Just a quick update for you lovely people out there who, by replying and/or liking a post, create a strange, invisible safety net for the psyche and make one feel just that bit less alone:
My OH had the op yesterday - and lived. Contrary to the vicious little thought imps that sneak around in the brain and whisper frightening things in the darkest, pre-dawn hours.
And better than that, he wasn't yellow and sunken-faced and suddenly old, as those intrusive thoughts had sniggered at me in the night.
Actually, he was grinning like the Cheshire cat, stoned out of his brains, if a little pale, but almost compus mentis as he floated around the ceiling in a purple haze, sore but very much alive. Muttering things like, 'nice drugs' and 'this catheter's great - don't need a wee' and 'if I took a naturist's funeral would I have to be naked?'. Don't ask, no idea.
But here's the interesting thing. I have been waking up in the early hours, with a heart rate that reverberates through the mattress like the hoofbeats of a bolting horse, for the last couple of weeks. However this morning I awoke at around 6 (as opposed to around 2 - 3.30) yet with a calm and steady heart rate. Go figure.
What's prompted this stream of consciousness is that last night, whilst whiling away the last bit of wakefulness that was dogging my desperation to sleep like Dobby the house elf mythering Harry in the Chamber of Secrets, I watched a programme on A&E on TV.
This woman woke at midnight with a hammering heart and severe chest pains. She had six paramedics around her (one of the luckier plebs - since ordinary people seem to be being starved of critical services) who found, on ECG, that she was experiencing some sort of sinus arrhythmia (must be improving to be able to spell that right first time).
Cut to the chase, it was anxiety. Her dad had died a couple of years before, and her mother had died of a heart attack at the same age this woman had now reached. Mind you, I knew it all along, of course. It was blindingly obvious to someone sitting on the bed of a hotel room, having been upgraded to the best room in the house - complete with a rooftop terrace with a second, outdoor, rolltop cast iron bath (in Manchester, in a gale) because the room I had been in had a problem with the plumbing so the bathroom stank like a navvie's crotch. No offense to navvies. And not that I've smelled their crotches. But one can imagine. Not that I have, necessarily, but the subconscious link may have been made by the preceding programme DIY SOS...
But I digress. There I was, sitting on this queen-sized, munching on a custard tart with a cup of tea and shouting at the screen, "it's just anxiety, you silly b**ch," (very compassionate for a therapist) without a hint of 'if the cap fits...'
My point is, I think, at least in part, that the waking up at unspeakably early hours with a heart bolting out of my chest like something out of Alien may have had something to do with my OH's little health issue. That is not to say that my adrenals are completely tickety boo - need to get them checked out. But ... damn. Anxiety can be a master of disguise, can't it? But so often, when it is cited as a potential cause of physical distress or illness, it feels so bl***y insulting,. Yet anxiety is one of the most powerful drivers we have. Tricky beast, though.
Actaully, while I think about it, it's brought up another little thought. I read in the paper yesterday that scientists have discovered an early indicator of Alzheimer's: rambling sentences that don't get to the point concisely ...
Oh Cr*p. There goes my sleep cycle again ...
Anxiety on thyroxine 
Mental health issues (anxiety, ocd, depression, nervous) and thyroid.
Hypothyroid and Depression/Anxiety
GABA & 5HTP for anxiety 
Thyroid or generalised anxiety disorder
