Panic attack: (verb) when you think you are going to die and you start hyperventilating and shaking and sometimes your hands get all prickly and the paramedics need to be called.
So far, I've had 3 major panic attacks (minor ones happen on the daily.) The first time I ever experienced one, I was in the back row of a 15-passenger van, going 80mph on the highway, when a car stopped short in front of us. I saw my 16-years of life flash before my eyes and I was pretty sure I saw the light. Crying, hyperventilating and freaking out followed shortly after.
The second time didn't happen for about another year or so. I was sitting on the porch of my dorm, reading a really great Nicolas Sparks book (don't judge me,) the sun was setting and I couldn't have been more in my happy place. Until I looked down and saw a man standing in my backyard who had been staring through the windows. He looked up right at me and then ran for his life. I freaked. We always knew we had a Peeping Tom, but this was the first time I saw him with my very own eyes. A police report and short panic attack later, I was alright.
But the most severe panic attack I've ever had happened a few years later, when I got stuck in a stampede in Jerusalem at the Jerusalem Day Parade. I was immobilized on the stairs going from the Western Wall up to the Old City, smushed into a few thousand people who were robbing me of my well-deserved oxygen. I gasped for air, started hyperventilating, some kids magically got me to the top of the steps, people were pouring water on me, then someone called the paramedics.. It was great fun.
Either I've become a much calmer person in the past few years, or I've somehow managed to avoid overcrowded, overly dangerous, and overly reckless situations. I'd call that Progress-Without-Prozac.
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