The following is what I experienced last weekend and I recorded it to Google-Doc through voice recognition as it was happening. It’s a week later and I just had another one and I’m still experiencing a lot of tension although the Xanax has calmed me a bit, it may take me a few tries to finish this because just writing about it can trigger or exacerbate the current attack. As I write this now that I’m on the verge of another attack. I started to peak then took a pill and after 5 minutes took a second. I am scared right now. Please let this feeling go away.
January 29 it’s early in the morning. I just had and I'm still having a very bad anxiety attack...very bad panic attack. I just took one and a half Xanax or 1.5 milligrams, the doctor prescribed them in .5 milligram dosages. I'm not feeling very good...my voice is shaking right now, of course that doesn’t translate to here but I’m shaking, my hands are shaking. I'm walking outside with my dogs. I had to get out of the house. I couldn’t take it in there. I don't know why this is happening. Is this is my blood sugar? I need to calm down. Did I drink too much coffee? I need to calm down….I need to calm down….I need to calm down….I need to calm down….this is a bad one….this is a bad one...this is a real bad one...I'm repeating myself, I know I am... I'm repeating myself because I don't know what else to do… I’m scared…. I don’t want to die... but I'm panicking…. right now as I speak. These things are terrible, these attacks... this is a bad one…. I'm scared…. I'm very very scared right now…. Please let me survive… please, I don’t want to die... I need to put this on the blog and let everybody know how scared…. I am…. I need to calm down... I'm waiting for the Xanax to hit…. needs to hit. My blood pressure is way up right now... I need to stop talking….
I'm back in the house now. I don’t know what to do, when I’m inside I feel like being outside will calm me but when I’m outside I feel like I need to be inside to calm down. I think it was causing me more Panic to be outside so I thought I better get back in. I'm sitting down on my chair right now. I tried sitting straight up, not limp, breathing through my stomach my left arm started hurting me. It's been hurting me for a week now. I've been working out and I'm not sure whether it's coming from working out or whether it's a pain that is so something worse. They say the left arm hurts during a heart attack. Is this a heart attack? It's been hurting me now for about 2 weeks so more than likely it's just a stretched muscle or something but it's just that the more stressed I become it seems like the more severe the pain in my arm becomes so right now I'm sitting down trying to relax. I just took another half a Xanax so I'm up to two milligrams which is probably too much. I don't think it’s bad because I've given my husband two before when he's reached this level, because as I said with his defibrillator going off he has been having some doozies. It's getting bad. I told the psychiatrist the other day that I didn't know how much longer I can take this. Right now I'm a little more calm, but I'm still scared to death and my voice isn’t shaking as badly so the meds are obviously taking effect.
My husband is asleep and doesn't know this is going on. I'm trying to keep this in perspective. Just the fact that I can talk now, much more relaxed, means that I'm calming down so the pills are probably starting to take effect I also took two baby aspirin. I just ate a pudding snack pack really quick just in case was my blood sugar too low. My nerves are on edge. I had a rough night last night, barely got any sleep and then I was, right before the attack happened I was jogging in place trying to make sure I got my Fitbit steps in and when I sat down I suddenly became light-headed and then pain in my arm started, is the stress and panic causing the pain to increase? This attack was much worse. I actually became clammy which are all signs of heart problems, light headedness, left arm hurting, clammy, sweating, panic.
I'm going to leave most of this recording or post in raw form when I post it to my blog (if I survive to post it) because I want people to know what a person goes through when they're having a panic attack. It's not fun, it's scary as hell. I've been going through these since my twenties but they were gone for so long, since my forties. I was hoping they were gone forever but in the last six months they have been returning and escalating in impact, becoming worse every time. It's time for me to start seeing my psychiatrist again. I think this is all in reaction to my husband's health seeing him go through these attacks and facing death with him on a daily basis it's all coming back now. I was just so hoping this part of my life was over, this anxiety part, but it looks like it's not so I'll post more later hopefully
Okay it's about two and a half hours later. The Xanax is in my system and I got drowsy. I laid down and took a nap and now I feel better. The anxiety level still there a little bit but not to point where I was this morning so it’s no longer the panic mode that was literally making me crazy this morning. I'm outside walking with the dogs again and I'm feeling much better I think I may have just overdid it this morning. I got up so early and didn't have a great night's sleep so even when I was awake I was still tired, I was trying to get my Fitbit steps in as I was reading my blog on my phone, to see how many typos it had (there are always typos no matter how many times I check it the next time I read it I find more mistakes) I was running in place, moving back and forth, working on getting in those steps. I hadn't eaten yet and I had probably three cups of coffee so I think I just overdid it. It could have been my sugar was probably very low but all of these things conspired to bring about the panic attack and it was a bad one. It was all I could do to keep from going to the emergency room. Believe me, if I haven’t been on the self-imposed drinking banned I would have poured myself a vodka and orange right at that moment. Sometimes the self-medication is the best way to treat these attacks, better and faster than any of the pills the doctors prescribe but remember I can’t drink until May. I have 3 months to go before I can turn to alcohol to help me cope with these attacks.
I've been working out everyday and without the alcohol I don't have an outlet anymore other than World of Warcraft or doing my chores around the house, like laundry or vacuuming. I really do miss having that drink. I have spent in 29 days now working out and stay sober and it's going to be a long next few months but I'm going to make it. This morning the pain in my arm, the clamminess, the lightheadedness, the shakiness, all these very physical responses put me way over the top. My husband and I spoke after he woke up and I said “Now you know what I have been going through my entire life” as he is having attacks now too but he has more reason to have these attacks than I do, 5-6 heart attacks, a defibrillator/pacemaker. He has “real” heart issues and mine are just imaginary. But the thing is when they happen we are sick, I mean we are physically, not just emotionally, sick. You feel like you are literally on the cusp of death going through all the experiences that someone that is truly having heart failure experiences without the actual dying part and it happens over and over and over again, day after day. I mean everything that you can imagine that it is incorporated along with the feeling of a heart attack along that comes to mind occurs and you feel it physically. This morning I was actually beginning to feel the check pains too. So is it real or just in my mind?