Hi folks. I was pretty happy to find this site today. Now I don't feel so alone.
I'm a 32 y/o stay at home mom to 3 girls.
My trouble with anxiety started when my husband was in the navy. I had my first panic attack while he was deployed. I was 6 months pregnant at the time, and worried that I'd never see him again. My mother (a panic sufferer) helped me through it. Being a military spouse was a stressful life. However, I never had another panic attack. Instead, I developed IBS. That stuck with me for 6 years, well after my husband left the military.
My feelings of fear were always based on the afterlife, and usually happened at night, laying in bed. What happens when we die? I have no religious faith, but it seems odd to me that our minds simply ... stop. And does it 'stop' instantly? Or are we essentially buried alive, knowing everything around us is dark and quiet for all eternity?
Thoughts like that had me running for anything that would make me not think them anymore. I got a prescription for ambien and prozac. Both worked for a while. I felt great. I got a part time job, I was full of energy.
Fast forward a couple of years. I was brushing my teeth, and found a sore spot on my gum. Probably from biting into something hot. But my brain made it cancer. Untreatable, terminal cancer.
I went to a dentist, who immediately diagnosed it as NOT cancer (just a sore spot). And then I went back a week later, for the same dentist to check it again. And tell me again that it was nothing.
And I've been spiraling ever since.
What I feel is not what I've heard from panic attack sufferers. It's not chest tightening, can't breathe, dizziness.
What I feel is when a car comes out of nowhere and misses you by inches. When you see a small child is about to fall off of something tall.
All of the blood runs out of my face, my heart feels like it's stopped, and I'm paralyzed. It's like adrenaline is being injected into fear, and turbo-charging it. It's pure terror. And it will take any reason it can to show up.
My throat hurts - cancer.
Leg aches - blood clot.
Congestion - cancer.
Shoulder pain - cancer.
You have no idea the burden that was lifted off of me when I read through these forums, and found out that I'm not alone. None of us are.
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