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I asked my MD WTF?! I told him I deal with people dying, stress, all that at work, and it has NEVER affected me this way. He says that it's a physical reaction to stress and cannot be controlled. It's not like "sit tight and chill out, think that it's going to be okay". This isn't caused so much by the conscious as it is a physiological reaction. Kindof like your pulse rising when you run, so to speak. I've never had this until now, a couple of days after the wreck. I'm really hoping it doesn't happen again. It was literally the scariest thing that has ever happened to me, bar none.

I have a good lawyer and the money will all work out, and the car will roll again, but the panic attack deal was just over the top. It wasn't emotional, I was being "calm" when it happened, I thought. I was sitting, wasn't running around, wasn't fidgeting hardcore, I was just physically degrading BADLY. The only sign I wasn't calm was that I was scared as **** and hyperventilating. I cannot describe it to you, because I couldn't understand it until it happened to me. I just glossed over that in clinicals and never encountered it in my practice, I just cannot describe the sensation of fear and "doom", but I will try.

Imagine someone has stuck your head through a sheet. A bad someone. Someone maybe who broke into your house and has first tied you in a chair. Now they lift the sheet, shove the barrel of a shotgun under there where you cant see, and pull the trigger while punching the barrel into your chest, except they are just messing with you. The shot purposefully goes wide, you feel no pain except them slamming the barrel into you and you're terrified you've been shot in the chest and have seconds/minutes at best to live, but they won't let you see under the sheet, so you're stuck imagining how back you are F'ed up. Then they laugh at you.

That's how I felt. Obviously totally different circumstances,and the people around me were being very helpful, taking my BP, glucose, O2 sat (I work in a hospital in critical and intermediate care.), etc. But those are the emotions and the level of fear I felt. Insane and off the charts. It even F'ed my EKG up to the point that the MD in the ER STRONGLY emphasized my need for a follow-up EKG. Depressed ST waves and a Q-T interval in the mid 500ms range. Luckily, my EKG is back to normal. Also as a reaction to that stress, by WBC count went to 17K, and my blood glucose went to the high 160's. I am fit, healthy, and not fighting infection. My BG normally is in the 100-113 range. That's how "real" the panic you feel during that is. It's not a "calm down, man, life will be okay" moment. I didn't even know I was freaking out until I saw my BP, and then got scared because of that, then my hands began going numb and that freaked me out more. I just thought my blood sugar was low at first.