Lessons learned from panic attacks

I remember so vividly the first time I was convinced I was dying. Unfortunately, such days happened other times, but for different reasons and in a different manner. I will write other articles about these. 

To briefly frame the context, my big sister had left our home in a stormy way. She basically didn’t want to live with us anymore and went on living with her at-the-time boyfriend (thank God, they since then splitted up). The process was quite violent, and since I am extremely sensible, I felt very shattered. My sister never ever told me she loved me, she never supported me, she would also hit me quite harshly (I had to do some X-rays once because my wrist was green and blue, and we thought it was broken). Apparently, she was jealous of me, hence her reaction. Jealous because I had an apparently more powerful brain than her. But she didn’t know the costs of having that. You will know soon about it. Anyway, I still loved her and I was sad that she was leaving. For my parents, all of this seemed to be perfectly normal. 

One day, she came back home as I was alone there. The day was therefore supposed to be good since I could spend some time with her. But as expected, it also was very hard since she was so mean without even noticing it. She decided to order pizzas for lunch, something that we had never done before. This made me extremely nervous, because I don’t like/am afraid of eating such foods. After we were done with that, she decided to leave the house, even though we were supposed to stay together during the afternoon. I think all of this somehow added up. And this is what happened. I remember everything until the point on which I fainted and thought I was dead. 

I was playing the piano. My sister was in the bathroom, doing something to her hair, I think. Then, all of a sudden, my head started spinning really quickly. I dragged myself to my bed because I didn’t feel good at all and couldn’t manage to stay sitting at the piano. I closed my eyes because it would make the spinning less bad. Then, my sister violently entered my room, saying she was leaving. She found me, lethargic on my bed. It seems like I didn’t look good. She asked what the hell was happening (I never show what I’m feeling, so me laying on my bed with my eyes closed during the day is not normal). I said I didn’t feel good. She said that was non-sense. She wanted me to stand up. As I put my two feet on the floor, I collapsed, completely tetanized. My whole body was wet. I couldn’t breathe, I was hyperventilating. I was crying at the same time, without knowing why. I could not move. My body was just frozen. My hands were petrified. My fingers were paralysed, and really tense. I was not lying straight but completely huddled, as I had fallen like this. My heart was beating incredibly fast. The beating was also happening in my ears. All the sounds were muffled. At this point, I thought – and so did my sister, that I was having a heart attack. Remember that during this whole time my eyes were closed. I could not open them anyway since my body was not responding to my brain anymore. 

I heard my sister calling my mother, completely panicked, telling her I was having a heart attack. Then, she called the firefighters (in my country, this is what you do when you have an emergency). I learned after that my mother had called my father in the meantime, this is why at some point I could hear his voice in my room next to me, even though he was supposed to be at work. He arrived before the firefighters. 

The firefighters arrived. They tried to move my fingers, but that didn’t work. To picture this, my fingers were like the fingers of the people who died in Pompeii. They also put my body straight, but I remember that they struggled since it was so tensed. They opened my eyes and realised my eyes were not responding to me either. I was not blinded by their torch, and my eyes were moving frantically in my eyeballs. They acknowledged that my heart was beating way too fast. They decided to send me straight away to the hospital. I was brought there in their fire truck, with sirens yelling. I remember that I was carried there with bare feet. I consider myself lucky, because since I was underage, my father was allowed to come with me in the truck. I couldn’t really talk since my mouth also was tense and therefore could not open. It was useful to have him. 

We arrived at the hospital. I was very confused, I didn’t really know where I was besides that I was laying on a stretcher. I heard someone yelling that accompanists were not allowed in the emergency care unit, to which my dad yelled back that I was underage (that was a grown-up hospital, which was the closest from my home, so I guess that’s why I was not brought to the children hospital). I felt I was more cared for then because I was underage. 

I felt angry because I had to somehow reply to questions, such as ‘are you taking medication’. I really didn’t like saying that I was on high doses of antidepressants and antipsychotics, yet it had to be said. 

Then I don’t remember much. The one thing I do remember is that at some point, I felt that I was transferred to a less noisy place (emergency care places are noisy). Maybe I was in a separate room, I don’t really know. I felt someone who extremely cautiously took my clothes off. I didn’t have any strength to say anything. The person was a woman. She had a very gentle and soothing voice. She told me she was very gentle because she didn’t want the spinning to go worse. She carefully wiped my body with a very soft piece of fabric soaked in hot water (at least I think because the fabric was warm, in fact I don’t know what it was). It felt good. It helped my body to be less tensed. My feet were ice cold as I had been transferred with bare feet (and my blood was not circulating well in my body either). I remember her massaging them with her warm hands and that piece of fabric too. To this day, I never felt someone caring so much about me (even though she probably doesn’t remember me and even though I don’t even know how she looks – maybe I could recognize her by her voice and by the gentleness of her movements). She understood that I could not talk. She understood that I was in a very vulnerable position, first arriving on a stretcher, and then lying almost naked on it. I am really thankful to her. 

Then, I was wired to multiple things. At this point, I fainted and don’t remember anything.

I later learned that what I had was not a heart attack, but a panic attack. Since I didn’t know what I was having, I was panicking even more, which caused the attack to be really massive. 

When thinking back about this, one thing makes me laugh. And I am grateful to not only have such horrible memories associated with it. I smile because my best friend told me, once I explained her what had happened: “What? Your room was full of firefighters, and you did not even see them? What a shame”. She reminds me that no matter the situation, you should try to seek for the positive out of it. Try to see what happens with a different perspective. Even if you cannot find a funny element in it (as it happened to me in other situations I will tell you later about), try to find how this situation has eventually helped you to move forward. Or identify the situation as the one being your rock bottom, from where things can eventually improve. Acknowledge these moments. Because they are also part of your life. 

These moments are also excellent reminders that we all face different challenges in our lives. Therefore, we should never judge a person as we first meet him or her. You can never know what people are going through. A ‘smiling’ person can be the most suicidal human being on the planet. A ‘good-looking’ girl can be struggling every time she is confronted with food. A ‘successful’ person can be paralysed by anxiety without you even noticing. Don’t judge people. Be compassionate and supportive to all the human beings you encounter. Support others, but most importantly, care about yourself too.