I had a panic attack last night.  Just a small one. But enough to send me down the same spiral I have now become quite accustomed too.

As usual, it came on without warning, but without any real surprise as I’d had a stressful couple of days. I was in a shop with my Wife and Daughter to help her spend her recently received birthday money.  Then at the till, a sudden dizziness and faint feeling came over me. The kind that makes you feel you’re walking on the deck of a small boat at sea.  It made me reach out and grab a shelf to steady myself and for a good few seconds I was convinced I was about to go down. Self care took over and I concentrated on my breathing and began walking around until the dizziness subsided. The feeling of lightheadedness stayed with me for a good couple of hours.  Then, without really noticing it, it was gone although I knew my subconscious would be going ninety to the dozen.

How it all began

Looking back, the first time I remember any sort of panic attack was around 8 years ago. I was helping a friend move into their house and was climbing out of the van when I experienced a very strange feeling in my chest.  The best way I could describe it was a kind of flutter.  It made me instantly stop what I was doing. Then I started getting palpitations and thinking something was wrong with my heart. I’ve seen a work colleague die in front of me from a heart attack.  My Mothers partner had also died suddenly from one. Heart health has therefore never been far from my mind because of this.

Over the coming weeks I started having similar episodes so I went to see my doctor. He asked me of any recent changes in my life.  I’d had very hard 18 months employment which resulted in me leaving a job I used to enjoy.  This was due to a change in Management which put a ridiculous amount of pressure on me. Then, three months into a new job my post was made redundant and I found myself unemployed for three months before finally landing my current role.  All this pointed towards what the doctor described as anxiousness.

He gave me a check up and insisted that there was nothing to suggest there was any issues with my heart. I was asked if I suffered from indigestion, which I confirmed, and as a result he advised me to try a course of Zantec.  He explained to me that during periods of worry the brain and the stomach can start conflicting with each other and can cause these symptoms. I took the tablets and chalked the whole thing down to experience.

Delving Deeper

Over the next couple of years things started to calm down and then all of a sudden I started getting all kinds of different symptoms.  I started searching online (damn you Doctor Google!) and came across a a fantastic website called www.nomorepanic.co.uk.  I took a lot of comfort reading the forums and their explanations of the symptoms of Anxiety.  A lot of them I could directly relate to.  I can look back now and see the obvious signs.  Classic trigger were getting married, having a child, money worries and a miscarriage.  But then sometimes I’d get the worst feelings for no apparent reason at all.  They would come and go without warning and leave me feeling incredibly low for days as my brain tried to convince me I was seriously ill. The worries continued.

It got to a point when I had to take some sort of action to try and get to the bottom of it. The main symptoms I was worried about were the dizziness, chest flutters and the general feeling that something serious was happening to me.  A few years ago I managed to get Private Health through my job so I decided to use that and see where it took me.  Over the course of six months I had a number of consultations and investigations including an Endosocpy and a 24 hour probe placed into my stomach.  This was to  try and rule out any potential digestive problems.  All the tests came back fine but I was still feeling the chest flutters. As a final attempt to get to the bottom of my issues I was sent to a heart specialist.

Closure

It was here that I finally got the closure I was looking for. An Ultrasound  test  came back very positive and the next test was the Treadmill. This was so they could monitor my heart under duress. Right at the end of the test I experienced one of my flutters and it was caught on the screen in front of me!  The consultant explained immediately it was an etopic heart beat which to the uninitiated (including me!) means “skipped beat”.  He told me it was nothing to worry about but just to be on the safe side I was given a heart monitor to wear for a week so they could see if they occurred again.  A sensor on the monitor was to be pressed if I experienced them again and this was then to be logged into a diary.

Over the next 7 days I did continue to experience these etopics and registered then accordingly. Upon returning to the consultant he inspected my results and confirmed that everytime I’d experienced a flutter it had been an etopic.  He also explained that whilst they aren’t very pleasant they aren’t anything to worry about. It seemed that when I was experiencing them my body was reacting and putting me into a state of panic. This in turn brought on my other symptoms.

This was a light bulb moment for me. I finally had a name to put to the symptoms that were causing me the most distress.  I still experience them, along with various other symptoms.  But the fact I now know what was causing them has been a tremendous help.  I feel I can now cope with the moments of panic.  They’re still not nice when they happen. But the acceptance that they are not going to cause me physical harm is of great comfort.

It’s time to talk.

Looking back on my life to this point I’m not really surprised about the stuff I’ve had to deal with recently.  I was painfully shy as a child, was bullied at school and suffered from horrible acne on my chin, nose and back.  In my twenties I gained a lot more confidence thanks to a great friendship group and being thrust into a public facing job.  This helped me almost forget about the times before but I suppose the anxiousness has always been there under the surface.

I like to think of myself as a fairly outgoing happy go lucky kind of person. But there’s always been the other side, the darkness, as I used to call it when it was at its worst. There’s been a massive shift in peoples perception towards mental health over the last few years and I wholeheartedly applaud it.  My own personal situation, whilst raw to me, is nowhere near as bad as some of the stories I have read. I have nothing but the upmost respect for those who have suffered and are still suffering today.

Thanks for reading.

 

Neil

One Dads View