jd_uk
02-10-2015, 02:14 PM
Hi, would be very grateful from anyone with experience for advice on this. Right now I'm not 100% sure what I've been experiencing or why.
I'm a 31 year old male and on Saturday I was in town shopping for a christening gift for a friends baby when I had a very scary experience resulting me ending up at the accident and emergency department of the local hospital.
First a bit of background: I have had a lot of stress in work recently and life has been 100 miles per hour. My boss has been making me fight to pass my probation (I work as a project manager), suggesting that I kept needing to do more and because of this I had been both working non stop and also applying for other jobs outside of work in case things didn't work out there. I'd also been going in to work with a bit of a bad cough recently because I didn't want to take time off sick with the pressures on me.
So, the Saturday morning which this happened I had been feeling in a pretty good mood. The week leading up to it had been very stressful and busy but by Friday I seemed to have my boss and other members of my team singing my praises. My boss had complimented me (for the first time ever) about how well I had come across in a meeting with some very senior people and it seemed like my worries of passing probation were over. I felt more confident than I had done in ages. I was in a bit of discomfort though after lifting weights in the gym the week before had caused me a slightly embarrassing hemorrhoid problem. So I had a morning bath to soothe this issue, played a bit of music , got changed and then walked into town feeling pretty happy (aside from the constant dull ache which anyone who has experience hemorrhoids will be familiar with).
I had some food in a local cafe and had a chat with a friend who works there before heading to the jewellers to get this christening present. After some rushing back and forth between shops to find the best prices I got to the shop where I knew what I wanted to buy. I didn't feel particularly stressed out or tired from rushing about (I'm generally very fit as I go to the gym a lot). I paid for the gift and that is the last thing which I can clearly remember before I felt very ill.
The jewellers was inside a shopping mall/arcade and the next thing I can remember after paying was being outside in the shopping mall (around 5 metres from the jelwellers entrance) and feeling dizzy and scared. I must have told myself that I needed to go back inside the jewellers and remember that I wanted to feel like I was around people. As I walked back in I must have looked confused because the staff there who were gathered together chatting looked at me puzzled asking if i wanted anything. I didn't say anything and lingered leading to one or two of them laughing that I didn't know what I wanted before I started really feeling ill. When I say ill, I remember that my breathing was becoming laboured and i was becoming more and more dizzy. I felt like i was dying and in my mind I thought to myself that maybe this hemorrhoid (which is actually technically a blood clot underneath the skin),which was causing me so much discomfort had broken away as a clot and was causing me to have a stroke or something similar. Seconds later after lingering around the staff I told them I felt unwell and as the panic set in I asked them to call a doctor. Initially they were a bit shocked but as my breathing became more difficult, one of them went to call an ambulance. I was scared of being on my own and remember thinking that my best friend might be saying afterwards how I had died buying a present for his baby :/ I was scared of being alone while all this happened and wanted the staff to write down my parents mobile number so that they could follow me into hospital (they were shopping only 5 minutes away). One of the members of staff there sat me down and suggested that I may be having a panic attack...I told her that I'd seen a doctor this week because of this 'blood clot' - after talking to her for maybe a minute the dizziness cleared and my breathing became a bit easier. I felt silly and embarrassed and told them I was feeling better and not to call the ambulance. I stumbled outside the shop back into the shopping center and called my parents asking them to take me home. My dad asked me to breathe into a bag which I did although I'm not sure it helped and I went in and out of episodes of feeling rough and struggling to control my breath - a roller coaster ride up and down. In the end I went to the hospital to get checked out...blood pressure, tests etc...they found nothing serious.
Then the next day I was still feeling shaken and woke up in bed after a fairly normal nights sleep. I immediately felt awful again like i was in serious danger and put my clothes on and ran to the front door of the house in case I needed people to see me if I collapsed. Again, very frightening but this time it passed quicker. I ended up ringing my friend saying I couldn't go to his baby's christening which was that morning.
Later that day I wanted to get out of the house just to get my confidence up a bit but didn't want to be alone so I joined my sister and her boyfriend for a quiet drink in a bar about 100 metres up the road. I felt up and down there and generally a bit anxious/uncomfortable about whether or not anything might happen again. Eventually I asked my sister just to walk me down the stairs in the bar and home and she was going to come back and stay out - but I didn't make it home. I ended up propped up on a table downstairs and feeling completely unable to walk. For around twenty minutes I tried to stand up but just couldn't and it felt terrifying - I had people looking at me as though I was some drunk or something when I hadn't had a single alcoholic drink. My other sister came from the other side of the city in her car to pick me up and drive me home but I started really struggling to breathe in the car and feeling numbness in my fingers and also in my left arm which worried me more based on what I knew about that sort of thing and heart issues. My sisters rang the out of hours GP who advised me to go back to the hospital to get checked out as I had breathing difficulties - he said that I didn't want to mess around in case I had a blood clot on my lung or something similar. After around 7-8 hours in the hospital until the early hours of the morning, I was eventually discharged with no blood abnormalities (although my heart rate was low so they do want to do some further tests in the form of a 24 hour heart monitor soon, but said this could be because I am usually quite fit and athletic).
