Anyone had something like this before? Someone hit me in the back of my neck...freaked me out...then I started breathing in deep pretty fast....I felt like I almost couln't breathe than I thought I was dying, my heart was also beating pretty fast.....
[Edited 10/16/06 14:49pm]

Now who in the hell would do that to you?

DanceWme said:

A family member because they were mad at me, but they're much older...so i'll let it slide.

unlucky7 said:

Well that has never happened to me but to a friend of mine and I was scared out of my mind.

I've only had it happen to me once.

I had accidently left the keys to my apartment, truck and my neighbour's apartment on the front step of my building. When I realized that they were gone and that meant that my truck could be stolen and my place and her place could be robbed, I panicked. It was an awful feeling.

JustErin said:

you never found them?

unlucky7 said:

Actually, once I calmed down I went into the building foyer and someone had pinned them up on the bulletin board.

I was so lucky that some kind person took the time to bring them in off the front step.

JustErin said:

good

JustErin said:

oh god, you just reminded me of just recently, I was with a friend and our kids at mcdonalds, we'd been there for a couple of hours, and I was looking for my keys, more and more frantically until I realised I had left them in the ignition, parked out in the street. The blood drained from my face and I started to feel tingling in my hands. It was the company car my husband got the day before. It was still parked outside thank god, but I didn't hyperventilate, close to it though.

WTF? Did he/she apologize?

coolcat said:

no, it was kind of a fight, but i didn't hit them back since they were older, i just covered myself. When they calmed down...the next day I told her what happened to me and she didn't really respond to it...

I had it about 4 times a week in the past. It's awful. In my case the panic attacks were connected to my rotten appendix slowly poisoning me..... Once it was removed, I felt so much better that the panic went away

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

wow, that's scary, glad you're doing much better. Sometimes I get charp pains in my sides.

Only once, when I'd been smoking a frightening amount of skunk a few years ago in a friend's house. It was around 3am and I remember 'feeling myself breathe'.
It was such an odd, alien sensation, I even said to my pal 'I can feel the breath in my throat, Chrissie'. Then - I could still sense it being there when I breathed out. My lungs suddenly felt empty.
Cutting a long and shameful story (quite) short, I ended up convusing on the floor - gasping for a breath while my heart thudded like thunder in my ears, beating faster than a Japanese train.
I seriously believed I was having a heart attack, that I was going to snuff it right there and then, in a pal's bedroom with beercans and bongs lying around. Not even wallpaper. So I gasped a few disjointed goodbyes to my pals (who were by now panicing over what to do/what was going on, all higher than God's hat themselves), a few odd memories I hadn't even remembered I remembered flickered in my head, weird metallic odours, zooming in and out of the flesh, ugh, dying like a bad actor.
I closed my eyes and my body rattled on the floor. Warmth then, nothing. Apparently, it was then I passed out completely. I came to about five minutes later with a lot of stereotypical slapping and water splashing from the gang who were usuing all their combined medical knowledge asassed solely from watching ER. Then it started again.
This time, I made the decision to walk home (just three minutes journey) and get to my bed because that's where I wanted to die. Got there (eventually), stripped to my underwear and slipped under the duvet - heart thrashing, again unable to catch a breath, to fill my burning lungs, one second freezing cold then boiling in flame, confused and very scared.
It got too much to cope with, fear was like a physical presence next to me, looming. I dived out of bed, grabbed my big jacket and put it on with just my boxers underneath. I stumbled back over the road to Chrissie's house in the Biblical weather, in my bare fucking feet, hauled myself up his stairs and threw myself onto the bed.
Everyone crowded me as I twisted and contorted and muttered and sweated and choked. I just couldn't breathe at all, nothing could go in, nothing could come out. But then, I had an idea.
I was now suspecting that this had to be some form of panic attack and I remembered someone saying panic attacks are all in the head, that I was actually breathing perfectly normally and had merely realised - conciously, under the influence of mind-altering substances - just how odd the act of breathing actually is.
I had to find rhythm. I listened to the song that was playing - something from the Beatles, I can't remember exactly what - and simply began singing along. Line - breath. Line - breath. By the time I got to the second chorus, I felt infinitely better. My thoughts were coming back as whole chunks, not fragmented frantic bullets.
When the song finished, I lay back in my boxer shorts and coat then helped myself to a wee drink and a fag to fully recuperate. I had survived, I was alive. And I should have listened to Mr T when he said don't do drugs.
Breathing is such an odd thing, that's what I learned.

Number23 said:

Well I have been reduced to less than human during my episodes and forget about drugs being involved. I probably would have died

Hyperventilation is increased inspiration and expiration of air (rate or depth or both). You blow off too much CO2. A sure fire symptom is "tingling" or numbness in the hands. This is usually accompanied by anxiety.

The immediate treatment is breathe in and out of a paper bag until symptoms subside. This restores normal CO2 levels. You're rebreathing your exhaled air. (carbon dioxide) Corrects the problem.

unlucky7 said:

this has happened to me a lot when i was trying to get out of a situation and i was under some really heavy stress. it would happen when i would think about it and worry. but i'd also get really bad chest pains. once i was having them so bad when it stop the whole side of my left arm felt really tired as if i'd been lifting weights with that arm. what i would do is just calm down and take my time breathing. that would stop things. it scared the mess out of me.
[Edited 10/16/06 18:17pm]

brownsugar said:

My arms would go numb from the elbow down!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

i dont really know what the hell it was but i'm glad i dont feel it anymore.
[Edited 10/16/06 19:16pm]

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

I was making noises like a donkey with its tail on fire. I'm sure it was quite distressing to my pals, but inwardly, somewhere in the head, I was fairly calm and prepared to die. I remember thinking that no-one had ever died from cannabis abuse and thinking 'Fuck! I'm first!'
Of course, the whole experience put me off drugs for life.

Number23 said:

Any time one developes chest and arm pain, it needs to be investigated. You're never too young for cardiac disease or hypertension.

I didn't start having these until this year right after me and my ex had broken up. I use to get so upset that I would have these attacks where I felt like i couldn't breathe with ease and I would get dizzy and have to sit down to catch my breath. It was scary.

Once I started to get over him, I had them less. I even had one at Target while I was shopping with one of my friends. I had to sit down by the couches before I felt like I was gonna fall out in the floor...it's a very miserable feeling to have.