Panic attacks

[KICKSTART]

Anyone else had them ? Last night i had another awful attack (that felt like heart attack) again , so i have spent ages on the phone to my renal nurse this morning . Near enough word for word the symptoms for a panic attack are the symptoms im getting (they can be so bad you think your having a heart attack) Its seems these are being triggered in my case by a chemical imbalance cause by kidney failure, also it seems i have depression again caused by a chemical imbalance ! My nurse wants me to try the tablets again that left me feeling stoned all day , great. Im dreading that feeling again , because i live on my own i need to be able to function!
Anyway if any of you have had panic attacks, how has it gone for you ? Let me know !
Could do with Stauffenberg and his words of wisdom here ! 

[rose1999]

Oh poor you! As I think I said in another post, my son's friend has them and they are really scary.  It sounds daft but get a paper bag and breathe in and out of that for a few minutes when you have an attack or feel one coming on, it's something to do with reducing oxygen intake (Stauffenberg will be able to tell you all the 'technical' side I hope) I just know it works.  Depression is a cause (as in my Son's friend's case).  All I can tell you is that he is learning to cope with them (he's 24) and is on anti-depressants which have helped a lot, but the paper bag trick is good (he says).  He says he can now tell when one is coming on so he sits quietly and breathes in and out in the paper bag.  Hope that helps, I'll be sending good wishes your way 

[monrein]

Hiya Kickstart
I did a Google search of "panic attacks self help uk" and found some links that look quite interesting and possibly worthwhile for you.  I limited it to the uk because that's where you live but you could expand the search by removing the uk part.  I was thinking you might find some tips to help you deal and maybe need little or less meds.  Hope you find something useful.

[stauffenberg]

Until the end of the 1970s, psychiatry liked to explain all mental problems in terms of psychological stresses, social tensions, childhood memories, early traumas, etc.  Then, with the rise of a new, highly conformist and right-wing social landscape in the 1980s, psychiatry learned to play along by pretending that the existing society was just perfect, so that if people developed mental problems, it must be because of chemical imbalances.  Since that time there is a lot of discussion of chemical causes of behavior in psychiatric, but the old talk about how people's mental illnesses represent valid responses to a poorly designed society with real problems in it that can make people crazy is totally gone.

That is unfortunate, since I think it is patently obvious that since dialysis is a horrible thing to endure, it is perfectly sane and normal for people to experience depression or panic attacks in reaction to it.  The cure for this depression and its associated panic attacks is not to dope up the patient's body with chemicals to suppress the capacity to react to anything, but is to cure renal failure and get rid of dialysis.

I don't think your symptoms are due to any chemical imbalance, since otherwise everyone on dialysis would respond the way you have.  I think they are due to your ability to understand the horror of dialysis for what it is and your personal sensitivity to and perception of that horror. 

Psychiatric medication is one of the most profoundly clumsy and stupid areas of medicine today.  Essentially, the treatment for depression simply involves whacking the patient on the head with a chemical club so hard that the patient can't think of anything, which includes the inability to think of the causes of the depression or panic attacks.  As humans had already discovered thousands of years ago, however, alcohol works just as well at smashing the brain as modern anti-depressants do.  Remember, even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association (DSM-IV), the 'Bible' of the profession, defines clinical depression as continuing sadness WHICH IS NOT JUSTIFIED BY REACTION TO EXTERNAL STRESSES.  Well, in your case, since your mood 'disorder' is justified by external stresses, it should not even be classified as depression.  You'd be neurotic if you didn't react the way you are now responding to something as unendurable as dialysis.

[petey]

Marvin doesn't have these attacks, Kickstart, so I don't have any tips or words of wisdom to share.  Know that I'm thinking about you and hoping you'll find some answers to deal with them or, better yet, not have them at all.

[monrein]

  The cure for this depression and its associated panic attacks is not to dope up the patient's body with chemicals to suppress the capacity to react to anything, but is to cure renal failure and get rid of dialysis.

