Saturday, November 28, 1998

Woman seeks to cope with panic attacks

By Ken Garfeld

Knight Ridder Newspapers

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- I'm not sure what led me to Rebecca Brooks. I just know that my wife came home from church and told me about this nice lady who was excited to be there because she has panic attacks and just getting out of the house is a major accomplishment. Enjoying an hour's worship without feeling like you're going to die, well, that's a minor miracle.

Hearing about Rebecca, especially at this time of year, hit a nerve. A woman who wakes up wondering how much panic the day might hold. An approaching holiday season that embodies the hope each day does hold. I knew the two of us had to get together and sort through the haze of panic and promise that clouds so many lives.

Rebecca, 53, remembers growing up nervous in West Virginia. She'd feel anxious or shake from nervousness and chalk it up to a difficult home life or maybe just typical teen-age angst.

But then adulthood arrived, her family settled in Charlotte, N.C., and the full-fledged panic attacks struck. If you're among the several million Americans who get them, you'll understand. If you're not, you can't begin to imagine the terror that comes when your heart beats like a machine gun, you overheat, you're dizzy, your stomach hurts, you can't catch your breath, you can't escape and death seems imminent.

There's no physical reason for the panic. Sometimes there's not even a real crisis that triggers it, like a wreck or a death in the family. It just comes. And the only thing worse than a panic attack is wondering when the next panic attack will strike.

Most every victim asks the question that Rebecca asked herself and her husband, Bob, as the walls closed in during an attack two years ago on Interstate 77:

"What is happening to me?"

Another attack came in traffic at Randolph and Sharon Amity. Long red lights are a particular hell. One came at the optometrist's office on the rainy day she took her elderly mother to have her eyes checked, and got all flummoxed with the wheelchair. She described the faintness and other feelings as if they had hit a minute ago.

Elevators make her tense, but sometimes no more tense than sitting in a quiet sanctuary on Sunday morning. Maybe you'll have to go the bathroom. Maybe someone will hear your stomach growl. Oh God, the panic.

Rebecca doesn't trust herself to drive, so she relies on her husband, their two grown daughters and their friends, all of whom understand. But there are still those mornings when she's alone in the house, alone with all her worries. The morning we chatted in her living room, she got up twice to quiet the dog. A yapping schnauzer in the laundry room, she said with a haggard look, is not an anxiety she needs.

"I've always been in control," she told me. "This is something I can't control. And that's the hard part about it. I can't describe it."

The bitterly funny thing is, she and her husband, a dentist, were held up one New Year's Eve night at a Chinese restaurant in Matthews, N.C. One robber wielded an Uzi, another a sawed-off shotgun. They were bound with duct tape and herded into a bathroom. She thought they were going to die. Yet she didn't panic, like she has when stuck in traffic or stuck in church.

Rebecca has done what people with panic attacks are supposed to do. They make sure it's not a heart problem or some other physical malady. They seek counseling. They take anti-anxiety medication. They practice relaxation techniques.

Most important, Rebecca does what every victim is urged to do. Don't surrender to panic attacks. Don't let them stop you, no matter how fast your heart races.

Rebecca is gaining on her panic.

It has taught her to live one day at a time, to be patient and not worry about little things. It has deepened her compassion for people with mental illness. Being home more, she has time to write letters to friends.

She is proud to share her story in the newspaper; maybe it will help others cope with their panic. Matthew 10:27 was a particular inspiration: "What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops."

She looks forward to Thanksgiving with her husband's ailing 93-year-old father in West Virginia, and Christmas at their home in Charlotte.

She's still riding high from that Sunday at church earlier this month, when she met my wife. The hand bells sounded clearer. The communion elements tasted sweeter. She even remained calm enough to enjoy Sunday lunch afterward at The Park Hotel, then shopping at the mall.

The panic stayed away that day.

"There was a time when I thought I'd rather just give up," Rebecca said. "But I'm over that."

I left Rebecca's house after two hours, not quite knowing what panic attacks and the holidays have to do with each other. I stopped for a cup of coffee to think it over, still not sure what I wanted to say. But then the day kept moving forward, I kept working at it and it started to come to me, like calm comes to the panic-stricken on their very best days:

The season that begins with Thanksgiving and ends with the New Year is filled with anticipation. There's an eagerness to these days, an expectation that something extraordinary waits for us the next morning, whether it's the smell of turkey or the sight of a brightly wrapped present.

That's what Rebecca teaches us -- that something extraordinary does wait for us in the morning.

It's not always easy to locate; panic can sometimes enshroud the greatest gifts. But if you go to sleep hopeful and wake up determined, you can beat the panic. You can grab hold of the hope you deserve.

That's when life is graced by great expectations.

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(Ken Garfield is the religion editor at The Charlotte Observer. Write to him at: The Charlotte Observer, 600 S. Tryon St., Charlotte, NC 28232.)

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(c) 1998, The Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, N.C.).

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