One more timer beeps. One more alarm goes off. My name is barked behind me. The line of culture specimens on the bench grown one longer. While I grind a knee joint tissue, elbowing a determined lab aide with good intentions and a urine cup away from my sterile field under the biological safety cabinet, the pains begin. Sharp knives in my chest, pressure in my back. I have heartburn. I know this. I take omeprazole. But the chest pain persists. My breath comes short. My chest hurts with spreading pressure added to the stabbing pain. It is gas! I put my head against the hood glass. Then I try to keep on with the culture. Remembering I eat antacids like candies. Then my chest hurts so bad I drop to a squat, one hand on the floor because I can’t breathe. Aware the door is open, aware that anyone entering the lab can see me in here having a stupidly conspicuous panic attack. I move away from the door and fall against the incubator. My heart is pounding. So loud. I am so dizzy, my chest hurts; I’m hyperventilating now. Predictability doesn’t make it bearable. Knowing it’s a panic attack doesn’t stop the pain. I’m crying. I don’t want to be here.
I push myself to my feet, lurch back to the hood. I start on the cultures again. Nothing is wrong. I can’t breathe. It never is. I’m trying to breathe square. Tears are falling, I am working, I can’t work, the migraine is even worse, I have to go sit down, but I have to set up these cultures. I focus on my organized process, each item in my hands. Now my supervisor barges in on me very excited to find out if the printer is fixed and did the sales rep say if they would send us a new one (because obviously a printer is more important than me getting my patient samples cultured), and I have to engage enthusiastically in whatever is presented to me. I leave the specimen safely behind the cabinet glass and smile. It makes me so mad except, they are also the person whose office I was about to run to, to sit and catch my breath and wait for the pain to end because they’d be cool with that. Instead, I have to pretend in this moment that I’m just fine.
And after they leave, lo and behold, I really do have my shit together. I don’t feel much better, really, but I can walk through the lab without crying in front of anyone. There is one thing I hold onto here at work, and that is I am not alone in this struggle. I push through because others around me are going through the same and they are pushing through. Maybe we are spreading our strength around. Maybe our pain binds us together. Maybe I’m delusional about that because I’m so lonely. But it is true that I’m not the only one in this particular boat and neither are you, so from me to you, as horrible as they are, these attacks are finite and there is still life at the end.
Siege of the Spirit 