The Evening Telegram

Eileen Power is a one-finger typist, but she spends three hours a night at her computer keyboard responding to the more than 100 e-mails she receives each week.

The computer has made Power, who struggles daily with panic disorder and extreme anxiety, a counsellor of sorts from the safe haven of her own home.

Her Web page — Eileen’s Panic Page — has had more than 12,000 visitors in just over a year. The page details Power’s personal experience with the illness and offers motivation and support to others.

“It’s been a big hit, the page has,” Power said in a telephone interview from her St. John’s home.

“I’ve had a lot of people write to say how it has helped them and how they have cried while reading the stories because it seems like I was writing stories about them.”

Power has become a virtual panic disorder expert. She has had psychiatrists ask her for help, most recently a doctor in Australia who set up an on-line meeting with one his patients.

“Myself and my son set up a chat room and I talked to her for about an hour,” Power said of the patient.

“It seemed to make an improvement in her, too, where the doctor had exhausted all avenues of getting through to her. Talking to somebody who already had this disorder made it more real to her.”

A woman with panic disorder from North Carolina, bracing herself for Hurricane Bonnie, put out a plea for help Tuesday night through Eileen’s Panic Page.

Power posted the woman’s letter on the page’s virtual message board so others could respond and help her through it.

The saddest case Power has encountered so far is that of an elderly man and a woman who had to move from their home when they could no longer take care of themselves.

“The woman has panic disorder and was terrified to go, so they called and asked me for help,” she said.

Power had her first panic attack — a brief period of acute anxiety often dominated by an intense fear of dying — at the age of 13 when a school teacher asked her to read aloud.

She lied and said she couldn’t because she needed glasses.

By the age of 15, Power couldn’t handle it anymore and left school.

The panic attacks didn’t return again until Power was in her mid-20s, forcing her to leave work. The most severe, however, came at the age of 35. She’s still trying to recover from that one.

“This day I happened to witness a minor traffic accident, and I turned around and I practically ran for home,” she said, describing the rapid heart beat, trembling legs, dizziness and disorientation that took over her body.

“The closer I got to my home, the symptoms were starting to disappear. That was just the start of it.”

Power can look back now on the progression of the disorder and identify the contributing factors in her life — an alcoholic mother, uncaring nuns who instilled the fear of God in her as a girl, and a cheating husband.

Power doesn’t blame anyone for her illness. Still, she recognizes the road that took her there.

“I had several very vicious, uncaring, brutal, cruel nuns — one in particular when I was in Grade 6. There was a lot of fear,” she said.

“We were taught to fear God, not love Him. If you eat meat on Friday, my gosh o’mighty. That was terrifying, especially if you forgot and had eaten it. You weren’t allowed to have an impure thought.”

The cause of panic attacks is unknown, but Power attributes her disorder to stress.

“It all built up to when I was 35, and it just exploded. I could have had a heart attack, gotten ulcers or whatever, but it came out in me as panic disorder,” she said.

“Some say it was a chemical imbalance. I have never gotten rid of it. There were times when I could go by myself to the corner store, then I would have setbacks.”

Power is experiencing a setback right now. She’s having dizzy spells that she cannot control. For someone with panic disorder, control is important.

“Most of us are all fighters and survivors,” she said.

“I can’t remain at home 24 hours a day, seven days a week, because I’m not being fair to myself, so I do go out with the symptons. The thought of going out is (terrifying), but once you get out there it seems things settle into place and the symptoms aren’t as severe as before you go.”

Power gets out once a week, with the help of her daughter and son, for between two to four hours.

The Internet, however, has brought the outside world to her.

“It has changed my life. The way I look at it is I have turned something negative, which is the panic disorder, into something positive,” she said, adding she’s getting virtual get-well cards from her friends on the Web.

“I don’t go out alone anywhere. I would keep busy doing crafts, or at night watching TV and doing mundane chores, but now I look forward to going to the computer. I have made an awful lot of good friends.”

At first, Power didn’t think she had anything to offer a Web page, but then she remembered the stories and poetry she had written as a form of therapy. The page is not clinical, and Power didn’t want it that way.

“There is a motivation page there and I think just reading about my own personal experiences helps them, too,” said Power, who was diagnosed for 12 years before she spoke to anyone who had a panic disorder.

“I just enjoy helping people. Not a letter has passed by that I haven’t responded to. It usually takes me around three hours to tackle the mail because people want to know different things. Most of them I will hear back from. They will reply and thank me.”

Power is getting a crash computer course from her daughter Deborah Farewell, who designed Eileen’s Panic Page, and her son James. So far, she can put people on her pen-pal list, respond to mail and post articles to the site.

“A lot of them are just people looking for help and the way I put them onto help is I explain how I feel in my situation, that I understand what they’re going through and then I give them the addresses of a half dozen Web sites where they can go and read up on this,” she said.

“I find knowledge really lessens the fear. If all of a sudden your heart starts pounding, you’re dizzy and your legs are jelly, people think they’re dying. Nobody has ever died from a panic attack.”

Eileen’s Panic Page can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Gallery/1909