Stauffenberg, while I agree enthusiastically with the ideas you put forth in your post,  the question remains about how to endure the unendurable which is dialysis until such time that medicine manages to cure renal failure thus eliminating the need for it.  I mean, bad enough KS is having to endure the usual ESRD serving of reduced quality of life but now she's hit with this extra component.  Added burden of crap is my technical term for it. I certainly agree that her panic attacks are in no way a deficiency on her part let alone a neurosis and she certainly does seem sane and normal, whatever that is.  I also agree that the DSM is a source of much amusement. Now,  KS may take some comfort from the fact that she possesses "the ability to understand the horror" and is so personally sensitive to the perception of it that she is responding in a non-neurotic way by experiencing panic attacks but then again she might also wish she could be at least a little "neurotic", like some of us other afflicted souls who manage NOT to add to the already large burden of crap we carry.

Hopefully KS can get some non-pharmaceutical help manage this merde.  (translation: the s word in french)

[petey]

Marvin and I must live in some fantasy land because we don't see the "horrors" of dialysis.  Dialysis is certainly not fun and not easy for Marvin, and the effects of it have affected my life, too; however, we choose to focus on the positive -- that being, dialysis keeps Marvin alive.  To both of us, that's a very, very, very good thing.  It's all in the way you perceive it, or at least that's how we have lived with it for 13 years -- and counting!

My heart goes out to you, Kickstart, because you're having to go through this.

[Stacy Without An E]

I understand what you're going through, but I get my panic attacks in relation to the other idiot patients I'm forced to endure.  They like to sit me next to these bearded fool who regularly blasts his television.  So for two hours I get more and more agitated because I can't control the situation.  And then as I'm having the panic attack, this moron is telling me to shut up and be quiet.  I've been very vocal lately and indicated the jerks at the clinic I cannot endure because of their lack of common courtesy.

The funny thing is they almost always help me because they know I have a blog and I'm not afraid to use it.

[KICKSTART]

Guys guys guys ..I have had kidney failure for 7 years , been on dialysis for 4 , so i hardly think im 'reacting' to the horrors of dialysis ! I was actually told by my neph , that the kidneys produce and balance alot of chemicals in our bodys and that mine are out of balance atm producing 'panick attacks'. Maybe not everyone gets this , let face it i havent for 7 years ! But my body is just going through a bad phaze , i  mean i dont get alot of the troubles other folk on dialysis get. Thanks for all your theories tho ! 

[Ken Shelmerdine]

Kickstart I had a several occurances of panic attacks but long before I started dialysis. I found that a mild anti-depressant stopped it and has done ever since. I know what it feels like though a feeling of imminent demise and you feel powerless to do anything about it. You think that any second i'ts going to be Goodnight Vienna! 

[stauffenberg]

Kickstart: you can get psychologically, not chemically, induced panic attacks over any continuing psychological stress, such as dialysis and renal failure represent.  It is not as if we just experience a single shock on finding out we are condemned to dialysis and then we coast from there on with no further psychological decline.  Quite the contrary, the longer we remain on dialysis, the longer we have to cope with all the stresses of renal failure, the more the tensions in the subconscious mind build.

Keep in mind that humans are the product of a million years of evolution during which time severe chronic illness was unknown.  Given the raw struggle for existence and the lack of medicines, you were either healthy or you were dead.  So we have no adaptive responses hard-wired into our genetic inheritance for being sick long-term.  Our basic instinct consists in the alternative of fight or flight: the problems we are hard-wired to deal with are either those we can overcome in a short, sharp conflict or which we can run away from.  But with chronic, incurable illness, which humans have been able survive only during relatively recent times, we cannot fight to overcome it and we also cannot escape it.  When the subconscious mind is put under the continuing pressure of such an unnatural challenge, the response is depression and panic attacks.

The chemical theory of human response is silly in any case.  Obviously, every time we think of something or feel anything there is a physical correlate of the thinking and feeling process which occurs in our brain and nervous system.  But this does not mean that the chemical changes which parallel these thoughts and feelings are the cause of our problems, rather than the events in the outside world which cause us to have these thoughts and feelings in the first place.

