Food Poisoning & Pep Talks

How to Talk Yourself Down From a Panic Attack

The Day I Ruined a Movie Being Made About Me

Panic attack. It’s a term we overuse a lot for moments that aren’t actually panic attacks, kind of like how we talk about food poisoning. You can eat something that disagrees with you, even puts you down for a day. That’s not food poisoning.

I know this because years ago I got to experience the real thing. I digested poison! I infected myself with Campylobacter (a very nasty bacteria)—a mistake made while butchering a chicken. It happened the day before a director from Los Angeles was flying out to possibly make a documentary about Cold Antler, about what I was trying to do with my life.

I wanted to have a fresh, rested bird in the fridge for her visit so I could serve it for a dinner al fresco. I had a whole table setting planned for under the maple tree. I thought that would impress her.

I was nervous, rushing through chores all day, my mind swirling with all the cleaning and preparation necessary to make a good impression. This was the kind of thing that could change my life. And since I was planning on butchering a meat bird in the middle of all that preparation, I wasn’t focused.

I made one mistake with a dull knife near a lower intestine, slicing it open and somehow got that bacteria into my system. Probably by wiping hair out of my face or on my phone. However it got into me, it did.

I have never been that sick before or since.

I hit me the next day while loading hay into the back of my truck. I was with the director, who rode along for the chore so we could talk while loading. It was when I was moving the bales I felt that first shock of weakness. Why was this bale so heavy? Why did the barn loft spin when I picked it up fast?

Within 10 hours I was unable to leave my bathroom and she was on her way back to California. My body violently rejected all food and liquids. If I so much as took a sip of flat coke it meant I wasn’t leaving my house for hours.

By the next day I couldn’t walk. Hell, I couldn’t stand. I understood why people died from diarrhea in the past, nothing could stop this. This wasn’t eat-a-banana-and-sip-some-sprite after some dodgy kabob. This was terrifying.

There was blood where it shouldn’t be. Aches like reeling from punches. I was so weak I remember it took 4+ hours to do the morning chores like a zombie. Like I wasn’t supposed to be alive but was still shuffling around with 1/4-filled buckets I could barely lift.

There was this moment sitting near my stream, feeling for the first time in my life what I imagine thin women feel like. I lifted up my arms in front of me while the bucket filled up. It felt like they weighed nothing, like some trickster god was hovering above pulling marionette strings. The saddest part of that memory was I was happy, that finally, I knew what it was like to feel pretty.

That’s poison.

It took a visit to the hospital for intense antibiotics and a week to recover. She never made that documentary. She never even spoke to me again. I think the whole starting-off-confident-and-folksy-then-fading-into-a-victorian-ghost-child really spoiled that opportunity.

And the worst part? When I told her about the chicken I had prepared for dinner, she said no thank you. She was a vegetarian.

Panic! At the Disc Harrow

I know what real food poisoning is now. I know it the same way I know the difference between anxiety, dread, and a real panic attack.

People that feel anxious, get a little tightness in their chest, maybe even need to stop and count breaths; sometimes call that discomfort a panic attack. It’s not.

Panic attacks shut your body down. If you’re driving, you will crash your car same as if you fell asleep at at the wheel. Sometimes your heartbeat pounds so fast your ears ring. Sometimes entire limbs stop working, actual paralysis takes over.

There are scenes in Ted Lasso where we can tell his panic attack is coming because he starts losing feeling in his hands. We can see him casually trying to touch his fingertips to his thumb, making sure he can still feel the pads. It’s such a subtle moment in the show you have to know what’s happening to notice it in the first couple episodes. People not living in fear may not even notice it at all.

I never watched a fictional character doing that same thing I’ve done to check for dread. I’ve shaken my hands, stretched my wrists, squeezed my fists while pacing around my house demanding my nervous system not shit the bed.

I had attacks triggered by a movie or show where a character is repairing their house. I was convinced my house was about to collapse on me (metaphor!*), that I would lose everything, that my entire life was a mistake. I sliced into the intestine of my potential, so to speak. Then spiraling into catastrophic thinking about things both in and out of my control.

One night a panic attack started mid-conversation with my girlfriend. The right side of my body went paralyzed from my jaw down my arm. It started with a tingling sensation, just like I slept on it, and then became numb and impossible to move. It was really scary. I didn’t know if it was the beginning of a heart attack or stroke.

Thank goodness I wasn’t alone for that. I was preparing to visit my hometown the next day. I can’t remember ever being that afraid before, not ever in my life.

