I am diagnosed with bipolar and do not have a separate diagnosis of panic disorder or anything, but I thought it would be best to ask here.
Over the years I had mini panic attack thingies so it's not that I completely don't know about panic attacks.
I would hyperventilate for maybe 20 minutes, feel like my heart is racing but I didn't feel like I was going to die or anything.
So maybe I shouldn't even call them panic attacks.
But these few months, I've been having really horrible so called "attacks" happening to me.
It only happens at night when I go to bed.
I've been having chronic insomnia for 4 months now, so I was thinking maybe it is connected to that.
What I mostly experience is
My jaw and neck get extremely tense, and it hurts like crazy.
No matter what I do I can't loosen them up.
I have to keep moving my jaws sideways to relieve some pain. Sometimes the whole jaw just trembles by itself.
And I feel like I am going to choke. My tongue rolls ups into my throat and I start feel like I have to throw up.
So I start to throw up until there is nothing left in my stomach. Even then, I feel like vomiting.
Another big thing is while all this is happening, I am SEVERELY agitated.
I can't stay still. If I try to sit down, I start to shake so bad.
I feel like clawing into my skin. I want rip the paint off my walls.
I start to pace around, but my family force me to sit down, and I just sit and shake.
When it happened first few times, nobody knew.
I was in my bed trying to sleep, and this would start.
I would take my sleep meds, and wait it out until I fall asleep.
Yet, this week, the attack was so bad, my brother heard me vomiting and noticed me shaking.
My brother and mom took me to the emergency room, and it didn't die down until I saw a doctor there.
(We had to wait about 2 hours). (This is the strange thing, I heard most of panic attacks pass after 20 minutes?)
He ordered blood tests which came out clean, and gave me Zofran & Ativan then sent me home with PRN Ativan.
Miraculously, Ativan stopped all the symptoms, and I felt sleepy soon.
Now I'm scared of bed time.
Has anyone heard of or experience this kind of thing?
Is this even panic or anxiety thing?
I'm so cofused.
I see my pdoc next Wednesday, so I'll talk about this with him, but before that I wanted to see if anybody can shine a light on this.
Thanks for reading!
Edited for bad grammar