My Experience with Panic Attacks

I did not know how it all began. A dreadful, churning nausea welled up in me out of the blue.The air around me seemed to have become viscous and I could not breathe properly.My chest and throat felt dry and tight, as if being constricted by a snake.I saw tiny balls of light flashing before me.Was I hallucinating? A powerful surge of fear washed over me. My hands shook involuntarily. My forehead, armpits and palms were damp with cold sweat. My heart was throbbing fast and my head went reeling. Holding my chest in anguish, I plonked myself down on a chair and asked my students to do their own work.

The students let out an uproarious cheer and started chatting among themselves. Most of them had not been paying attention to my verb conjugation lesson. They were so thrilled to be left on their own devices.None of them bothered to ask why I stopped teaching. Chattering and playing games mattered more to them. The classroom was a cacophony of voices. The students were having the time of their lives, talking their heads off, throwing hand-made paper planes to each other, playing Tic-Tac-Toe, chasing each other around the room and doing arm-wrestling without a care of the world. Nobody paid attention to me. I found myself being gradually sucked into a vortex of emotions. I was trying to fight off a strong urge to cry. I clenched my fists with all my might but it did nothing to alleviate my feelings of dread.

Before the panic attack happened, I had been in the grip of depression for several months.I had been struggling with a newly-assigned job and worrying about my chances of getting a promotion.The newly-assigned job was a drudgery which had been foisted on me.Its paperwork was so much that I had to stay up late getting things done every night.I wanted to voice out my trouble to my colleagues but feared that they might ridicule me.The issue of promotion worsened my predicament to the nth degree. Having been the lowest-ranked teacher for twelve years at my school, I had been desperate to get myself promoted to end my state of abject humiliation.I had applied for it back in 2008 but received no reply for a long time.Day in and day out, I waited for the letter in vain and wallowed in self-pity.Like a balloon which had been over-inflated,the accumulated stress finally burst out uncontrollably when I was teaching in a Form One class one Wednesday afternoon on 19 May 2009.

When my English lesson was over, I dragged myself back to the staffroom. My head was light and my steps doddery. I asked for permission to go to hospital from the afternoon senior assistant. I was so beyond my normal-self that my speech disintegrated into a stammer. Seeing that I was unwell, the senior assistant commiserated with me and gave me her consent. I rang up my father and he came to take me to hospital.

While waiting for a doctor to attend to me, I was fighting a futile war against my troubled emotions.My energy was gradually sapped by a debilitating coldness that pulsated through my veins. I even found it difficult to sit upright on the low-backed chair in the waiting hall.My back muscles were sore and my shoulders trembled like leaves. At one point I experienced numbness on the upper right side of my neck. I could not look sideways for a frightening period of ten to fifteen minutes. What was wrong with me? Was I suffering from a minor stroke? The large crowd in the waiting room disturbed me too. Their chatters, footfalls and staring eyes seemed to cast a stifling weight upon my chest. I could not help writhing in where I sat.My worried father poked his head around the door of the consultation room every now and then, inquiring the nurse when I would be attended to.

After what seemed like an eternity, I was called into the consultation room. The doctor asked me what was wrong but I could not answer. I was so overwhelmed by the onslaught of emotions that many English and Malay words eluded me.I kept saying Ah-Ah-Ah in spite of myself.The doctor put his hand on my shoulder and asked me to inhale deeply before speaking. I followed what he had said and told him what I had been going through in disconnected sentences.He smiled at me encouragingly each time I floundered for words to put my message across.

"You are under tremendous stress, and you need to relax," said the doctor.
"Do I have a heart problem? My heartbeat is fast," asked I, in a voice full of
worry.
"I am going to give you an injection to calm you down. Then, a nurse will take
the reading of your heartbeat,"was the doctor's gentle reply.

The doctor got up and gave me the so-called nerve-calming injection. I grimaced in pain as the needle poked into the muscle of my upper arm.Then, a male nurse took me to an adjacent emergency ward and asked me to lie down on a narrow bed.He opened my shirt and rubbed some ointment on my chest. What he did next was to paste the electrodes of an electrocardiogram on my chest.He turned on the machine and the reading of my heartbeat was printed on a long piece of paper.While waiting for the result, another nurse came and took my blood sample. She told me that the doctor wanted to see if my blood glucose level was in the normal range. According to her, people with diabetic problems normally experience lightheadness and numbness in the arms like I did. Like the previous test, the result of my blood sample would be out in an hour. I waited for the results in the waiting hall.

