WhenTheMotorWon'tStop

The motor won't stop. When I get hit by something, the motor starts, and becomes the energizer bunny.
My mother's car broke one day on the highway, years ago. A piece inside the engine somewhere broke off and rattled around in the guts of her minivan until it stuck in the mechanism that controls the accelerator. The car behaved like the pedal was floored no matter what she did. She started flying down the highway faster and faster, the engine roaring louder and louder. It took her a while, but she finally got it out of gear and coasted it to a stop.
This is my nervous system. When life takes one of its normal innumerable little shots at me it knocks something loose and the heart pounds, the hands shake, fight or flight cuts loose, rattling around inside a small box. I can't find the way to get it out of gear. A thousand unhelpful visions flash across the screen inside my head and like Alex amidst the Ludovico technique, I can't stop it. Last night it took an hour of computer trivia at 2am to make it stop.

My brain doc was outraged, in his mild idiom, when I told him the HMO wouldn't pay for enough pills for 60 mgs daily. "Let me know if I can help..." he said.