I have nearly died jumping off waterfalls in the Smoky Mountains. I drove through a Blizzard that nearly blew me off a mountain in Montana in the middle of the night. I’ve felt planes lurch and toss luggage across the aisle. This anxiety was scarier—and even if I couldn’t understand it completely then—my body did.

Which is why I knew one was about to happen driving back to the farm yesterday.

*Also structural problems from water damage

The Broken Molar & Naked Sheep

I was on my way home from an emergency dentist appointment. I had spent an unexpected $500 getting a cracked molar repaired before it could reinfect the root canal it resided over. If I let it go it would be far worse, possibly cost thousands, and the 15-year-old car I was driving didn’t cost as much as two root canals would. I had 11 days left to figure out how to earn the money back and make the late February mortgage payment before April to avoid foreclosure risk.

Sometimes it’s too much. I am usually so optimistic it’s stubborn, but sometimes it’s simply too much. I was driving under blue skies, the sun was shining, and I could feel the attack coming, like sitting on train tracks.

My heartbeat started throbbing low in my temples. Sweat started to appear everywhere like condensation on a beer can. When I felt my fingers start to tingle, I pulled over. This was not a time to be driving a combustible engine at 50 mph.

I did the kind of deep breathing I was taught in yoga. I counted every breath, cleared my mind of anything but breath and numbers. I told myself that right now, in this exact moment of living reality, nothing was trying to hurt me. I told myself when I pulled into my driveway in a few minutes, representatives from Blackrock would not be waiting there for the keys. The police weren’t with them, ready to shoot my dog and haul me off to Debtors’ Prison.

{one. two. three. four}
{one. two. three. four}
{one. two. three. four}
….
{one. two. three. four}

I put on music that helps grounds me. Songs I memorized like psalms. I took a long sip of cold water from my bottle. If I let this win I wouldn’t be able to go home and do the work I needed to solve this problem. I can not fold. I can’t give in. It’s just me, and it’s always only going to be me. I need to get it together.

Breath in. Move fingers. Count. Repeat.

I knew I had a shearer coming the next day. My old shearer stopped traveling to shepherds in this area, so us local homesteaders were all scrambling to find a new guy.

My friend Katie gave me a name of a man who was traveling from western Mass to do her sheep. I figured if he was coming all the way out here, he’d probably want as many gigs as possible. I emailed and consider myself lucky to get him last minute. Shearing isn’t something I could put off like a root canal.

Sheep shearers come to my area once or twice a spring, tops. They get all their clients done in day that justifies the gas money driving out of state. I can’t just ask him to drive hours to show up another day, just for me, when it’s more financially convenient. Another thing to earn back.

{one. two. three. four}
{one. two. three. four}
{one. two. three. four}
….
{one. two. three. four}

That’s what I was dealing with on the side of the road on a sunny day in March; a stretch of fields and barns in the middle of nowhere and a little golden Subaru idling near a ditch. No one whizzing by had any idea I was trying to get my hands to work, my heart to slow down. It took a solid ten minutes but I got through it.

This kind of thing rarely happens in broad daylight. I knew exactly what I needed to do when I got home to turn this dread into bread.

I am now going to share with you the trick to reversing a panic attack.

How to Reverse a Panic Attack

When I got home I grabbed Friday’s leash (it’s actually a hawk leash, they are nicer to hold) and the very first thing we did was go for a walk. No phone. No music. No car. No background YouTube. No emails…

Just walk.

I don’t do anything special on the walk. The point is to move the body, breathe, feel the wind and sunlight. It’s two miles down the mountain and back. You got to give the body something to do it understands. Do it somewhere familiar and safe.

When I got home from the walk I realized I hadn’t eaten anything yet and it was nearly 4pm. I didn’t have the capacity to plan a square meal. I went to the kitchen and scooped a giant brownie out of the tray on the stove. It wasn’t the healthiest dinner but it was soft and ready to eat.

My dentist said the repair was precarious. He said “Don’t you dare go biting down on a popcorn kernel or almond…” I grabbed a soda from the fridge. I told Friday to come along and join me in the sunlight on the deck. I could eat it slow.

I brought a blanket and set it down for us. My heart still thumped too fast, my tee shirt had pit stains. I was still wrestling this thing to the ground that I hog-tied on the side of the road and tired out on that walk. It was panting, but it wasn’t thwarted yet.

I became still as possible. I let whatever I was experiencing outside my mind happen. I didn’t close my eyes and chant, but I did take slow breathes. I felt the wind on my face and heard the rustle of the wind chimes. I heard the creek roaring. Birds singing. Cats wrasslin’

It was spring. It was here. I made it.

