Put that cheese burger down

I didn’t lose my mind all at once.

It left gradually. Like a dignified guest at a party that had gone on too long.

The party, in this case, was one and a half months of ICU monitors, oxygen saturation readings, steroid adjustments, pulmonologists, neurologists, and that special brand of hospital lighting that makes everyone look both sick and guilty.

My mother was in and out of crisis. Myasthenia Gravis doesn’t send calendar invites before it flares. One day she’s walking. The next we’re discussing respiratory strength like it’s a quarterly earnings call.

Somewhere in the middle of this, I became Chief Executive Officer of Everything.

Increase the steroids?
Hospitalize or manage at home?
Is this bulbar weakness or fatigue?
Is 95% oxygen acceptable — or the opening scene of a tragic documentary?

Doctors would explain options calmly. Then they would look at me.

That look.

The “you’re the daughter, what do you think?” look. What do I think? I think I’d like a neurology degree and a crystal ball.

Every decision came with invisible fine print: If this goes wrong, you chose wrong.

That’s when my nervous system declared siege. Maybe you will enjoy this: Navigating Care for Parents from Afar: A Guide

Sleep became optional. Google became dangerous. My brain ran disaster simulations at 3 a.m. with Olympic-level stamina. I’d lie there imagining oxygen levels dropping in real time, as if my imagination had remote-control access to her lungs.

When she was in the ICU, I stayed in the hospital dorm for families. A narrow bed, a thin blanket, fluorescent lighting that never fully switched off. I would lie there staring at the ceiling, waiting for the phone to ring. The phone ringing meant something had happened. No one calls at 2 a.m. to say everything is stable.

So I didn’t sleep. I hovered somewhere between horizontal and alert, like my body was plugged into an invisible alarm system. Every vibration, every distant footstep in the corridor, every sound that might have been a phone — my heart would spike before I even processed it.

And on the nights the phone didn’t ring, it felt like a small miracle had occurred.Morning would arrive quietly. No call. No emergency. Just light seeping through the curtains and another day earned.

That’s what hypervigilance looks like. Not panic. Not hysteria. Just a body that refuses to power down because it believes it is guarding something fragile.

And then I met my coping mechanism.

Melzap.

A small yellow strip. Five milligrams. Innocent-looking. Almost cheerful. It resembles stationery more than surrender.

You place it on your tongue. It dissolves. The edges soften. The catastrophic film festival in your head quietly shuts down.

It felt civilized. Measured. I wasn’t doubling doses or spiraling into recklessness. I was trying to sleep. Trying to stop feeling personally responsible for the mechanics of respiration.

But here’s what no one romanticizes: medications like MelZap — benzodiazepines — can be habit-forming. They’re intended for short-term use, under supervision. They can teach your brain that calm is outsourced, that steadiness comes from chemistry, that peace arrives in five milligrams.

Doctors warn you. The leaflet warns you. The internet practically screams it.

Fear is persuasive.

Exhaustion is louder.

I didn’t take it to feel high. I took it to feel level. To make decisions without my voice shaking. To sit beside her bed without calculating mortality statistics. To function.

And for a while, it worked.

That was the unnerving part.

Because the crisis eventually stabilized. Oxygen hovered politely at 97%. Her voice strengthened in the mornings. She walked again. Objectively, we were better.

My nervous system refused to downgrade from DEFCON 1.

I’d sit at the dining table watching her trying to drink water and feel certain something catastrophic was about to happen precisely because nothing catastrophic was happening. Calm felt suspicious. Stability felt like a trap.

That’s when I realized I hadn’t just been responding to stress — I had trained myself to live inside it.

I had become addicted to vigilance.

I thought anxiety was proof of love. If I stayed hyper-alert, I was protecting her. If I anticipated every complication, I was being thorough. If I worried hard enough, maybe biology would respect the effort.

It doesn’t.

Illness does not negotiate with devotion. And control is mostly theater — something we stage so we can sleep at night, ironically the very thing I couldn’t do without assistance.

There’s a particular clarity in realizing you can manage an ICU crisis but can’t silence your own mind on command.

I refuse to shame myself for that.

The past month and a half stretched me beyond what one nervous system is built to hold: repeated hospitalizations, medication adjustments, nights listening for breath, living in the narrow corridor between “she’s fine” and “what if she’s not?”

Of course something gave. It was my inner peace.

Now I’m reclaiming it. Not dramatically. Not heroically. Just deliberately.

I question catastrophic thoughts like unreliable news sources. I let good oxygen readings register as good instead of temporary. I practice sitting in a quiet room without bracing for impact.

I use MelZap carefully now. Sparingly. Respectfully. It isn’t the villain — it did what it promised. The mistake was believing it could carry what only a recalibrated nervous system can.

The real work is accepting that I cannot carry my mother’s illness for her.

I can advocate.
I can decide.
I can love.
I can show up.

But I cannot outthink myasthenia. And I cannot anesthetize fear indefinitely.

The day I lost my mind wasn’t dramatic. It was administrative. It happened somewhere between consent forms, oxygen checks, and pretending I fully understood “steroid taper protocol.”

Losing it taught me something necessary:

Strength isn’t constant composure.
Calm isn’t indifference.
And love doesn’t require self-erasure.

My mind didn’t abandon me. It simply refused to live permanently in crisis.

I’m inviting it back now — without five milligrams doing all the heavy lifting.

Some nights are better than others.

But I’m here for them.