The rigmarole of the aforementioned tests was able to temporarily distract me from my suffering. All the feelings of doom crept back up on me when I returned to the waiting hall. They multiplied by intensity when I thought of my unfinished job and my promotion. My father asked me if I was hungry. I shook my head. I did not feel hungry at all despite being one hour late for my usual dinner time. Papa was hungry and decided to have dinner at the hospital canteen. When he was making his way to the canteen, I was seized by a sudden urge to retch and rushed to the toilet. I only vomited out liquid. I looked at myself in the mirror and found my face drained of colour. My eyes were bloodshot and my hair in a rumpled mess. I wanted to cry but no tears came out.On my way back to the waiting hall, I lost the swinging rhythm of my arms for no reason at all.I groaned and crossed my arms as hard as I could. My tinnitus-infected ear rang louder than usual.I made a soundless cry to God:"Lord, drive the devil out of me. I can't stand it any more!" Panting like a sick dog, I teetered between panic and a complete sense of helplessness. My mouth was dry and bitter.They were the taste of depression, so to speak.

I reached home at almost eight that evening. The doctor pronounced that I was alright. He advised me to take a good rest and forget about my troubles.Papa cooked some porridge and insisted that I take it. I could only take a morsel of it and went to sleep after taking a hot shower.However, I could not drift into a peaceful sleep. My suffocating workload and my hard-to-get promotion came back haunting me again. Torrents of doom-like sensation kept coursing through my body. I could also feel a great weight settle on my forehead. The more I wanted to shut my eyes, the heavier the weight became. The walls of my bedroom seemed to be closing in around me and I shouted on top of my voice in horror. However, nobody heard my cry. My consciousness slowly fizzled out into nothingness. I thought I was dead.

I woke up the next morning feeling emotionally-spent.Worse still,I had wet my bed.I was filled with shame.Papa had to wash the mattress and dry it in the sun. I did not go to school that afternoon. I was both physically and mentally unfit for teaching that day.

From June to July, I had regular bouts of panic attacks. I made countless trips to hospital. As a result, I was absent from school for a staggering number of twenty-three days. Even when I was at school, I could not teach and sat through my lessons allowing my students to do anything they liked.

One night, when I was down with another spell of panic attack, my sister sat beside my bed and gave me some words of advice.

She said,"Tai-Tai, you can't go on like that forever. You have to take a different approach to deal with your problems."

In a tremble voice, I said," I can't handle my newly-assigned job well. There's no one helping me. The deadline for my report has dwindled to 14 days but I have only finished 40 percent of it."

Sister asked, "Why don't you seek advice from the head of your department?"

I said, "No, I don't dare. She might label me as useless and incompetent."

Sister furrowed her eyebrows and said," Don't be negative. Haven't you noticed that you are making yourself miserable with your pessimism? Don't keep everything to yourself."

I said,defending my weak ego, " She may laugh at me, sis"

Sister hissed, "If you are too scared to get help, I will come to your school on your behalf. I will make sure that she appoints someone to help you."

I jerked up from my bed in shock and said, "No, don't do it. I will try my best to get help."

Sister smiled and said, "Make sure you do it. As for your promotion, wait patiently for the reply.Telephone the National Education Commission if you are eager to know the result of your application."

Sister's words knocked some senses into my head and I gave her my word that I would follow her suggestions.

When I returned to school the next day, I discussed my problems with my school's head of language department. She listened to me with concern and agreed to appoint someone to help me. I felt very much relieved when the appointed person came and took some files from me. Then, I telephoned the National Education Commission and inquired about my promotion. To my delight, the officer told me that my application was being processed.From that day onwards, I suffered less from panic attacks.

One day, Papa suggested I go to China to relax my mind. I heeded his advice and went on a nine-day-tour to Hunan. I enjoyed the year-end trip very much. The beautiful scenery and friendly people took a huge load of stress off my shoulders. When I returned to Miri, I was completely healed from panic attacks.I was ready to start year 2010 with a vengeance.

From my horrifying experience with panic attacks, I have learnt that it is not good to keep all problems to mysef. Talking to others provides a healthy outlet for all pent-up feelings.I could have been spared from the horrors of panic attacks had I looked at my problems with a positive mind. I hope I will not be beset with panic attacks again.