High Anxiety

“I got I! I got it! I got it...I don’t got it.” Mel Brooks, High Anxiety (1977)

So, I’m writing a few days following my recovery from maybe the nastiest case of high anxiety any retired dentist/scribe/elite athlete could’ve ever suffered. And trust me, I know the dentite crowd can exhibit all the human frailties that show up in humankind; I just hope we’re not carriers.

I started thinking back. Did I have a history of anxiety, paranoia, or multiple personalities? The evidence that surfaced during my trip down memory lane was convincing. I saw a clear timeline of HIGH ANXIETY.

I really can’t remember my first anxious experience and it was probably a blessing I had no clue at the time. All I know is that I was confined and growing within a small dark space for months before suddenly being scooped out into the bright lights and spanked for freakin doing nothing wrong.

Things were awesome for about three years. I had the greatest parents in the world and an older brother who always told me I was way better than the dog he’d wanted for the past five or six years.

But then it happened, the tricycle ride from hell. One minute I was motoring around like a junior Olympian, but then I realized (the hard way) that doing tricycle wheelies is no joke. I tipped Leaning Tower style to my right and did not tuck and roll. I stuck my landing with my right hand and broke my arm. I was cool. But Mom had never seen a broken arm; I heard her ask if we “should call an ambulance” I LOST IT. HIGH ANXIETY, “I GOT IT.” I began my 4-word mantra, it went, “I want my Daddy. I want my Daddy. I want my Daddy. I want my Daddy.” I may have been ethered out while having my fractured radius set, but I was still wearing my Billy Idol snarl.

It was clear sailing all the way to high school. I was chill, never nervous Jack. If it was a free throw, base hit, or spelling bee, my 12-year-old Jack smiled, “I got this.”

In high school, several things happened. I started out at 5’6” and weighing 100lbs; what followed was not any big-time growth spurt. My professional athlete prospects dropped to less than zero. Testing showed an aptitude for science and math. I chose health, either medicine or dentistry. Medicine took forever, there was no balance, and then you got a bypass. I chose Dentistry in the 10th grade- that’s when everything started falling apart.

I was a high school loner who played sports. I didn’t say much. I shared classes with the same 20 kids for FOUR long years. My brother was worried, “He doesn’t talk. What’s wrong with him.” I’m like, “I can hear you.”

In college, I became very competitive, and that’s what happens when your first quarter GPA reads 2.13. And the day after the news hit home, I began working in a warehouse from 3 to midnight and carrying 18 units. I was either going to dental school, or the jungle. I didn’t have time for anxiety.

In dental school, I played the victim and became paranoid. I turned around a Woody Allen quote. Just because they were all out to get me didn’t mean I was paranoid, right? Wrong. Four years of compound HIGH ANXIETY would leave its mark.

Somehow, when nobody was looking, I escaped dental school with paper documentation proving I was legit.

For the next 25 years, I walked a tight rope. I wanted everyone to like me, but I always had to have the last word. Relationships, idle conversations, tennis matches, and even tossing rocks into some river in the Texas Hill Country were all about competition and having the last word and winning, even if I lost. My Office Manager (who remains my best friend) used to sit back and observe, “And you wonder why no one has snapped him up?” I was complex: I had HIGH ANXIETY, approval addiction, and imposter syndrome…before the syndrome was even invented.

One practice advisor even paid for me to have four sessions with his Personal Coach. He yawned a lot during our sessions.” Dang, I was boring the therapist; wasn’t that a positive sign? Truth be told, sharing columns for the past 26 years has been my own way of managing HIGH ANXIETY episodes.

And writing got me through 2016, and I was doing okay until about four months or so ago. I’m a lifelong Democrat and I’ve been a political nerd since I was a kid (probably since the wheelie incident). I had just come home from chairing a study club event on June 27. I was anxious to see the Presidential Debate. After about 5 minutes, I was beyond anxious. HIGH ANNXIETY. “I got it!”

VP Harris stepped in and would prove to make the race for the White House competitive. Prosecutor vs the felon. I watched the debate; it was almost like elder abuse. Yeah, we were way better off than four years ago. Yeah, the economy is the Covid-19 recovery the rest of globe envies. He wanted to be dictator for one day, get even with political opponents, deport millions of immigrants. He said Hitler did some good things. Again why was this contest close? More HIGH ANXIETY.

When I was in Dental School at USC back in the 70s, out of 120 students, we had TWO women in our class. Today, more than half the students are women. For the love of God, when will America catch up with the USC School of Dentistry and the 21st Century?

By the time November 5th arrived, I was suffering headaches, my neck had locked into my shoulders, I had writer’s block, shoulder and hip pain, a constant left armpit burn, restless nights dozing in sleep cycle blocks of 90 minutes and clenching my teeth. I stopped taking my blood pressure about two weeks before Election day. I’d become an angry 3-year-old. HIGH ANXIETY.

Early Election Tuesday evening, my massage therapist and I shared the screen on CNN. It was okay, Gina and I agree on all things political. As I opened the door for Gina, I experienced a bloody nose, for the second time in four days. HIGH NASAL ANXIETY. “I got it!”

By 9PM, I was reading an Italian crime novel and forgetting CNN and John King at The Map.

When I woke up after a full night’s sleep, my physical and psychiatric symptoms had all disappeared. It was over…for now. Dan Quayle once observed that, “a mind is a terrible thing to lose.” Not my deal, it was just acute HIGH ANXIETY. And for now, “I don’t got it”. BP:110/68.

Keanu Reeves recently shared, “I’m at the stage of my life where I stay out of discussions, even if they say 1+1=5. You’re right, have fun.” Me too, for about a minute. I’ll just focus on stuff over which I have control. And I’ll also remember you can’t keep growing up without stress.

Time to Fight on.