To Those of Us Suffering from Panic Disorder: You’re Not Alone

I remember my first panic attack like it happened yesterday. I was 23 years old. It was my first day working as a teacher’s assistant at a very strict Catholic grade school, and we were in teacher orientation. As soon as the principal stood up to speak to the staff, my entire face went numb. My eyesight got blurry. My hands became clammy. There was ringing in my ears. My heart began to race a million miles a minute. I had to get out of there! Surely, I was having a stroke. Should I tell my new co-workers sitting next to me that I was dying, and they needed to call 911? No, they’d think I was crazy. I had to find the school nurse.

The lights went off and a slideshow presentation began. I ran out into the hallway and as luck would have it, the school nurse happened to be standing there. She took my blood pressure, then had me sit on the floor and think of my happy place. The image of waves crashing on a beautiful Caribbean beach was my happy place, but it wasn’t calming me down. And that made me panic more. I went home early that day.

The next three months of the school year consisted of random blood pressure checks by the school nurse that served as an escape from an overwhelming amount of responsibility during debilitating panic attacks in the classroom. These attacks would come at me with no warning: at school mass, during art class, or while the kids took a math test.  I remember the middle schoolers and first graders standing in the clinic, staring through my soul, wondering why a teacher was in the nurse’s office. Teachers never go to the nurse… well, sane teachers at least.

After 4 months of the same pattern with little progress to be made, my psychiatrist decided to send me to “Ward 7”as they called it, a weeklong inpatient stay in the local hospital. Luckily, I was able to get sick leave from work, but the entire gossipy staff at my workplace knew something was up. My worst nightmare had come true, the entire school administration thought I was mentally unfit to oversee children.

My first day in the hospital is still very vivid, right out of Shutter Island. Everyone had on hospital gowns and walked around like zombies. One 60 year-old woman told me she was a famous model, and a man diagnosed with HIV was suffering from a candida infection that brought on psychosis. We sat down for breakfast, the food looked and smelled terrible. “Try the chocolate pudding”, she said. “It won’t disappoint”, she said.

Three days later I had become good friends with my fellow outcasts. Not to mention I was eating each meal like it was my last. The drugs they put me on had finally kicked in and I got my appetite back. I remember having one psychiatry session with the doctor assigned to our floor, but she pretty much called the shots. I was placed on three new medications that day: an antipsychotic, a benzo, and a new antidepressant. I wondered if my dopiness was only going to be temporary while in the hospital, but they never adjusted the dosage and finally sent me on my way.

Once I returned to work, every day became a blur. I messed up a lot of simple tasks and forgot everything. My memory had become nonexistent. Since leaving the hospital, my psychiatrist put me on two more bipolar medications (I’m not bipolar), one additional benzo, a dose of lithium and some adderall. I was a walking zombie. I lived my life like this for another 3 years, going in and out of jobs. It wasn’t until I met the love of my life who comes from a family of medical professionals, that he realized I had been drugged and something wasn’t right.

I’ve received help since then, but the journey hasn’t been perfect. For those of us struggling, just know this too shall pass. We are strong. We are warriors. We are more than a panic attack. Our strength is the inspiration for others.

Just as Winston Churchill once said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”

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