That was Sunday night and it is now Tuesday night. I have been off work for 2 days and expect to be off for at least another couple of days. I still don't feel right. My head feels 'pressured' and I generally don't feel right in myself - I have moments where i feel myself go a bit dizzy and panic. IN fact, just as I was writing this I felt a shooting pain in my leg and immediately wanted to close this message down so that nobody would see it if anything did happen to me.
I don't really understand what has happened. I felt so good on Saturday morning all things considered and was really quite relaxed. Then next thing I know I feel like I'm dying.
Is this my first experience of panic attacks? Or have I had a virus which is making me feel dizzy and then I panic and have some sort of attack? Right now I feel a bit scared to be alone and when my parents brought me back home last night to stay with them and we stopped at a shop on the way to get food, I didn't feel at all comfortable as they wandered off. I feel very scared about going back to work and the prospect of feeling like this there as it feels so real and out of my control. I don't want my work colleagues or anyone to see me like that. Just thinking about the prospect of work yesterday morning in bed had me feeling like an elephant was sat on my chest and like my legs were numb.
So again - is this what a first panic attack feels like or is it possible that I've been ill/had a virus which is making me feel dizzy and unwell and then I'm panicking on top of it? How do I get rid of this as I never want it to happen again.
P.s. around 2 months ago when in Amsterdam I did something really stupid and ate some weed cake thinking it would have no effect on me - actually I hadn't read the label properly and ate way too much leading to me feeling awful and panicking for around 7 to 8 hours. The feelings are similar but it is more scary knowing I haven't taken anything because at least then I knew it would ware off. I have wondered if that experience did something to mess my brain up and gave me the ability to experience true panic.
Right now I don't really know what to do. My head and eyes feel pressured and lips feel tight. I thought that I was managing the stress which I had quite well and felt great about it. I am generally a fairly confident and sociable person but right now I feel very uncertain about everything.
Any help would be very much appreciated. Sorry this post was so long.
I'm a 31 year old male and on Saturday I was in town shopping for a christening gift for a friends baby when I had a very scary experience resulting me ending up at the accident and emergency department of the local hospital.
First a bit of background: I have had a lot of stress in work recently and life has been 100 miles per hour. My boss has been making me fight to pass my probation (I work as a project manager), suggesting that I kept needing to do more and because of this I had been both working non stop and also applying for other jobs outside of work in case things didn't work out there. I'd also been going in to work with a bit of a bad cough recently because I didn't want to take time off sick with the pressures on me.
So, the Saturday morning which this happened I had been feeling in a pretty good mood. The week leading up to it had been very stressful and busy but by Friday I seemed to have my boss and other members of my team singing my praises. My boss had complimented me (for the first time ever) about how well I had come across in a meeting with some very senior people and it seemed like my worries of passing probation were over. I felt more confident than I had done in ages. I was in a bit of discomfort though after lifting weights in the gym the week before had caused me a slightly embarrassing hemorrhoid problem. So I had a morning bath to soothe this issue, played a bit of music , got changed and then walked into town feeling pretty happy (aside from the constant dull ache which anyone who has experience hemorrhoids will be familiar with).
I had some food in a local cafe and had a chat with a friend who works there before heading to the jewellers to get this christening present. After some rushing back and forth between shops to find the best prices I got to the shop where I knew what I wanted to buy. I didn't feel particularly stressed out or tired from rushing about (I'm generally very fit as I go to the gym a lot). I paid for the gift and that is the last thing which I can clearly remember before I felt very ill.
