WHATEVER Ya Do, DON'T PANIC

Nicknames are an interesting thing.  My nickname all thru high school was ‘Mellow’.  If you were to check out the farewell signatures in my graduation yearbook, everyone who signed it refers to me as  ‘Mizz Mellow’ – or - ‘Mellow-head’ -  or - ‘Mellow’ and most commonly, just plain ‘MEL’.    I suppose back in the day, I came across as the unperturbed type most of the time…

Which is kinda ironic because some years ago, I was diagnosed with Acute Anxiety Disorder.  You know: Panic Attacks.   Yeah, I’ve spent some significant time BOOGYIN’ DOWN  in the  FREAK-OUT- ZONE.    Mellow-No-More. 

The very act of living wears us down and it changes us, of that I have no doubt.  While chronic anxiety has become a very common thing and practically in fashion at this point in our cultural times, my first (and ultimately, worst) full-blown ATTACK was very scary indeed.  It gripped me, unawares, in the middle of the afternoon while I was at one of my beloved office jobs.  (The money was decent but boy, did I end up paying for it with my mental health.)

This particular occupation, I was managing a large import firm - an unchallenging, mind-numbing job that I truly detested.  But even worse, my frail, elderly boss had just taken on his son  - a failed schoolteacher – and dubbed him Vice President of the company.  And this son-asshole turns out to be a perverted, skeevoza weirdo that I instantly and positively despise. 

At any rate, it was the usual bullshit-ridden, otherwise unremarkable day at the office when out of the blue I begin to experience tunnel-vision and the office sounds around me morph into a helicopter-esque whirring/buzzing noise that drowns out all else.  I feel a * PING * that jolts my arms and my neck.  A single thought: I’m dying.

I faintly call out to the elderly bookkeeper lady who sits across the room from me.  Then I collapse in a heap right at my godforsaken desk and an ambulance comes to take me away. 

I start comin’ ‘round in the ambulance.  There’s two EMS workers riding with me, a man and a woman.  I hear them joking around with each other.  Groggy, I pipe in: “Am I having a heart attack?”  The gal says kindly: “No, no.  You’re gonna be fine.  It’s looking like it was only a panic attack.”

Huh???  I’m stymied.  Never had I heard of such a thing.  It sounded so harmless.  Panic Attack:  An image flashed in my mind of a little old man or woman, shaking their heads with worry, muttering: ‘Oy vey,  Oy vey – what do I do now?  What now??’  Certainly not the frightening episode I’d just been thru.  And it had transpired during a relative lull in my dreary workday, seemingly triggered by nothing. 

Ahhhh….But that’s how anxiety catches ya - with yer pants down, oh yeah.  And I was to find out a lot about this vexing phenomenon in the worrisome (however enlightening) weeks to come…

To be Continued….