I was sitting cross legged, my most comfortable position. For a very compact person I am very bendy. My back that was hurting so much yesterday felt better today. I took a second to say thanks for that (to whomever deity was listening - I’m remain unaffiliated). It could be worse. I could be going through all this with a twerked back.

I took a bite of the brownie. It hit like only a box-mix brownie with that caramel drizzle can. I took a long sip from one of the last Diet Dr Pepper’s in the fridge. Good medicine.

In that moment life was perfect. The cats were with me on the deck, sprawled like lazy tigers in the sun. Friday laid beside me, her brittle shed coat in my left hand, the cold can in my right resting on my thigh. I solved a problem today. I took care of myself today. I still had time.

I chewed slowly. I tasted the chocolate on every part of my tongue. I felt the soda travel. I remembered the best words of advice anyone ever gave me:

“Take a deeper breath. You can go even slower.”

I practiced some yoga breathing, the silly kind where you inhale through one nostril and exhale through the other. Yoga breathing is like a koan, you don’t have to understand it to start getting better because of it. Shut up and try.

By the time the brownie was done I felt a lot better. The dread had lifted. My body felt normal. I wasn’t in the clear yet, but I could figure my way out if I didn’t let myself get lost again. My feet were firmly back on the ledge, not scrambling to find it. Then I sealed the deal on smiting the panic. I started telling myself undeniable facts.

Facts like I’ve haven’t been foreclosed on once in my life, not yet. And since this is the only house I ever owned, I technically have a perfect record. If I make it to May I will have paid this mortgage 15 years straight as a single, queer, woman making a living farming and writing. Incredible. And on like that.

Point is, I stopped focusing on all the possible things that might happen, and started reminding me of all the accomplishments that DID happen. I think that’s the real trick. For me at least, I need to audibly remind myself that I am not a failure unless I allow myself to become one.

Someone who figured all that out and can handle making up a dentist bill in a few days. And if I can’t, then I’ll sell something I own or discount my rates to a song. Maybe I could even write something that could encourage you folks as I was encouraging myself. Words have power. I mean, the Gettysburg Address was only one page and that helped stop a war. It’s harder to feel that stalking panic when you’re inspired to save yourself. The house hasn’t fallen yet.

This roof has survived the Civil War, a Great Depression, and everything since. It can handle one Jenna.

And if it can’t, it’ll be one hell of a story.

---

FARM STAND

I made this! Do you like it? Get one!

Girl, I Am Not Paying For Substack.
What Else You Got?

I also understand some of you feel paying anyone on substack for anything, is a slippery slope. Kind of like choosing a favorite student in your class you don’t pay any writers on here.

If you don’t want to give your debit card information to a website, maybe you are comfortable with PayPal, or CashApp, or Venmo. Maybe I can encourage you to support this farm through other means?

• I raise pork. Sometimes I raise and sell lamb. I also raise chickens for eggs. Right now I have a 1/4 share of pork left for this springs’ pigs. It is the last share I will have until next winter/spring. Please scoop it up! it would make my day to move this. A 1/4 pig share is a min of 25lbs of meat. Price includes full service: butchering and smoking and packaging costs. You pick up professionally prepared, vacuum-sealed meat.

• I’m also a professional graphic designer, with years of corporate experience and national brands. I design logos for a flat rate (no hourly fee), with unlimited revisions.

postcards, pet portraits, watercolors, canvas paintings

• I also illustrate, pet portraits and farm animal portraits and paintings are all original art drawn by hand in this house. These are not prints. This is a writer sitting at her coffee table with grass-stained jeans drawing your Boston Terrier on a rainy day to keep the lights on. Basic illustrations ship anywhere in the world FREE, canvas paintings are heavier and bigger, so they cost $20 to ship.

• I make soap by hand. It’s mostly goat milk based, made with coconut and olive oil. Soaps are sold by the bundle of 10-20 bars. They are great gifts and everyone here showers, so that’s something you need and can see everyday and help this word slinger. Only Ship in US. shipping is $20

• I also write for hire for copy writing. You can hire me to write something for you, like website copy, speeches, press releases or product descriptions for your company. With AI this work is almost entirely gone. But I offer it.

  Thanks for your time. Sorry for the solicitation. I hate money, but I need to make it or I end up losing my roof. Apologies for the lack of tact, but I’m all I’ve got. Usually when I send these only one or two people respond. If I get zero interest I will try something else.

• Venmo and Cashapp is Jennawog

Alright. That’s it.
Wish me luck, it’s scary as hell out here for people playing on hard mode.