The jewellers was inside a shopping mall/arcade and the next thing I can remember after paying was being outside in the shopping mall (around 5 metres from the jelwellers entrance) and feeling dizzy and scared. I must have told myself that I needed to go back inside the jewellers and remember that I wanted to feel like I was around people. As I walked back in I must have looked confused because the staff there who were gathered together chatting looked at me puzzled asking if i wanted anything. I didn't say anything and lingered leading to one or two of them laughing that I didn't know what I wanted before I started really feeling ill. When I say ill, I remember that my breathing was becoming laboured and i was becoming more and more dizzy. I felt like i was dying and in my mind I thought to myself that maybe this hemorrhoid (which is actually technically a blood clot underneath the skin),which was causing me so much discomfort had broken away as a clot and was causing me to have a stroke or something similar. Seconds later after lingering around the staff I told them I felt unwell and as the panic set in I asked them to call a doctor. Initially they were a bit shocked but as my breathing became more difficult, one of them went to call an ambulance. I was scared of being on my own and remember thinking that my best friend might be saying afterwards how I had died buying a present for his baby :/ I was scared of being alone while all this happened and wanted the staff to write down my parents mobile number so that they could follow me into hospital (they were shopping only 5 minutes away). One of the members of staff there sat me down and suggested that I may be having a panic attack...I told her that I'd seen a doctor this week because of this 'blood clot' - after talking to her for maybe a minute the dizziness cleared and my breathing became a bit easier. I felt silly and embarrassed and told them I was feeling better and not to call the ambulance. I stumbled outside the shop back into the shopping center and called my parents asking them to take me home. My dad asked me to breathe into a bag which I did although I'm not sure it helped and I went in and out of episodes of feeling rough and struggling to control my breath - a roller coaster ride up and down. In the end I went to the hospital to get checked out...blood pressure, tests etc...they found nothing serious.
Then the next day I was still feeling shaken and woke up in bed after a fairly normal nights sleep. I immediately felt awful again like i was in serious danger and put my clothes on and ran to the front door of the house in case I needed people to see me if I collapsed. Again, very frightening but this time it passed quicker. I ended up ringing my friend saying I couldn't go to his baby's christening which was that morning.
Later that day I wanted to get out of the house just to get my confidence up a bit but didn't want to be alone so I joined my sister and her boyfriend for a quiet drink in a bar about 100 metres up the road. I felt up and down there and generally a bit anxious/uncomfortable about whether or not anything might happen again. Eventually I asked my sister just to walk me down the stairs in the bar and home and she was going to come back and stay out - but I didn't make it home. I ended up propped up on a table downstairs and feeling completely unable to walk. For around twenty minutes I tried to stand up but just couldn't and it felt terrifying - I had people looking at me as though I was some drunk or something when I hadn't had a single alcoholic drink. My other sister came from the other side of the city in her car to pick me up and drive me home but I started really struggling to breathe in the car and feeling numbness in my fingers and also in my left arm which worried me more based on what I knew about that sort of thing and heart issues. My sisters rang the out of hours GP who advised me to go back to the hospital to get checked out as I had breathing difficulties - he said that I didn't want to mess around in case I had a blood clot on my lung or something similar. After around 7-8 hours in the hospital until the early hours of the morning, I was eventually discharged with no blood abnormalities (although my heart rate was low so they do want to do some further tests in the form of a 24 hour heart monitor soon, but said this could be because I am usually quite fit and athletic).
That was Sunday night and it is now Tuesday night. I have been off work for 2 days and expect to be off for at least another couple of days. I still don't feel right. My head feels 'pressured' and I generally don't feel right in myself - I have moments where i feel myself go a bit dizzy and panic. IN fact, just as I was writing this I felt a shooting pain in my leg and immediately wanted to close this message down so that nobody would see it if anything did happen to me.
I don't really understand what has happened. I felt so good on Saturday morning all things considered and was really quite relaxed. Then next thing I know I feel like I'm dying.
Is this my first experience of panic attacks? Or have I had a virus which is making me feel dizzy and then I panic and have some sort of attack? Right now I feel a bit scared to be alone and when my parents brought me back home last night to stay with them and we stopped at a shop on the way to get food, I didn't feel at all comfortable as they wandered off. I feel very scared about going back to work and the prospect of feeling like this there as it feels so real and out of my control. I don't want my work colleagues or anyone to see me like that. Just thinking about the prospect of work yesterday morning in bed had me feeling like an elephant was sat on my chest and like my legs were numb.
So again - is this what a first panic attack feels like or is it possible that I've been ill/had a virus which is making me feel dizzy and unwell and then I'm panicking on top of it? How do I get rid of this as I never want it to happen again.
P.s. around 2 months ago when in Amsterdam I did something really stupid and ate some weed cake thinking it would have no effect on me - actually I hadn't read the label properly and ate way too much leading to me feeling awful and panicking for around 7 to 8 hours. The feelings are similar but it is more scary knowing I haven't taken anything because at least then I knew it would ware off. I have wondered if that experience did something to mess my brain up and gave me the ability to experience true panic.
Right now I don't really know what to do. My head and eyes feel pressured and lips feel tight. I thought that I was managing the stress which I had quite well and felt great about it. I am generally a fairly confident and sociable person but right now I feel very uncertain about everything.
Any help would be very much appreciated. Sorry this post was so long.