Panic at the Discold

Starting sometime last week, around Monday or Tuesday, I started feeling a fluttering in my chest. The feeling was the feeling you get when you are extremely nervous or when you have a lot of anxiety. I didn’t think anything of this at first because who hasn’t felt that feeling every once in a while. But it kept happening. Over and over. Several times a day. It was starting to freak me out a bit. It was almost as if I was having miniature panic attacks for no reason. But I wasn’t. My heart was beating normally. I wasn’t feeling anything else besides these bursts of fluttering several times a day. I figured I’d give it a few more days before I would make an appointment with a doctor.

Last night I finally voiced my concerns with a couple of people. My friend Trix told me to make an appointment with a doctor right away. My friend Brittney reacted a bit differently. I told her what I was feeling via IM and her response was one of shock. She was feeling the exact same thing I was. I thought this was very odd but didn’t really think anything of it. I decided to tell my mom what I was feeling and that I may need to see a doctor. As I’m telling her, her eyes get wide and she tells me she has felt the exact same thing. This was really starting to get weird. What was causing this feeling in people? Especially Brittney, who lives in Wisconsin. This is too much to be a coincidence. My mom then goes on to explain how it freaked her out at first as well but then she overheard two ladies talking about having the same exact feeling. What is going on here? Why are all these people feeling this and why haven’t I heard something about this from others? It turns out one of the ladies my mom overheard, and her husband, were feeling this and went to the doctor. The doctor told them that because St. Louis has had such a warm winter with temperatures well above the norm, our bodies didn’t know how to react last week when the temperature dropped to zero. I mean, we’ve had weather in the 50’s, 60’s and even 70’s when it should be in the 20’s and 30’s. As it so happens, the feeling started when the cold hit, but I would have never attributed it to the weather. My friend that lives in Wisconsin hasn’t had a warm winter. But the temperatures have been record lows, so I would assume it can do the same as it did to me.

I’m going to keep monitoring just to make sure it’s nothing else, but a huge weight was lifted from my shoulders when I found out others were having the feeling and that it was all caused by the weather. Very strange.