Life is fairly consequential. Often the reactions loop back and link up with the actions, forming circles, so life is full of circles. Problem is that some circles turn into vicious cycles that, like maelstrom, suck us down and we cannot escape despite all our efforts.
We saw a young pregnant lady this morning, who had quite a lot on her plate. We saw her for the panic disorder, but the medical problems that she is dealing with took pages and pages to summarise.
Her chronic anxiety lead to avoidance and sensitisation which feed into fear of future panic attacks. Avoidance develop into agrophobia, plus the sensitisation finally becomes panic disorder, which accentuate to chronic anxiety.
When she's anxious, she smokes cigarette, which compromise airway, lead to use of nebuliser (ventolin) that produce symptoms like palpitations that mimic her panic attack, increase her anxiety.
She has gastroparesis which lead to constipation, chronic abdo pain which is accentuated by the panic disorder. She abuses codeine and NSAIDs to control the pain, which reduce bowel movement, lead to more small bowel obstruction, lead to more pain and thus more morphine, slows bowel further, but also lead to addiction and tolerance, so she needs increased dose of morphine use, more constipation, more pain. Downward spiral.
She gets stressed by her panic disorder, so she abuses cannabis (THC), opioid, and was given valium (BZD), developed dependence on all of them, which lead to more stress as she knows she's addicted...
Because of all this on her plate, she has only recently stopped her cigarette and THC a month ago, and possibly still using opioid. She is now 36 weeks, the damage for the fetus has already been done. When the child is born it is likely to have congenital problems, which means more issues for her, who already has 2 children, no job, left school at 15, etc etc. Her parent were young as well, mum was 18 and dad was 16 when they had her.
How will she ever escape?
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