On Panic and the Dangers of Tortilla Chips

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I woke up in a full panic attack at two in the morning. I had a nightmare where I’ve forgotten to turn in the project I’ve been working on this week at work—which is due today—until five hours after the deadline and I am running… Running up the quad in a mini skirt and my tennis shoes (thank goodness I have my tennis shoes, but what the hell is up with the mini skirt I don’t even own?) but cannot move. Also, there is some ambiguous guy who is directly in front of me, blocking my path, but I cannot tell who it is—only that he wants to impede me. I’m stuck in the quintessential high school nightmare: part motionless when trying to run, part inappropriately dressed, part not remembering that today is the test.

I wake up, gasping for breath- my chest tight and my heart pounding- and tell myself over and over again that today is the day that I have to turn this in, and I will turn this in, and everything will be okay. I am having a panic attack that started in my sleep—which is not an experience I would wish on anyone.

Panic attacks are such assholes.

As my heart finally slows and my breathing regulates, I realize that the left side of my throat hurts, and badly so. I run through the list of scenarios in my mind that could be causing the pain: strep throat, tonsillitis, cancer, I’ve eaten a spider in my sleep, and in its last desperate attempt at life it bit me, and now the poison is slowing working its way through my throat and will soon enter the rest of my body and the doctors will not know how to save me because they won’t see the spider’s bite, and OH. GOD. How do they x-ray your throat for a spider bite? Can they pick that up on a MRI? They will have to drug me to get into that oversized coffin. Did you ever see the X-Files (was it the X-Files?) episode when the MRI machine starts attacking people with its magnetic properties?

And then I remembered the tortilla chip.

It was taco night. Tortilla chips accompanied our dinner last night, and when eating one I ended up laughing at something K said, and I’m fairly certain that I gouged my throat on that tortilla chip and it’s only now starting to really bug me.

At this point I knew that sleep would be inevitable unless I Googled if you can cut your esophagus open on a tortilla chip and what would happen to you if you could. FYI: apparently this is very freaking common and will now likely go on my ever-increasing list of phobias. The good news is that most people live. Or they just don’t report the ones who die from it, due to the embarrassment of it all.

Also, I wonder if there is a direct correlation between the occurrence of panic disorders and being able to Google things.

At this point I had been awake for over an hour (the project/throat combo panic attack had taken thirty minutes of that time), and prior bouts of insomnia have taught me that if I can’t convince myself to fall back asleep in the first twenty minutes of waking up, I’m up for the long haul.

This, for your information, is why many people with panic attacks or anxiety disorders do not talk about the experiences they have with said panic attacks or anxiety disorders. The reason for onset can be so trite as to be embarrassing. Also, the physiological response is often completely beyond your control, and the best thing you can do is know how to ride it out. Granted, I can share this with you now, and my God, I hope you are laughing because the inner workings of my mind are nothing if not humorous. I wouldn’t have been able to share this with you three years ago, however. I want you to remember this when you deal with others who have general anxiety or panic disorders; you can’t pick what you’ll panic about and you can’t control what your body does during a panic attack.

That, and stay away from the freaking tortilla chips. They are out to get us!