I've fallen down a slippery slope in the last few weeks, and I can't seem to get myself out of it. My panic attacks are new development to my issues, and it's to a degree needless to say that I need advice and maybe some help. Although the current panic attacks are new, I've suffered two in the past. The first time I was able to call a friend that suffered attacks, and the second I was with a good friend who had in the past also suffered attacks. This recent third time I wasn't as lucky.
I'll start from the beginning. Recently I've fallen into a depression. I don't enjoy much of anything and I've been irritated and snappy. This started around my time of the month so I ignored it but it didn't get any better afterwards and it quickly started making a dent on my life despite the fact that it hasn't been more than a month since it started. I suffer from insomnia, something I've had for at least 10 years and in the last five years I've developed hypersomnia. Hypersomnia effects how much I sleep and how restful my sleep is when my insomnia doesn't prevent me from sleeping. I sleep on average 12-16 hours and wake up feeling worse than if I hadn't slept at all. I have no control over the hours I sleep so I cycle between sleeping early in the day to insure I can wake up for work and not sleeping at all when my insomnia gives me issue. Since my depression began I spent more nights awake and more hours asleep when I did crash, on average 16-20 hours.
Last Friday night I stayed up and was trying to motivate myself to work on some of my hobby projects. I drank an energy drink because I didn't want to sleep until mid afternoon and was feeling fine for the most part. Sometime during the night I started thinking about lead poisoning. I work with solder, putting electronic chips on pc boards and I was thinking that since it's coming up on a year, it would be smart to get a lead blood level test. Better safe than the horrible effects of lead poisoning. I was looking for a place where I could get said test done, but remembered my projects and moved on. A few hours later I noticed my neck was still hurting from the other day. I was playing with a book and accidental smacked the corner against my neck when I bumped something about two days prior. I tried to ignore it but for some stupid reason I wondered "What if I broke a blood vessel in my neck and I've slowly been bleeding into my lungs and I drown?" Obviously it freaked me out a bit but I laughed it off. Twenty minutes later I was feeling lightheaded, it was about 9 in the morning so I decided to lay down. When I laid on my side I thought about the bleeding into my lungs thing and tried to ignore it. The longer I laid there the more I swore I could feel it. I kept rolling over but it kept just getting harder to breathe until I finally woke my fiancee up and told him I couldn't breathe.
A full blown panic attack began as I started shaking, unable to catch my breath, chest pain, numbness and my hands were locking up. My fiancee's mother who has four nurse sisters and worked as a nurse told my fiancee to take me to the hospital. It got to the point that I was telling my fiancee that I loved him and he needed to tell my family I loved them. Once we got to the hospital the nurse recognized my symptoms as a panic attack and was able to quickly talk me down. He explained why I couldn't breathe, why I was numb and why I couldn't move my hands which helped. My doctor on the other hand only made me stress out more. She told me that I had a blood pressure of 145, but it dropped to 135 over 90 and that it was high and I was too young, yadda yadda. After I was discharged I immediately returned home and slept for 13 hours and for the first time since my depression woke up feeling refreshed. I started to read the papers the doctor had given me, but it triggered another panic attack and I had to put them away. That day I had two near panic attacks, one when my friend came a visited me. The next day I had three almost panic attacks and one limited symptoms attacks when I was trying to sleep (laying down makes me freak out now).
Then today I've had six near panic attacks and I'm about to go to sleep. My doctor told me that I'd be susceptible to panic attacks because of the one I had, but it should pass in three days. This is upsetting because I feel like everything is triggering me, and it's growing by two each day. Tomorrow feels like I'm going to have eight, then ten. People talking loud, wanting to give me hugs, getting in the car, going to sleep, going out front, all of these things trigger me. I've been obsessive to say the least about cleaning my room. I nearly screamed at my fiancee today because there was a mess that took us two minutes to clean. I feel crazy, I cant leave the house and I can't remember the last time I went out to a friends house and have been invited on multiple occasions but I can't bring myself to leave. I managed to get my ha***ut but nearly had an attack when the woman put the paper around my neck. I'm still depressed, but I haven't been as snappy, except the clean room thing, and everything is triggering me.
Sorry if this post is really long! I'm just so lost and scared. In fact last week my wallet was stole by a family friend and his wife who both had felonies, the wife for trying to stab her husband at the time. Now I'm freaking out about my wallet. I'm really lost and luckily my fiancee is really, really helpful. He notices immediately when I start a panic attack and reminds me how to breathe and that nothing is wrong and I'm perfectly fine. I really don't want to put him through anymore of this, it's killing him to see me so depressed when he just proposed just a few weeks ago. In fact, I've been having to an extent suicidal thoughts. Not extreme or anything, just more like a passing thought and a lot of it stems around the fact that I don't even feel like... I'm worth anything. He's the only reason I have for anything really.
Gah, I'm really sorry about the massive long post. If anyone has any advice I'd really, really appreciate it. I'm so very lost.
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Originally Posted by winterfall
