Panic! Stranded, Scared, and Silent!

Witnessing the quiet trauma of caregivers through my own moment of fear. Crying through the eyes of others.

On the morning of 12 January, I had an appointment with my therapist at 9 am for a minor injury in my knee.

We had to take the NH, which is now being redone as the Express Highway. So it made more sense to take a two-wheeler.

As fate would have it, someone had messed with the “reserve” knob of the bike — maybe when it was parked in the city, someone casually turned the knob. The thing with our RE Bullet 350 is — it does not have a fuel gauge. We usually fill the tank to the top. When the bike goes into reserve mode we refill.

Since the reserve knob was turned wrong, we ran out of petrol in the middle of the road!

We pushed the bike for a while. The road construction leaves us fewer functioning fuel stations.

Then a gentleman on a bike stopped and told us there are no fuel stations for another 2 km or so. He offered to take my husband to get a bottle of petrol.

My husband didn’t want to leave me standing by the dusty road. So he asked a shopkeeper nearby if I could sit there until he came back.

The uncle welcomed me warmly and gave me a chair to sit. My husband left.

The shop was the front yard of a house, actually — just something people do if their house is by the road. This shop sold small items like pens, soap, candy, biscuits, etc.

The shopkeeper uncle was in his late 60s or early 70s. He was chatty.

But there was a lady inside who did not make eye contact with me. I mean, I did not blame her — I was an uninvited guest.

The uncle started telling me about his daughter, who was my age and looked like me. Then he started telling me how people accuse him of stealing. People lock him up. People are rude to him.

I was confused. Many uncles are chatty. They could talk non-stop.

This was too much information even for a chatty uncle.

But what confused me is — none of the information was connected. Most sentences did not make sense to me.

A boy came to buy something from the shop and the uncle chased him away. Uncle told me that he will not use bad words. But he was clearly trying to control bad words.

Everything was odd!

Then another lady came. She seemed related to the uncle.

She too did not smile at me. She just grabbed a chair and sat a bit farther on the other side of the shop.

When the uncle was not looking, auntie showed me a hand gesture.

It was something I half-suspected:

The uncle was struggling psychologically!

I have seen things before. I watched my two grandparents struggle with potassium imbalance and other issues on their deathbeds that looked like signs of Alzheimer’s. I am familiar with how people can appear absolutely absurd when they lose grasp of their minds.

Once when I was changing my grandmother’s diaper, she started caressing my face. But she was not conscious enough. She had put her hand inside the diaper earlier in a moment of discomfort. So she was unknowingly smearing faeces on my face. The lady who changed my diapers hundreds of time would never have done that in her right mind.

My paternal grandfather is said to have attacked his caregiver in an episode triggered by Alzheimer’s or ionic imbalance.

The differences here:

I do not know what caused this uncle’s condition. He was not bedridden, but physically alright. The auntie gestured clearly that he may attack in a bout of anger. I cannot guess what triggers him. And my knee was bandaged. So I couldn’t move as needed.

I stayed calm on the outside. Even the auntie kept gesturing to me not to lose my cool.

Clearly, if she tried to remove me from the situation, or if I tried to excuse myself without enough reason to convince him, he would get angry.

A slight wrong twitch in my tone, face, or body language, and he might get violent.

He continued to chat and complain. I nodded along.

When I lost attention for a moment, he literally walked up to me with the huge thermoflask in one hand, and a hot glass of tea in the other, just to get my attention back.

The 20 minutes or so felt like eternity — an eternity of fear. The uncle clearly was someone who lost control often.

Even when my husband came back, I did not get up until he was close enough.

The uncle came along with us to the bike, still chatting. He chatted on while we poured petrol into the tank.

My husband was getting confused by his behavior. So I muttered to him in English, still smiling so that the uncle wouldn’t figure. “Do not engage. We need to go. NOW!”

My husband figured something was wrong and we scooted.

Since the day didn’t go as planned, I had to push many plans and reschedule a lot. But my mind still replayed the events.

The helplessness on the faces of the two ladies at the shop — the caregivers of that uncle!

They somehow manage. They do not react even when he uses foul language and accuses them of doing bad things to him. They could say nothing to clear themselves in front of a total stranger. I did not even thank them properly.

The best thing I could do for them was leave without getting the uncle too excited. I did that.

But I still must have given them a silent heart attack. If I didn’t react right and he got violent, people might blame them. They may ask them to confine him. It must be hellishly traumatic for them.

And the things people say and do — the way they behave when they have lost control of their rationale!

The uncle would come off as a normal shopkeeper uncle to anyone. You may even by a pen from him, leave, and never suspect that he struggled inside. If you were just a one-time visitor, you wouldn’t even wonder why the ladies of the house were worried about having people around.

Photo by Miguel Carraça on Unsplash

The day was hectic to say the least. I was tired out early. So I went to bed by 10 pm.

But I couldn’t sleep properly. There was a lot of yelling in my head.

By 11:30 pm, I woke up sweating despite it being a winter night. I was panting as though I had just run a mile for life.

My limbs and back ached, but also had a tingling sensation. Heart racing, nausea, dizziness.

I don’t usually wake my husband (or anyone) up. But there was this sense of doom!

It felt as though if I didn’t wake him up, Iwouldn’t get a chance to say goodbye.

He turned the fan to high speed. I went to the bathroom, opened a window, drank water.

Nothing helped. So we turned on Netflix for a while. After an hour or so, I told him I was okay and made him go back to sleep.

But I wasn’t completely okay, but better.

The physical discomfort continued. Pain, palpitations, tingling, nausea. I coughed all night, even with lozenges in my mouth, as though I was choking.

I finally got some sleep after 4:15 am.

But before I got to sleep, I watched YouTube for a while. The algorithm proved itself again!

A girl in a video was showing what a panic attack looked like. It is exactly what I just had!

Textbook Panic Attack!

Probably the first one I had in 4 years — the night after my mother-in-law passed away in front of me.

I got up at 6. But I sustained body pain and fever-like symptoms. I am not sure if it is consistent with a panic attack.

Tiredness and “fever” wrecked Tuesday for me. Ayurveda calls it Bhaya-ja Jwara. Modern medicine calls it Psychogenic Fever. In Kerala, we call it “Pedi Pani”

I got close to nothing done. I was moody too.

I didn’t burp my first-ever jar of sauerkraut (which I made to help my weak knee), and it burst.

I feel better today after resting for two days.

But yes…

All because someone fidgeted with a bike’s fuel knob — I was reminded that caregiving comes with layers of trauma, and that panic attacks (and anxiety attacks for that matter) are REAL!

Image made with Google Gemini