Anxiety

Here are these doctors telling him he’s fine but he feels like shit. In the Underground he was sure he was about to have a heart attack but they’re all saying he’s OK. Now, as well as feeling he’s about to die, he’s also going round the bend.

He has another attack the following week. Same symptoms. The diagnoses of two doctors the previous week can’t have been right so he goes back to hospital. They're panic attacks, they say. Go and see a specialist. They'll give you something to stop them.

It must be something to do with the Underground he tells himself. "I get claustrophobia when I go down there".

He decides to go by bus. But one day, on the way to the city centre, he has another attack: irregular heartbeat, cold sweats, breathing difficulties but, worst of all fear, an overwhelming sense of dread.

So, he stops going by bus too and starts avoiding crowded shops, pubs, airports, stations, theatres, and cinemas. He develops a theory about the amount of personal space he needs to feel comfortable in. Give him that space and he’ll feel OK.

But not long afterwards he has an attack on a windswept hillside in the Pennines.

"Shit! Shit! Shit!" he curses as he sits breathlessly on a rock on a Pennine hillside, overcome by fear. They're now happening in sparsely populated areas too. Theory out of the window.

Soon, just about any venture out of the house becomes unbearable. The mere thought of an attack makes him shake. He is virtually a hermit.