The onset of MCAS is different for everyone. For some it is a slow trickle of raindrops that slowly and steadily builds momentum overtime. Maybe even subtle enough to make it hard to distinguish or seperate from health challenges we have experience throughout our lives. And for others the storm is abrupt, relentless storm clouds with thunder. Like being hit by a wave when your back is turned and getting sucked into a quick sinking whirlpool. You hardly remember who you were before using every morsel of energy to fight the thing pulling you downward. It's a losing battle, before you know it your hands are clawing at the water to remember what life is, exhale with the easy smoothness that was taken for granted your whole life. That was what my experience was like.
I remember having some immune issues in the month prior, stomach distress, and loss of appetite, brain fog, and fatigue. I knew something was wrong, but chalked it up to SIBO or gut dysbiosis from my years of living and rough and reckless lifestyle traveling abroad. I threw antiobiotics at myself a multiple of times not batting an eyes. I was, and my body, in my own mind – invincible.
I ducked my head under and dripping roof on a cloudy night in New York City. I was eating a slice of 1$ pizza found at every street corner and in Midtown with me friend. I took a bite, feeling the sensation one might have right before food poisening. Sweaty, feverish, a wretched urge to vomit and diarrhea at the same time. Worst yet, it was more than that. My heart pounded rapidly and a dizziness spinned the night and passing bodies into blurs and beeping cars shined there headlights moving towards me. My knees buckled, and face begin to feel itchy – swollen. I tried holding a conversation, meeting the gaze of my friend. But the sickness felt too complete. A panic arose.
I had never had panic attacks. My mouth went dry and throat clutched shut wobbling to the neared Subway station. As I walked down the subway stares the lights turned out. The lights that illuminated logic, reason – abilities to understand and make sense of words. It flickered and feigned a loose wire pulled out. As noises and smells, light magnified and came to possess a different quality. A quality the could shatter my nerves now made of thin glass.
I breathed heavily. My stomach invaded like poisen crawling up into the pillars of an old abandoned house. Darkened by mold and brushed with dirt. The poisen spindiled around my blood vessels. Confusion.
How could make sense of something when it impacted the one thing I needed more than anything to stay calm – my brain.
“Stand clear of the closing doors” the Subway intercom interjected.
I shivered that night sleeping in my friend's spare bedroom. She lived in Bushwick and there was a mattress on the floor. I brought every item of clothing out of my suitcase and piled it on top of me. My whole body trembling in cold sweats. Staring at the dark textured ceilng, my eyes wide open.
I didn't sleep that night or many nights following –
A blur of days.
Traveling to Asheville then Medellin Colombia, strange air bnbs with cleaning sprays knocked me out of commission.
I had no health insurance. And no logical brain anymore to make sound medical decisions. Just a sinking panic and delirium – poisoned – inflamed and not knowing the cause. Everything I ate made it worst.
Some transition had taken place in that time of two weeks. A transition of the loss of normalcy, the loss of health.
Sinking to the bottom of that ocean floor, as a cloud covered the sun and perpetual darkness took hold.
I was now a foreigner in my own body – governed by a new set of rules.
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