also have psychogenic nonepileptic seizures.  Guess i won the lottery right? yeah right.  well the psych team at the hospital changed the medications that i was on and put me on a SSNRI (selective seratonin norepinephrin reuptake inhibitor) and on the first day my seizures dropped by 75% the same day i got the diagnosis of obessive compulsive disorder.  one more sleepless night and then i was discharged with these two new diagnoses and poorly connected to the resources that i needed to get through this new chapter of my life.  I was to spend the next two months on disability and move out of state in the process.  My therapist at the time (and i use the term therapist loosely) said that maybe i should call McLean Hospital, (www.mcleanhospital.org/) they were able to get me the names of a couple therapist that would be able to help me in when i moved to NH.  I am still in therapy and doing pretty good most of the time, when it is good it is good when it is bad it is bad but i guess that is how life is for everyone.