Fear of Fear

"What on God's green earth was that?"
I sat at the seven-foot Kawai grand piano in Calvary's worship center on a crisp Sunday morning, 12 bars away from the final chord of my piano solo.
The most awful, nasty, atrociously horrible sensation of impending death sneaked up from behind and bludgeoned me like a sledgehammer to my brittle skull.
My field of vision funnelled, nausea gripped my innards and hot and cold shocks jolted my spine. My heart machine-gunned my chest, as if trying to breach ribs, blood vessels and flesh.
Terrible as the fear was, the thought of passing out and falling onto the piano keys in front of 500 horrified spectators was nearly as bad.
Somehow, though the piano keys and music score looked incomprehensible, my fingers limped to the finish line.
I stood up, amid applause, and made my shaky way back to my family, sitting in the pews, far stage left.
My husband put his arm around my shoulder and squeezed me. "That was great, honey."
I smiled at him with my mouth, but the rest of me was reliving the horror of my first panic attack.
My mind would relive that horror thousands of times over the following weeks, each time finishing with the logical question: will that happen the next time I perform?
I've later discovered that this is the greatest horror suffered by those sensitive souls afflicted by panic attacks. When/where will it happen again?
I'll be sharing more about my 17 year struggle --what works, what doesn't. I've even written a novel about a woman who battles attacks of anxiety.
How about you? Do you battle panic? How do you cope?