My Anxiety Diagnosis

I was officially diagnosed with anxiety in December 2019, however I know that I’ve struggled with it for longer.

In middle school, like seventh or eight grade, I began to have these horrible headaches that also caused a shortage of breath. I missed an entire month of school and had work sent home by all my teachers. I went to see my doctor, who sent me to the ER, that after twelve hours and what felt like hundreds of tests, couldn’t figure out what my issue was.

Fast forward almost six years later, and I found myself in the doctor’s office again however, this time they handed me a mental health evaluation to fill out. But, i couldn’t out the entire form truthfully because one of my biggest causes of anxiety was with me that day, watching as I fill out the form.

Fortunately, the nurse realized that something wasn’t right with my answers and prescribed me anti-anxiety meds. First, I started off on 10mg of Hydroxyzine as needed, meaning whenever I felt anxious. Then the dosage got upped to 25mg as needed. Then after about a year and half on that I was put on 5mg of Escitalopram to be taken once a day in addition to the 25mg of Hydroxyzine. Finally after six months of that it was determined that I needed a higher dosage of 10mg of Escitalopram in addition to Hydroxyzine being taken daily.

Mental health is something that you can’t hide from forever. And from my experience, the biggest reason for my anxiety was also the reason why it took almost nine years to get an accurate diagnosis and treatment.