The next decade....what's in store?

What a place to have a panic attack!

In the 90's, somewhere from 1995 to 1999 or 2000, I used to get panic attacks bad bad.

The first time when it crippled me was one day when I was driving to Ocho Rios to work on a conference. In my zippy (skettel) Nissan Sentry, I suddenly found myself hyperventilating somewhere around Ewarton. Was it from going over Flat Bridge? Anyway, I pulled into the health centre only to find it closed. I creeped my way to Ocho Rios, depriving my brain of oxygen since I wasn't breathing properly. With each breath I felt it was going to be my last. I reached to Ocho Rios with a whopping headache.

The next memorable event was while my father was driving from Mandeville to St Elizabeth one day. I was sitting in the front and started hyperventilating again. I eventually asked him to stop and take me back to Mandeville. He steuppsed and said I was being silly, but took me back anyway, where my Aunt (an Anaesthesiologist - dat spell wrong I know!) gave me one of them drugs they give patients before an operation to calm them.

Other incidents occured. For eg walking around the Mona Reservoir one day (had to seek refuge in a friend's house whose mother is a nurse - but at Bellevue...hell....maybe I was crazy indeed!); on a train from Windemere to Carlisle in England; on a BWIA plane (caused me not to eat a single thing in First Class....you know I hadda be feeling bad!); 1998 while being driven by my friend from Detroit airport to her house in Shelby Township.

Then they stopped.

I don't recall having any incidents from 2001 (if I did, they weren't significant).....until last Saturday.

I drove to Discovery Bay quite fine in my mother's Mitsibushi Gallant. Drove on the new toll road which look like road in foreign. Speed limit 110k and I was struggling to stay under that the way the road nice. No problems going.

Coming back, I reached the 'big' road once again. Two lanes either way. No lights, just them reflector things along the white line. I came up behind a man who was going a little slower than I wanted to be going, so I pulled over to overtake in the right lane.

The mind is a helluva thing. I started thinking about how the road look like road in foreign, about the concrete wall that I was now alongside and how it would be so easy to hit it and flip over .....and then panic set in. I slowed down to draw alongside the car I was overtaking. Then I managed to speed up and go back over in the left lane and there I stayed.

The hyperventilation started, the gulping of breaths, but no sweaty palms such that I am having now while typing this as I remember the incident. Once I turned off the toll road on to Mandela Highway I was ok. Just then Patch (my brother) called to check up on me. Told him about the panic attack. In fact he's the only person I told until now. Haven't told anybody else in the house.

It's a thing in the house I think that every time you go on a country run, something could happen. I suppose it's true, but I realize that that has caused me to have very few solo trips to the country. In fact I have driven to the country less than 10 times in my life. And I had a car for quite a few years in Jamaica before I moved to Grenada.

Anyway, so the panic attacks returned. But I'm older now and mentally stronger, so it is not going to win. I am going to drive on the Toll road again and conquer whatever it was that caused it to occur.

Posted by yamfoot at January 10, 2005 08:50 PM