Panic Attack Part II

Three days after Panic Attack Part I, hubby and I visited a local lab to have our blood tested. My regular physical was back in October but I never got around to the blood work my doctor had recommended. Hubby had his physical the week before. So, like the middle aged married couple we are, we booked our appointments back to back so we could go together. Just like his parents do, I thought sweetly. The technician took a few vials of blood, I tinkled into a cup, and off we went.

A few days after that, I was looking at the papers I got from the hospital during Panic Attack I, and decided I should probably make an appointment with my doctor to discuss the episode. While I was there, I figured, I'd get the results of the blood work too. I felt perfectly fine walking into his office, just as I had since Panic Attack I six days before.

The doctor seemed perplexed from the events of the previous week. But he wanted to talk to me about my blood work anyway. The results were nothing to write home about. It seems I have an unfortunately high level of cholesterol. He wanted me to have a stress test and EKG. He wanted me to take an aspirin every day. Not the baby kind, the regular kind. He wanted to put me on cholesterol lowering medication. He wrote me a prescription for simvastatin, 20 mg. I was not too jazzed about this but okay, yeah, I'll do it, no biggie.

I went home, called the hospital and made the appointment for the stress test & EKG. I took the simvastatin before bed, and the aspirin in the morning. I ate breakfast. Then things started to feel...out of control. My stomach was churning. My heart was leaping out of my chest. I had a feeling of foreboding. I was going to die at any moment. Of that there could be no doubt. Hubby was getting ready to go to the gym as he always does after breakfast but I wouldn't let him go. "I think I'm having a panic attack," I said, very quietly so my 13-year old didn't hear. Hubby is kind and sensitive so he sat down next to me and read the paper until I felt secure enough to let him to go.

I decided I'd keep myself busy and my mind off the fact that I was going to die at any moment. After my son left for school, I showered, then headed off to the gym. I was just going to walk around the lap at the gym anyway, nothing too strenuous. After which I was going to run some errands, so the shower came first. So far, so good. I did 45 minutes around the track. I talked to people. I tried to push down the anxiety that was raising inside me. I had no pain but I knew with certainty I was about to collapse.

But I made it to Costco, where I saw a woman that looked like a college friend who died over 10 years ago. It was a sign that she was waiting for me. On the car radio, I heard Bob Dylan singing "Knocking on Heaven's Door," and he was almost certainly referring to me. On the front page of the paper I saw a picture of school children looking up, which was captioned something to the effect of, "Children looking toward Heaven." These were signs of my impending demise. I was afraid to eat, lest my cholesterol level skyrocket upwards and kill me even quicker. For lunch I had only a banana and some asparagus. I opened all the doors in the house in case I had to call 9-1-1 and lost consciousness before the ambulance arrived. I walked to the end of the street taking deep breaths, trying to fend off the heart attack I was about to have. At least someone would find my body in the snow, instead of my kids finding me on the floor when they got home. This was a very rational panic attack.

I went to work in the school library, where I volunteer once every week. Surely that would keep me busy and my mind off the fact that people were shortly going to find me dead. Helping the kids check out books would make me happy and distracted. It didn't. I felt faint. I felt dizzy. My heart was pounding. I felt flushed. I told the library secretary that I wasn't feeling well and planned to lie down in the nurse's office until school was over. I just said I felt woozy, and she said one of the kids had just told her he felt woozy too. But, I thought, he's not about to have a heart attack like I am.

I lay down on one of the vinyl beds they have for students in the nurse's office. I confided to the nurse that I thought I was having a panic attack because of the cholesterol problem and the chest pains from the previous week. "What did you eat today?" she asked. "Yogurt for breakfast, a banana and asparagus for lunch." "Not enough protein," she said, handing me some peanut butter crackers. They seemed to help. I confided with her about the upcoming stress test, and she said, "I know what you're going through. I've been there."

I went home and texted Hubby, "Feeling awful. Must you go tonight?" He was scheduled to attend the Pitt-WVU basketball game that evening with some friends, where they had tickets for a luxury box. My phone rang immediately.

"What's going on?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said. "I feel terrible."

When he arrived home, I was under a blanket on the living room couch, shivering, dizzy, heart leaping from my chest. I'm surprised he couldn't hear it across the room.

"I'm not going tonight," he said, pulling out his cell phone to call his buddy with the news that he would not be joining the gang in the luxury box. I didn't even try to pretend I wanted him to go. If I was going to expire that evening, I wanted him by my side, not at some stupid basketball game. I called my doctor to report that I was afraid something was very wrong, and was thrilled to find out she had office hours that night and time to see me.

Hubby took me to the doctor's office. Just being there made me feel calmer. When the heart attack arrived, at least I'd be in the presence of skilled professionals. The nurse took my blood pressure, measured my pulse, gave me another EKG. All of which were normal. I convinced my doctor, teary-eyed (me, not her) to write me a prescription for anxiety. Xanax. She said it was a low dose but to take it if I needed it, and really, I should only need to take half a pill. I filled the prescription immediately, took a whole pill and drank a glass of port.

