Panic When The Kids Get Sick
February 17th, 2011
One thing that would set me off into a panic attack was the kids getting sick. I think this started when my middle boy was 2½ and one morning he just held his head and started screaming like he was in pain. About a minute later he started vomiting and then a couple of minutes later he became really lethargic and it was difficult to get him to stay awake.
As these are the symptoms of meningitis we rushed him straight into hospital. At first the doctors thought it was meningitis but when they tested his eye movements and responses they were all ok so then they didn’t think it was meningitis. He stayed in hospital for 24 hours and he came good after that. We still don’t know what caused this illness but it was possibly some sort of virus. But this experience was a very scary one and one that changed me I think.
I was pregnant at that time with my third son and when he was born my oldest son was at kindergarten. Being at kindy of course the kids started getting sick as they pick things up from other kids, so he was always coming home with a sniffle and it would go around all of us including the baby. As a result my little boy Lachlan seemed to be forever sick with a cold or something. He would always seem to get things worse than the others too and even over the years as he grew into a toddler, then into a school aged boy he still seemed to pick things up easily and got them worse than the others. When he got a cold it would often turn into a chest infection or bronchialitis (not sure how to spell that) and now that he’s 8 he has asthma which is usually worse when he has a cold.
I think with the suspected meningitis incident and then Lachlan always being sick and always worse than the other two, I started to become a bit paranoid. Then whenever any of the kids got sick, the first sign of a sniffle, my stomach did a backflip and felt like it was jumping out of my chest. I would get sweaty hands, I couldn’t sit still, I would just get really panicky.
In fact, at one point it wasn’t just when my kids got sick but if my friends kids got sick I would panic and keep mine away from them. I also reached the point where I didn’t want my kids playing outside or even mucking around inside because I had this awful fear of them getting hurt.
My oldest boy was swinging on the clothesline a few years back (even though I told him a thousand times not to) and he fell and landed on the top of his back and his head. He got a severe concussion and was screaming with the pain in his head. I took him to hospital and his vision was going blurry and at the hospital he was vomiting. He fell asleep and slept for about 4 hours after it – he remembers falling and driving to the hospital, but those 4 hours he slept he doesn’t remember any of that even though the nurses were waking him regularly.
I really couldn’t cope with these things and had such an intense fear of anything happening to my kids. I acted irrationally when they were sick or hurt because of my panic symptoms. I actually started using EFT to help when I experienced these panic attacks and it has helped quite a bit. I still have small feelings of panic when the kids get sick or hurt but not to the extent that I once did.
With the help of EFT and the Panic Away program I now deal with these stresses in my life much better and without falling into a full panic attack.
