Hi there (sorry this is a long post - but I could do with some help!!!)
I'm new to this site and am here because I have had 4 panic attacks since May.
I am 34 and have recently moved house (March) and care for my daughter Tabby,5, who is profoundly and multiply disabled following being starved of oxygen at birth.
I have had a lot of stress over the last few years but have always been fine in myself, down sometimes but have been able to get over most things fairly quickly. I'm a positive person (or was) and always look on the bright side!!!
This year my daughter had pneumonia for the first time and I must admit it scared the socks off me! She has unstable epilepsy and cannot move (spastic quadriplegia) so we have to sleep with the baby monitor on full blast at night so if we can hear if she has a fit or chokes etc. (writing this it sounds awful!!! But it is amazing what you get used to and I have been very very happy for the last 5 years and grateful that she is with us! She really is a darling and her smile lights up any room!)
Anyway the problem started a couple of months after we moved here and 2 weeks after Tabby had pneumonia. Pneumonia is very serious for Tabby and last year 2 children in her school died of pneumonia, so it was a scary time.
Anyway how it all started was like this...I was sat at the computer and out of the blue I suddenly thought I was going to die. I didn't feel too scared then (i really did think I was going to die! I felt calm and even said goodbye to my hubby who was sat next to me at the time!!!) but after that I was scared I'd feel the same thing again! It was so weird, I went to the doctor and she said I was suffering from an infection as my blood test showed lots of white cells. I put it down to that and all was oK for 2 weeks. Then I started to think about my health all the time, brain tumours, heart etc basically anything I heard in the news I thought I had! I was in the bath reading a trashy horror story about mad cow disease and I had another one where I thought I was going to get mad cow disease, die, but go mad first. Then I found this site and realised that my own thoughts (and the trashy horror stories were making me scared!!!) were bringing on this panic. It helped enormously and I have been able to stave off attacks centered around my health (the advice here and the knowledge that I was not alone was amazing) and I didn't have an attack for 6 weeks. But last week they started again. This time it's centered around me going mad and losing control of myself. My palms and feet go really cold and start sweating (palms actually dripping!)and I start to feel scared. This last one I had really scared the pants off me. I was with my daughter on the bed doing her physio exercises (btw i have another infection at the mo and am on antibiotics) and suddenly I thought what if all those panic attacks I'd had before were really me going mad and I'm really a closet schizo? (!) Or I have a brain tumour making me go mad? What if I black out now (I have never blacked out btw!!!) and when I wake up everyone is dead or something horrible like that? What if I black out and i'm dangerous when I black out if I have no control over myself? (I have to say here I am a total pacifist and don't even kill spiders!!!!) I tried to tell myself that this is really silly thinking but the more I thought that my mind kept bringing up stories I'd heard on the news about people blacking out and doing things (like the chap on the news who had killed his son and hurt his daughter by jumping off a balcony with them etc) and I remember feeling glad I lived in a bungalow!!!! (Now, that is so ridiculous I even laughed out loud!!!!)
This is a new one on me but has left me really messed up. I'm scared now to be alone in case I go mad!!! Reading this I could laugh at it it sounds so nuts and silly (it's like ha ha funny) but I also feel like crying too!!! I have seen my doctor and told her I felt like I was going mad and that I'd had a lot of silly morbid thoughts (like the time I thought what if i die sitting h
Reply With Quote
) I must be a bit of an emotional blob today because i had tears of relief in my eyes when i read your reply! Thank you so much. XXXX
