Email to a Fellow Panic Attack Sufferer #2

Well, I've been thinking about you these past few days and wondering
how you made out at the doctor's office yesterday. I hope with all my
heart that it went well. Please let me know! :)

I'm so glad that you found my letter to be helpful. I know that it's
just awful to feel like "NOBODY GETS ME!!!" or the dreaded "Am I the
only person in the world who feels like this???" but trust me, the way
you described your anxiety could have been any one of millions of
people talking. Including myself.

After reading your account of what you believe brings on panic
attacks, I'd say you and I are twins. Right down to the social
smoking and worrying about lighting up a cigarette in the morning. I
know about deadlines - although I haven't worked in the newspaper
industry for several years now - I worked for both a daily paper as
well as a weekly paper. My job was pagination, and then it was
graphic design and supervising the layout department. At the time I
was on Zoloft and was still having panic attacks. Although I was
busy, the pressure of that ever-looming deadline kept me in near-panic
mode at all times. Even on the days I had off of work I would panic
thinking about the last layout I approved - what if it went to press
with errors??? So I'd go to the store and grab a copy and scour it
for errors. Thursday nights when I had to do all the ad layout for
the Sunday paper I was fine - but from the time I turned it in until
Sunday afternoon I was constantly going over in my head whether or not
I'd put our big advertisers in the right spot. Even triple checking
the thing wasn't enough for me - I was so engrossed in the fact that
so many people had to touch the thing before it got shot, what if
someone nudged something for God's sake??? I was the ultimate
paste-up department witch - I'd go back there and pour over everyones
work to make sure they didn't screw it up.

Why on earth I felt like everyone around me was so incompetent I have
no idea...it was more than likely the fact that I was terrified of
screwing up. But, yes - deadlines, no fun. I miss that line of work
though, which is rather ironic.

Oh and intestinal bloating??? ME!!! This is a major trigger for me
so I try to eat smaller meals. Key word being "try." I am convinced
that when I eat a big meal it causes me to get all bloated in my
stomach and belly and push everything upward leading to heart
palpitations...so I burp and then say to myself, "Oh thank God, it was
just gas." Man, the things we do, huh?

Oh, and the shellfish thing - TOTALLY me. Every holiday or family
gathering I make a sort of crab spread ... it's that pseudo-fish, oh,
what's it called... I don't know, like Crab Delight or something - but
it's not crab it's Pollock or some other weird fish with pink dye on
the edges...well, I mix that with cream cheese and ranch dressing and
take a box of Club crackers and everyone loves it. I eat it and think
"oh God please don't let me get an allergic reaction!!!" There is NO
shellfish IN the stuff - yet it's called "Crab Delight" so I get that
thought in my head and well, there ya go - I'm anxious and excusing
myself so that I can run to the bathroom to check for red blotchy
patches on my body. I've eaten tons of shrimp and crab in my life and
never had an allergic reaction, either. In fact, I love shrimp scampi
and order it sometimes when we go to Red Lobster (okay, every time we
go there) and every single solitary time I worry about the possibility
of a reaction.

So when do you leave for ****** ? (Thou shalt not have a tidy segue
at 3 AM.) :) Now, I totally understand where you're coming from - I
could have written that word for word, except - exchange ******* for
the Eastern shore of Maryland. It's a big long 2 hour stretch of
nothingness, and to be quite honest - if there WAS a hospital I'd be
terrified that the entire staff was incompetent. So - my mother's
house - where we'll be having Thanksgiving dinner (on Saturday ...
don't ask, it's a weird family) is on a teeny little island in some
teeny little trickle of a river that leaks off of the Chesapeake Bay.
There's a serious lack of people living there who have all of their
teeth - however, on the edges of the island are the "nice homes",
which thankfully my mother has one of. I don't care if it's nice or a
pop-up camper - it's on an ISLAND 25 miles from the nearest town, or -
village, you could call it, I suppose. Every time I visit her I wish
I was a person who drank. I feel so terrified that I'll have a panic
attack - which might actually be a heart attack - just like you said,
that I have to take extra xanax to get through it.

That being said, I bet that neither you or I will have a total
freak-out panic attack over Thanksgiving - no, no - if we're going to
do that we'll do it when we've gotten back home. Man are we good in
"crisis mode" - (big family get togethers qualify as 'crisis mode' for
me) - if we absolutely can NOT panic, we don't - but as soon as the
perceived 'danger' is removed we let out a really big breath and then
we "handle" everything at once. And by handle - I mean finding
ourselves just spewing anxiety while slipping on our PJ's a day or two
after we've gotten home from the trip, ending up having a major panic
attack and wondering "Why???" We're just not all that nice to
ourselves. Oh, and for certain we're very smart women - but when it
comes to figuring out whatever could have caused such an intense panic
attack - we have no clue. It takes some digging - but you usually
find the answer if you look back a week or more and think about all
the times you didn't panic.

Oh, blah - I'm so tired ... this is my usual bedtime, I'm a terrible
night-owl but trying to recover from that and sleep and wake at
socially acceptable times. My latest research regarding panic
disorder is the effects of antidepressants and benzodiazapines on our
circadian rhythm. My body temperature doesn't ever seem to be 98.6º -
but usually lower, so I am trying to figure out if all of those years
I spent on antidepressants put my body into slow-mo, which would
explain why they made me gain so much weight, and now - 3 years later,
I still can't seem to lose it very easily. Sometimes researching it
is scary because I run across words that are triggers for me, (mostly
medical terms) but I think it's really important to my website to
continue to add articles to it. It's a project that I'm certain will
be a work-in-progress for at least another couple of decades.

Well, I didn't mean to blather on incessantly (again) - basically I
just wanted to do three things - say hello, see how your doctor's
appointment went, and reassure you that you'll make it through the
Thanksgiving trip. You're amazingly strong, so much more so than you
give yourself credit for.

Take care, :)
Lisa