The problem, for example, of being Jewish in Nazi Germany is not your feelings on seeing a concentration camp cause a change in the seratonin levels in your brain, but the fact that concentration camps exist.  If you would stop reacting with horror when you saw the concentration camp if only a surgeon would perform a lobotomy on you, your problem is not that you have not yet had a lobotomy, but that there are concentration camps out there.  The same way, in your case, the problem is not that no one has yet turned you into an unthinking zombie by smashing you on the head with anti-depressive chemicals which keep you from thinking or feeling anything, but the problem is that medicine can't cure renal failure.  Your response to this is not some chemical imbalance in your brain, but just a normal reaction to something bad which never ends. 

[Claudia30]

Hey kickstart

I used to get panic attacks lot in college and then again when i started dialysis a year and a half ago. THey suddenly come on and i admit that they are scary. They also happen anytime and anywhere. It is a pyschological response to what you are going through. I look funny but when i have one i normally grab the wall or whatever is near me i can and i say outloud to myself "claudia, breath 1,2,3 etc" and i slow down my breathing. I have had bad ones in which i literally hide under my bed. My psychiartist with the transplant team prescribed me Xanax - which helped alot and it didn't knock me out. When you have one just think of something peaceful like the ocean or somewhere you like to go or think about. I think about oceans and dogs and cats when i have my panic attacks. They have lessened a great deal but i still have them at times and i adit they are scary - as they suddenly come on so very quickly. Talk to your doctors about this and maybe the social worker as she or he can help you learn some coping skills that can help you. Good luck.

[xtrememoosetrax]

. . . . no one has yet turned you into an unthinking zombie by smashing you on the head with anti-depressive chemicals which keep you from thinking or feeling anything . . .

Wow, stauff, has this really been your experience with antidepressants?  How sad that they have this effect on you, which is the absolute opposite of what I experience when I take them.  A couple haven't worked that well for me, but the ones that do work great!  For me, antidepressants produce a quite subtle effect, sort of like the lights in my brain coming on again, that makes it feel like I CAN think and feel again.  When I'm afflicted with depression is when I feel like the "zombie" you describe. 

Just wanted to put in my 2 cents on this, as sometimes your pronouncements have a very authoritative sound to them which I'm not sure is appropriate in this case, especially when you consider the tremendous variety of ways in which human psychologies and physiologies can react to the same stimulus. 

[spacezombie]

I'm so sorry you're having panic attacks. I do have them occasionally. The very first one I had was so strange since at the time I was just watching TV. My mind was racing, I couldn't control my thoughts, my breathing was heavy, and my chest hurt. I thought I was dying, which made me even more panicked. Now I have them once in awhile if things are really stressful in my life (and it seems that school makes me more stressed than dialysis! haha). Now that I know what is happening, I try to relax as much as I can and know that I will not die. Hang in there! I hope you get some relief without having to feel drugged up. <3

[stauffenberg]

Moose: Neuroleptics are known to have extremely variable effects on various people.  Children with attention deficit disorder, for example, can be calmed down by amphetomines, but the same drugs make people without this condition quite irritable and agitated.  This class of medications is almost untestable on animals, since animals routinely have the opposite reaction from humans.  Thus you can put a cat straight to sleep with an injection of noradrenalin, which would make a human in the same dose wakeful and energetic.

I have never taken anti-depressants myself, so my account is based just on what I have seen and heard from patients about their effects.

[annabanana]

My sister has had panic attacks most of her life, says she...On lots of pills that make her a zombie, and she prefers it that way. She says panic attacks can be inherited...a chemical thing...I don't know (but I tend to agree with stauffenberg.)

When I have a "panic attack", which is very much like what you describe, I use relaxation/meditation techniques. usually within 15-30 minutes it's over and I feel fine. I'm not against the pills...I just know what that's done to my sister so I refuse to take them.   

[KICKSTART]

There seem to be a lot of conflicting opinions about panic attacks so i will put exactly what my neph said to me about it ! .
She said the kidneys have alot of jobs and one is reproducing certain chemicals in the body and hormones and that at the moment mine are not in balance hence my body is panicking..not with stress or worry but because of this imbalance that is going on. So regardless of relaxing/chilling/avoiding stress it wont help as she said its actually a reaction to this lack of chemicals/hormones being produced right now.
The tablets they have put me on are supposed to bring things back into line with regards to balance , but they make me feel like a dope head!! I have been told to give them 2 weeks to let them even out and then i shouldnt really notice them or their effect on me , so all i can do is give them a try.
I just hope its not one of those devil and deep blue sea situations , because neither is very nice !