My sister called. She's a psychiatrist and wanted to see how I was feeling. She had been called by a concerned brother, himself a physician but not a psychiatrist, after his having been called by Hubby, who was very concerned at this point that the easy-going exceedingly healthy woman he married, the one who bore him four strapping sons, had gone off the deep end without a life vest.

Dr. Sister didn't hesitate to diagnose. "It's menopause," she said. "You should be on hormones." She went on to describe patients who thought they were losing their minds, thought they were suffering from depression, thought they were having heart attacks, when all they needed was to adjust their hormones. She explained the flawed studies about HRT that have done a disservice to women like me by making our doctors swear off dispensing of hormones when we need it most. She recommended I pick up a good read entitled "It's My Ovaries, Stupid," so I would understand the biology of the body that was at that moment betraying me.

Our conversation made me feel better in the sense that I began to recognize that it was at least possible that I was not going to drop dead of a heart attack at any moment. Or maybe it was the Xanax. In any event, I slept well and hoped that tomorrow would be a better day.

Panic Attack, Part I

So I'm sitting in my Florence Melton Adult Mini-School class last week, learning about the Jewish viewpoint on artificial insemination. An interesting and somewhat academic discussion, since I have already birthed my four children and, at age 50, certainly am not planning to have more by the regular means, never mind artificially.

About 15 minutes before the class ends, I begin to have chest pain. Nothing major, the kind I've felt maybe twice a year over the past 30 years. Sharp, stabbing, left side, worse when I inhale. I assume it will pass after a minute or two but it doesn't. I begin to feel faint and dizzy and lean up against my adoring husband, who is seated beside me. "Something's wrong," I whisper. "What is it?" he asks quietly. "My chest," I say. "It hurts." I have my hand on my heart. "I have to lay down," I say.

Picture this: we are seated around a large table in a large room located in the basement of our temple. By "we" I mean my husband and me, the rabbi, and about 8 somewhat elderly Jewish people who convene weekly to learn about Judaism, same as me (except for the somewhat elderly part.) They are alarmed. Two of them are retired physicians, and they stand over me, asking questions. "Do you feel nauseous?" "Have you had this pain before?" "Do you have high blood pressure?" I tell them to call someone. Yes, call 9-1-1. So then I hear the rabbi's voice on the phone in the next room, a 50-year old woman with chest pains, send an ambulance. I feel calm, but my chest hurts. Still stabbing pains, worse when I inhale. I tell one of the retired docs I think maybe it's a heart murmur that a doctor said I had some 30 years ago, but that another doctor said I didn't, 15 years ago. "Do you have indigestion?" One of them asks. "My family is legendary for its hiatal hernias," I reply. He laughs.

After about 10 minutes, the pain subsides and I feel....fine. But by then the ambulance has arrived and here they are, telling me to get on the gurney. I say, "Really, I feel better now," but they are having none of that. My classmates are now clustered together, standing on the other side of the room, looking at me with concerned expressions on their faces. Eyebrows raised in sympathy, tight smiles, as I am wheeled out of the room and maneuvered into the elevator, which does not seem to have been designed for gurnies.

Out of the building we go, bump bump bump down the cement steps, where the ambulance is waiting. Now there's a police car there too. I see my husband standing behind the ambulance clutching my coat and my new Coach purse as they shut the doors. The EMT lady puts an IV in my left arm "so you're ready for medication if you need it when we get to the hospital." She puts one of those oxygen tube things in my nose, like you see in the health wing at assisted living facilities (you know, those places they used to call "old folks homes.")

"Is this really necessary?" I say. "I'm feeling much better now."

"It's protocol," the EMT lady says. "You're in an ambulance after having chest pain. That'll get you an EKG, blood work, Xrays, and 23 hours in the hospital."

"I just don't want my kids to worry," I say.

"Better worried than grieving," she says, and to that, I have no retort.

Once at the hospital, they do just as the EMT lady said: EKG, blood work, Xray. All of which return as normal. One of the questions they ask, before my husband gets there, is "Do you feel safe at home?" I want to laugh because I have a ridiculously happy marriage. But then I think that it's a sad society when a woman comes to the emergency room and a standard questions is, "Do you feel safe at home?" A topic for another day, but suffice it to say, yes, I feel safe at home.

My husband enters and tells me he has called the kids and said I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance. "I wish you hadn't told them that," I say. "They'll be worried."

"Why don't you call them now to tell them you're OK?" he says, handing me his phone. I call, and son #3 answers. He's 17, a shining light in my life. Just looking at him is a joyful experience.

"Hello?" he says.

"Hi Phil, it's Mom."

"Are you OK?"

"I'm fine. I just didn't feel very well so they're running some tests. We'll be home soon." An audible sigh of relief. "Were you worried?"

"Well, Dad said he'd call if anything was wrong, and I saw his cell number on my phone..."

"Sorry honey, I didn't mean to scare you. I'm sure I'm fine and we'll be home probably in half an hour or so."

They send me home with the following instructions: whatever pain you are experiencing is not coming from the heart. To be cautious, rest for the next 24 hours and follow-up with your doctor. Continue with any current medications.

I am not on any medications.

Call me crazy, but these are not the most illuminating of instructions. But I do make an appointment with my doctor, because I should be following up with him on my blood work from a recent routine physical anyway. Which leads us to Panic Attack, Part II.