Hi
@Antje77
Thank you for your response
I don’t feel like it is anxiety as it just happens out of the blue some times when I’m not even doing anything. Very strange. Thank you for seeing if someone else can give me some advice in order to narrow it down. It isn’t nice at all
Donna
Hello Donna,
There's a difference between chronic hyperventilation and acute hyperventilation. For me, personally, in times of prolonged stress, my hyperventilating is chronic. I barely notice that I breathe faster than average, but after a while I get stabbing pains in my chest (naturally, by the heart area, making it extra scary), my lungs ache, and sometimes it's just like not being able to breathe even if you're not doing anything special. Numbness and tingling I experience mostly in my extremities though. And the longest this has lasted for me was I believe, about
half a year at a time. I hate to say it, but the ER sounds like they could well be right about this being a matter of panic attacks. For me, they tend to vary from actual panic and needing to get away to a quiet place to collect myself (also known and getting myself home), to feeling like I'm about to drop dead on the spot, triggered sometimes out of seemingly nowhere. (Heart racing or skipping beats, not able to breathe, that sort of thing. It's a very, very physical experience.).
You might want to go to your GP about this and talk it over. There is medication that can help you deal with this, and from what I understand there could be therapists specialising in people with T1, helping them cope with their rather traumatic diagnosis and diabetic burn outs and such. If you are absolutely convinced that that can't be the problem, ask for further testing, (I have asthma, my mom's got bronchitis and COPD, and sometimes it is hard for either one of us to differentiate between a physical condition and one that is triggered by stress. Just having ventolin around helps sometimes: if that doesn't work, it's my mind at it again. If it does, however, then it fixes the problem.). But.... Again... I think the ER folks can have a point. If it is getting in the way of your daily life, and it sounds like it is, do go talk to someone about it, and see whether you can figure this out together. There are various ways forwards, whatever the cause.
Good luck,
Jo