This past week my dad has been in the hospital. His symptoms seemed serious going in as he was having trouble breathing and getting a full breath. My dad has been on dialysis for the past three years. What was going on was that too much fluid had built up putting pressure on his lungs and heart. Sound pretty serious right? What you don’t know can be scary.
A week later, my dad is out of the hospital. With hindsight, the issue was resolved. However, last Monday was the “peak” of my anxiety coming from incomplete information. I took my dad in on Friday of last week. I also saw him that Saturday and Sunday. Hospitals are the slowest over the weekend. Monday morning, I get a call from my aunt who said, “there is a large amount of fluid on your dad, and he is needing more dialysis to take it off.” However, my aunt did say she was getting this information from a nurse who did was not my dad’s main doctor.
With that information, my anxiety was through the roof. Every time I tried to call me dad’s hospital room the line was always busy. Mondays are the busiest day for me as I had client’s from 10am all the way until 8pm, so I was not able to go to visit him that day. I distinctly remember not getting a great night’s sleep that day.
The next day I cancelled some of my appointments with client’s so I could go see my dad and see what was going on. Things were much, much better having all of the information going on instead of getting pieces of it. The reason I could not reach my dad was because the phone in his room was not connected properly to the phone jack.
When your brain does not know all of the information, it will fill in the blanks on its own often causing one to catastrophize and go in these worst-case scenario tangents. When I heard that my dad was needing more dialysis, my first thought was he was going to need more than the three a week he usually gets.
When I was finally able to get the whole story, what transpired was much more reasonable. My dad did have to get more dialysis to remove the excess fluid. He got four of them, once a day on four different days. Although it was painful for my dad as the process causes craps and is generally hard on the body anyway, he did what was needed, and the issue was resolved.
Although it is much easier said than done to not jump to conclusions on a matter where you do not have all of the information, do everything in your power to reserve jumping to a conclusion and do everything in your power to get all of the information instead of getting pieces of information.
If you are looking for a therapist near you then a Google search is a great way of finding one. I happen to be a therapist in Charlotte, NC but am licensed to counsel anyone in the state of North Carolina. In Google, try looking for “psychotherapist,” “find therapist,” “therapy near me,” or even “counseling charlotte, nc.” If you feel like you have hit a wall you are not able to get past, call me at (704) 458-6298 or email me at jeffhelms@clearerthoughtspllc.com.
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