I didn't know what was going on

by Megan
(Scarborough)

I am 15 years old and have had 2 panic attacks so far, one when i was in the swimming pool doing a race and another at school.

I was in my physics lesson and had worked all of the equations out wrong making my answers wrong. So when my teacher pointed this out to me i started to get really hot and visibly red. He then asked if i wanted a breath of cold air outside of the classroom. So i stood outside for two minutes before he came out. By this point i was starting to get breathless and I was still rather hot. So he walked me up to the science prep room and told me to stand over by the sink with my wrists under the tap until i felt 'normal' again. The science technician then went on to tell me that even though I had managed to stop the panic attack before it got serious, i had still had one.

When i got back to class i felt quite disengaged from class and comments from my classmates didn't help. They said things like "you went to the prep room because you were too hot? thats just pathetic" I told them it was a very small panic attack but nobody seemed to believe me. However i felt like i was more panicky because of the fact it could happen again.

Now i have come to realise that the warning signs were there all along. I was having hot flushes and feeling dizzy the whole lesson and had nearly fainted in the toilets just 5 minutes before.

I understand that some of you will be thinking that i dont have a clue what a bad panic attack is however my friend suffers from them too and i have witnessed one myself. So please do not think any less of me.