Panic Attacks

Panic attacks are no fun. I’ve had to deal with them several times in my life, and I don’t wish them on anybody. Anybody.

The first time I experienced panic attacks was June of 1998. We were about to move from New England to the South – a move I did not really want to make – and were organizing every aspect of the move ourselves. I was trying to say pulled together for C, who was just 2 at the time, and for my husband who was trying to study for impending board exams in addition to packing and moving. I remember several times my vision became fuzzy, I had a hard time breathing and my blood pressure rose. I thought I could collapse at any second. It’s a sickening feeling. It was made even worse when I would start to have the attacks while driving. I would pull over and work hard at breathing deeply.

Over several weeks, as we made it to our new place and settled in, the attacks started to subside. I tried to practice more relaxation techniques to try to prevent them. I have no idea if that really worked, or the stress of moving just eased naturally.

The worst panic attack I had was on April 8, 2004.

I was seven days shy of my due date with S, sitting in a meeting. I remember my colleague’s voices suddenly sounding distant and my notebook, keys and bottle of water on the table looked distorted as if seen through a tunnel. My blood pressure shot up. I could feel this and fought back. I tried focusing on breathing but felt totally disoriented. All I could do was plan an escape.

After a couple of deep breaths, I rose out of my seat and stumbled out of the room. I have no idea if anyone spoke to me or what. I vaguely remember making my way back to my office, sitting down, then thinking I needed to get help.

I paged my husband. I paged my doctor. They wanted me into the hospital as soon as possible.

Was there someone who could drive me to the hospital? No, no one. People had places to go – it was already rush hour. A coworker retrieved my keys, water and notebook from the conference room.

My husband started the drive out to get me. Our places of work were about 17 miles apart. Fairly urban indirect miles.

What about my boys? I called my friend A and asked her to pick them up from their after school programs. Her boys and my boys are good friends. I told her that I was not having the baby, just needed to check something out. Please don’t scare C and M. She was wonderful.

We made it back to the hospital about 5:30 or so, two full hours after the panic attack began. I was starting to get it under control on my own, but my blood pressure reading was still high. My doctor, Dr. Z, was there. She was reassuring and she knew exactly why this was happening.

It was exactly one year, to the day, since C started to really deteriorate. Probably close to the hour and minute, too.

In my efforts to just breathe, I hadn’t put it all together. Of course. C’s “bad day,” as he called it. The one day he did not want me to have the baby.

After verifying that I was not contracting and was not dialated, we called our friend A and reassured the boys that no baby was going to be born that night. That we would be home that evening. They were relieved, especially C.

Dr. Z and the labor nurses monitored me for several hours to make sure my blood pressure went back to normal ranges. Dr. Z ordered me not to try to work any more. “Your leave starts right now,” she said.

C was so pleased to see us – and to see me still looking like I was hiding a beach ball – that evening. He and I talked fairly late into the night. I did my best to reassure him. He tried his hardest to be brave.

We had a long way to go to be okay.