So hungry but so calm: beta-blocker life.

Jun 9

I wake up in my daughter’s bed. This is not uncommon, as she is easily scared at night, doesn’t snore, and is cute as hell — it’s typical for me to climb under her cozy quilt and volunteer as her bedmate. In the morning, she grabs my hand when we both start to open our eyes (hers first). Her fingers are soft and chubby, but they’re seven now, so my instinct is to think first about when they were even tinier and chubbier. We spend less than a minute in this state. The simple gesture is her only silent and gentle form of communication throughout the day; it’s sacred. My stomach interrupts the moment. It grumbles loudly. She giggles and I moan; how am I already hungry? It’s 7:00!

A few years ago, I started to panic over my health. My heart raced, skipped beats, and scared me. I saw family doctors, cardiologists, and went to the hospital looking for reasons as to why I felt like the rest of my body and brain couldn’t keep up with it. They gave me some answers but no reasons, really, as to why it was happening. Am I super anxious? Had I had Covid? Um yeah, like, all of the damn time to both. I was basically patient zero in my little town and certainly amongst my family in 2020 during pandemic hell, and that virus revisited me a handful of times. That only made my anxiety, particularly related to health, considerably worse. PACs and PVCs were usually harmless, doctors would assure me after reading my ECG or reviewing the results of my holter monitor, a small device that recorded my heart rhythm for a week on a few different occasions, and send me on my way. Sometimes cyclical, I would think the palpitations were totally gone and then they’d come back, majorly affecting my quality of life and ability to do anything without feeling like my heart would burst open. Have you ever been shocked and felt the sensation of your heart skipping a beat? That’s how I felt all day. I told my husband I would do literally anything to change it.

If you’ve had anxiety, you already know that this cycle of worrying about a health ailment is so vicious. The more I worry, the worse my palps (I come from a family of abbreviators, even for serious matters). The worse my palps, the more heightened my anxiety. I saw an electrophysiologist in Miami one and a half years ago. He did all the tests, suggested I relax (thank you I hadn’t thought of it), and prescribed me 10mg of Propranolol to take twice a day. “It’s a baby dose and very safe” he said more than once in response to my wild resistance to and fear of drugs. Propranolol is a beta-blocker, which helps to block the effects of adrenaline on the heart and blood vessels. I can make any ordinary circumstance catastrophic, so the idea that I could take a prescription and feel better without growing a third eye or losing my limbs wasn’t feasible to my brain. I called my sister on the drive home. “I’m scared to take it even though I just admitted I would do literally anything to not continue living like this.” A longtime fan of pharmaceuticals and never one to overthink, she told me to go pick it up before dinner and take it, or in fact, take two. I asked her if she’d take care of my children if I died — even though they have a dad who would presumably be alive and completely capable. She agreed, like all good sisters do, that she would indeed become their mother if the harmless medicine my doctor prescribed to make me better somehow killed me.

I took the first pill and stared at myself in the mirror. Life would be different now. I’d be a pill taker. I googled all of the things: what if it was addictive, or it had wild side effects that no one mentioned, or you can only safely take it for a few months? Things slowed down for me physically, then mentally, then emotionally, almost immediately, within days. Palps died down, and with them, so did anxiety. It felt amazing to feel like my old self — but an even better and cooler version of her. She didn’t text the babysitter six times, she just ate her dinner. She didn’t imagine her kids going through something traumatic before bed to get her heart rate to a dangerous place. Beta-blocker girl was acclimating to a new very fatigued (truly, plan for more sleep if you’re on this train) and slow life of calm bliss.

What anxiety does to you on the outside very often doesn’t show the world what’s happening on the inside. I was skinny and stressed for a long time. But now, in my new world, I was calm and as hungry as one can be — I end zoom calls enthusiastically so I can run to the kitchen. The worldwide web tells me that these meds can slow down your metabolism, and they sure as heck do. I’ve gained enough weight to donate my pants (who needs pants?), change the size I “always order” from some of my favorite brands, and complain to my husband more times than feels fair to him or me. It’s been good for me to think more consciously about the foods I eat, and an amazing result of my body dissatisfaction has been starting pilates and actually sticking to it. I’m truly healthier in many ways. Doesn’t it feel like everything you see on Instagram or in friend groups has something to do with size, even if not directly? I had never thought about it until I realized my body changed and then I started to feel like my feed was mostly posts about young moms losing 3,000 lbs. [She exaggerates.] It’s too much a part of our culture I realize now that I’ve changed. The truth is, I wake up and go to bed thinking that a Wegmans sub would be money. It’s much better than imagining my own sudden death, so, I’m accepting the new me: she isn’t going to pass on any meals so don’t ask her, but she’s not getting blood pressure readings high enough to make nurses do a triple take. We’ll take her. And feed her.