The anxiety was something that was building up during last week. It first started with the bad news of my friend’s dog having cancer. My friend is devastated and I feel her pain. I have a dog, too, who is like my child. He’s a senior now and it got me thinking that one day he will no longer be with me. Then I had a lot of stress from my job all week. I work from home and I feel very isolated. My husband is deployed and it’s mostly just me at my house alone with my dog. I also look after my elderly father and help him with various online things that he can’t do on his own. I’m very close to my father. We talk about twice a day. By the end of last week, I was very stressed out. Saturday morning I awakened around 3 am with a panic attack. This was the second panic attack of my life with the last being about 3 years ago during a dental procedure. Ever since then, I seem to have become a more and more anxious person. It’s very hard with my husband being deployed. Lately, I seem to worry about everything. I have had this awful nervous feeling in my stomach all weekend and all day today. I can barely eat. I hate feeling like this and just want to get back to being my old self, who is generally pretty cheerful. The last time I felt like this was when I was given the grim news that my mother had 2 weeks left to live. This was more than a decade ago, but I can still remember that awful feeling. I feel very afraid and very alone. I’m also having a hard time concentrating on my work.