[stauffenberg]

If your nephrologist's theory is true, ask her why only a tiny fraction of dialysis patients, all of whom have perpetual chemical imbalances to deal with as a result of renal failure and the inability of any modality of dialysis adequately to replace normal renal function, don't have panic attacks and depression.

[stauffenberg]

If your nephrologist's theory is true, ask her why only a tiny fraction of dialysis patients, all of whom have perpetual chemical imbalances to deal with as a result of renal failure and the inability of any modality of dialysis adequately to replace normal renal function, don't have panic attacks and depression.

[KICKSTART]

Then again i could also ask why a tiny fraction of dialysis patients get other dialysis related problems , none of which i seem to have gotten. I obviously know myself better than anyone and am completely suprised by these panick attacks/depression . Without going into detail , i have delt with several major situations head on , so to speak , that have not resulted in this reaction and as previously stated have been on dialysis for 4 years ..so why would these panick attacks manifest now ? What has triggered them ?

[stauffenberg]

William and Henry James, the famous psychologist and novelist, respectively, both suffered from panic attacks, which almost always occurred when they were in settings which were entirely calm and relaxing, such as while smoking a good cigar after dinner.  The reason they occurred during calm periods, which seems totally illogical, was that they are not products of the logical mind, but of the subconscious.  So from the totally obscure, murky forces generating responses from the subconscious, no one can consciously discern the 'why' explaining the sudden appearance of panic attacks in respect of one theme rather than another, even though the conscious mind may not find the former situation any more or less panicking than the latter.  Something in your subconscious may be reacting to the particular stress of dialysis now in ways not obvious to the conscious mind.  There is even a theory that panic attacks are a circuitous device of the subconscious to 'speak' to a conscious mind which is internally not listening to it, so it has to be jolted into listening by an external physical symptom.

[meadowlandsnj]

Psychiatric medication is one of the most profoundly clumsy and stupid areas of medicine today.  Essentially, the treatment for depression simply involves whacking the patient on the head with a chemical club so hard that the patient can't think of anything, which includes the inability to think of the causes of the depression or panic attacks. 

Stauffenburg, are you really Tom Cruise posting here?    He vehemently opposes the uses of psychiatric medicine also.  I get what you're saying and it makes sense in certain situations.  IMO what we feel makes us human, I had a few panic attacks and took XANAX but I felt so numb and dead inside I'd rather deal with the panic attacks.  In fact I think the Xanax made it worse for me.  But Valium makes me hyper so figure that out.......it is a thought provoking subject.

Donna

[bdpoe]

 

I fight it the best I can. Antidepressant's don't work on me and give me terrible side effects.

I''m exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.

[meadowlandsnj]

I fight it the best I can. Antidepressant's don't work on me and give me terrible side effects.

I''m exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.

When I had my transplant in 1995 they had asked me if I wanted an antidepressant.  I thought it was so strange they asked me that and my doctor told me nearly all ESRD patients are on antidepressants.  In 2000 I started feeling yucky so I asked to have one.  They put me on Prozac 40mg and I didn't notice a thing.  I gave it a chance, two years I took it and felt no better so I stopped taking it.  No withdrawls, no nothing.  And I had heard from others not to stop it because I'd suffer because of it.  Nothing happened.  Sometimes now I get feeling a little yucky, not all the time but somedays I get depressed.  How do you know if you should take something?  How do you know WHICH antidepressant to take?  A friend of mine was on one and it made her sleep all day and made her worse.  It it trial and error?  Isn't St Johns Wort supposed to help with depression, it's a herb?  I know when I had the transplant they told me to absolutley not take that it interferes with the TX drugs.

Donna   (Feels happy today!)

[paris]

For some, medication truly does help.  It is a personal choice, but many benefit from some form of medication, either short or long term.