Today I had the craziest of experiences - one I prefer not to repeat anytime soon! At lunch I drank a swallow of water when I realized it smelled funny. As soon as I swallowed it I realized it had the smell and tastse of bleach. That morning I had soaked a few things in a bucket in some bleach at the kitchen sink and then dumped the water down the sink. To this time, I don't know how come there could have been any bleach or bleach smell in the water. I poured it out of a pitcher that I had filled that hadn't been with the bleach bucket, and don't know how it could have gotten any bleach in or on it. Whatever was in there had to be pretty minute.
I first asked my husband if the water smelled funny to him. He agreed and I asked if it smelled like bleach and he agreed. He also had drunk some water. I then asked if any of the kids had drunk their water which they hadn't so I proceeded to get rid of their cups of water. I then started to question my husband about what would happen if you drank bleach water and started to get worried about it. I started to feel like I was a little light-headed and my heart was racing. I grabbed the bleach bottle to read the label and it said if you ingest it you should drink lots of water so I started downing cups of water.
I was still continuing to feel light-headed and felt like my heart was racing a little. After about 10 minutes I still didn't feel well and was feeling a little worse and decided to go to the computer to check out what happens if you ingest bleach. I was really starting to feel light-headed and started to worry I would pass out. I told my husband to call 911 where he got the poison control phone # and called them.
Meanwhile all I had turned up on a google search is a Yahoo answers forum that someone asks what happens if you drink bleach and everyone after that answers, "you die" and the 2nd site was named "Drink Bleach and Die". I started saying things to my husband like, "What if I'm going to die" and other such comments. Thankfully my husband was very level-headed and of course the fact that he had drunk more water than I had and hadn't suffered any ill effects probably helped his level-headedness. I started thinking in my head, "What a horrible way to end my life and die" and things like that. To make matters worse, my 6yo daughter was worrying about me the whole time and starting to panic that her mom was really hurt.
When my husband talked to poison control, he told them about the small amount that would possibly have been ingested and my symptoms and they said that ingesting bleach doesn't cause your heart to race, dzziness or light-headedness. They said that if you drank too much bleach you would feel a burning sensation in your throat and stomach and this would cause you to vomit so vomiting would be the symptom of a problem to watch for. Thankfully I had had none of these symptoms so all of my problems were entirely an anxiety attack from the possibility of having had bleach poisoning!
For the next hour or so I still felt awful even though I knew physically nothing had happened. I got cold and had a bit of the chills and laid down under a blanket cuddling my 6yo girl and letting her warm me up. This happened at lunch time and still I feel weak and have a headache at suppertime.
I find it completely amazing at everything that happened. I had absolutely nothing physically happen to me but because of the worries and my thinking something that wasn't true, many things happened to me physically. Even once I knew that physically all was fine, I still couldn't control the physical response that was going on in my body to what I had perceived had happened.
This really made me think about how many things in our life are a product of our thought processes. When we think something is some way, it often becomes that way to our bodies and our body reacts as if things are that way. If I think I'm horribly tired, my body will act as if I'm tired and respond that way. If I think I'm having an awful morning, I get depressed and everything continues to get worse and worse.
I wonder how many lies the devil feeds our minds to make us think things that aren't true and respond in wrong ways? How important it is that we only allow God's truth in our minds! How important it is that we know and believe God's word so that we know his truth. May we keep our minds free from Satan's lies - from negative thought patterns that seek to destroy us!
AMEN! You said a mouthful. I hope you feel much better by in the morning. I bet that was un-nerving. Our thoughts can either help us or hurt us.
Christy
I wonder how many conditions are at least partly a condition of the thought process? Those who think they are "born" a certain way, because something they once experimented with took hold in their lives and the devil convinced them it is just "how they are". Or those who are really smart, but have been convinced by an inflexible educational system that they are not, so they stop learning. Lord, please govern over all my thoughts today, and always!
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• Mon 1 Oct 2007 - Untitled Comment