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beneficii
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06 Aug 2015, 6:11 pm

Last time I had panic attacks was maybe 5 years ago, when I was on spironolactone. This characterizes my panic attacks:

They tend to have triggers.

They involve dread and terror, like a feeling I'm about to die.

I tend to breathe very heavily throughout.

They last at most a couple minutes.

The panic attacks always lead to where everything starts getting white, like a fog rolling in.

After everything starts getting white, next thing I know I've fallen. Once, my family members grabbed hold of me after falling. Otherwise, I often find myself lying on the ground.

One I get back up from this apparent loss of consciousness, I'm calm, relaxed.

Is this typical for panic attacks? Situations where panic attacks occurred were:

2002, when I was flipping a baton in my room and it broke a light fixture above me, causing a shard of glass to cut into my left arm. I went downstairs to my family immediately. I began to panic about the wound, but then everything starts getting white and next thing I know my sister and father are holding me up (like to keep me from falling) and I saw a chair got knocked over. I was calm and relaxed after this.

The next 3 were when I was on spironolactone:

I had had very little sleep because I was focused on a forecast snowstorm. I was watching TV when I became obsessed about something dangerous, though I don't remember what it was. I start breathing heavily and feared I was going to die. I then dropped down and put my hands behind my head; afterward, everything started getting white, then it cleared out. I was much calmer now, but noticed I had cold sweat.

This was dearing a hot summer. I hit my head closing a trunk because I had a bike rack on it. I began to have terror and ran over to my landlord's office. Everything then started going white and next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the grass; I was relaxed again. A man who was walking nearby helped me up, but within minutes the panic began to return and everything went white again and next thing I knew I had fallen again. I was calm again. The man advised me to sit in the shade. I did not panic again.

So I wonder if this is common for panic attacks.


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beneficii
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08 Aug 2015, 1:29 pm

I've gone into more detail and I have one guess, for the shared progression among all of them:

These are not real "panic attacks," but seizures. The seizure begins in the temporal lobe, causing the sense of terror. The seizure not long after spreads to the occipital lobe, causing the white-out. The seizure then causes loss of consciousness. After that, the seizure terminates and I recover.

One big thing I need to do is ask my dad to see if he remembers how that all went when I had that first panic. I plan to ask in person. I visit him tomorrow.

For that first panic, I think this was in my senior year of high school. I know I did not sleep well in my senior year of high school, so sleep deprivation might have contributed to it. The intense summer heat and direct sunlight, along with the lowered seizure threshold caused by spironoloactone, might have contributed to 3 and 4. Sleep deprivation was already clear in 2.


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"You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin