Hello MeAV and welcome to Cancer Chat,

I hope you find the forum a useful place to connect with others. 

I just wanted to message and say that I'm sorry about how you've been feeling lately. It's important that you feel confident in managing these panic attacks while having treatment and one key thing is to make your medical team is aware at every step, if you haven't already. By making everyone aware, the necessary adjustments, like giving you time and support, can be put in place. Sometimes these attacks can be triggered by the mind running away with itself so it helps to pull back and stay calm before and during treatment. Breathing exercises and meditation can help with this. You can find various methods and techniques via your search engine. 

It's perfectly natural to feel scared, so it's also important to be kind to yourself when these feelings bubble up. Feeling informed and mentally prepared for things like the tube fitting can be a helpful tool in coping with fears. If there is something that you can take with you or focus your mind on at appointments that relaxes you, that might help.

We have some advice around mental health during and after treatment on our website. This includes tips for looking after your mental health and specialist support that might be available to you and if you ever need to talk through anything medical, we have a team of dedicated nurses available on our free and confidential helpline. You can call 0808 800 4040 and lines are open from 9 to 5 Monday to Friday.

I hope this helps in some way and keep us updated on how you're doing!

Moderator Anastasia