My Cervical Vertigo and Panic Disorder (Chapter 5)
Brisbane, Australia
“A very little key will open a very heavy door.”-Charles Dickens
Australia was a dream. It was a blurry, yet fantastic dream. It was stressful, it was fulfilling. There were regrets, there was internal applause. I made friends, I made enemies.
I felt “it” for the first time…
My first job was Blackbird, an upscale restaurant and club on the famous boardwalk alongside the Brisbane River. I had a beautiful view of the story bridge and enjoyed some wild nights as a barback.
I ran my ass off.
It was a job not for the faint of heart. On most weekends I would pull 14 hour shifts starting with the sun going down and then finish with the sun coming up. And I drank. I would lose track of the shots on any given night, as once the lights went low (11pm), bartenders made sure to treat us right.
I had no remorse for my body and put it through hell. I was dumb, lifting full kegs by myself and running back and forth in the 85–90 degree humid weather.
During the infamous “silly season” (Christmas holidays), we pulled stupid long hours and racked up 100 hour long weeks. By the time we finally got two days off after New Years, I was exhausted. Utterly depleted.
Once the booze and espresso shots wear off, fatigue sets in.
If you haven’t already, make sure to read Chapter 4, above.
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But it was during this time at Blackbird that I started to feel…off. I was having these weird sensations in my brain, as if it was spasming. “Brain zaps” is the technical term for them, I guess. On top of that, my balance/equilibrium was feeling off and I was getting lightheaded a lot easier. And no, it wasn’t from dehydration; I chugged water daily.
I went to a primary care doctor right around from my house and she recommended that I get an MRI of my brain. I lived in Red Hill at the time, and the hospital I was to get the scan, was only in Milton. I didn’t go.
Instead, I went on living my life, trying to ignore it and believing it wasn’t there. But deep down I knew. Deep down, it waited…
The turn of the year in 2018 proved a very difficult time for me. My working visa had a stipulation that I could only work at one job for 6 months before having to find a new one. My roommates and I had only signed a 6 month lease on our house and were not going to renew it. Homeless and unemployed halfway around the world.
Don’t get me wrong, I went job searching, but no one was hiring. The busy season was over and no new workers were needed.
Be the grace of God, a couple who were good friends of mine, held me up on their AirBnB portion of their condo. I paid them rent, to start, but it was eating up my income quickly.
In my stress I turned to drinking. I went way too hard, constantly throwing my neurotransmitters and body’s chemistry out of wack. That took me down further into depression and anxiety.
As the common saying goes,
“When it rains, it pours.”
The irony of that is that when it rains in tropical Australia, mate, it pours. Not much of a difference with the trajectory of my life; it rained down on me hard. So bad that there were times I was having panic attacks while laying in bed all day repeating the mantra “inner peace” for hours.
I was a wreck.
My body and my subsequent mind were on a destructive railway and I felt like my time in Australia was coming to a premature close. I didn’t want to give up early, because I had barely even seen the country. I was constantly stuck in the inner city of Brisbane living the life of an urban cowboy and now, I was probably going to have to leave the land behind.
When all hope was lost, though, I got a call.
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