My Norwegians, Part II

At midnight the Norwegian lady from the previous post phoned, begging for a housecall. Something terrible was happening. This was a full-blown panic attack, she informed me. She knew for certain that she was dying. When I assured her that she would not die, she did not deny it but pleaded tearfully for me to come. Victims of panic attacks are not psychotic. They know they’re behaving irrationally, but they can’t resist.

These calls are not rare, and I usually handle them without a visit. Ten minutes of soothing reassurance and the knowledge that I’m immediately available over the phone generally works. Reassurance also works when I visit a guest whose complaint unexpectedly turns out to be a panic attack. Unfortunately, these successes are guests who don’t know they’re having an attack or suffer them rarely. This lady was a hard-core, locked-in panic attack veteran. Her attacks followed a strict pattern, and no reassurance would change matters.

If I came, examined, and found everything normal, she would express gratitude, but even before I finished counting my money, she would be pleading for another exam. Yes (I know you’re asking) there are shots, and I give them, but they don’t work. I hate walking out on a guest who’s begging me to stay, and these attacks may last hours.

This guest’s conviction that she was dying was clearly wrong. Yet every doctor has heard of patients who announce that they’re dying and then proceed to die. No doctor wants to be the source of such an anecdote, so this lady needed at least one exam. As I was agonizing, she broke in to say she would ask the hotel to call an ambulance. Then she hung up. I phoned the front desk to make sure they had done so. Like me the paramedics have encountered plenty of panic attacks; in the unlikely event something bad happened, they were the last medical professionals the guest had seen.