On panic attacks and how sometimes your bags go missing when you fly

Okay, I am putting it out there: I had (have) 'em. Sometime after that ValuJet Flight 592 took a nose-dive into the Everglades I began having them when I flew. Can't say when exactly. It came to my attention years later, as a matter of fact. I was totally unaware I was having them. I actually had convinced myself that an airplane's cabin pressure took a dip each time a change in altitude occurred, as it so often does. I also convinced myself that I was just hypersensitive to cabin pressure change, and that I should not feel worried if I looked at the other passengers' faces and they didn't seem to feel what I was feeling. So I was able to avoid the whole panic attack issue entirely by making up a scenario that wasn't real. My specialty. My point is that once, on a particularly innocuous flight it was revealed to me by JMB that what I was experiencing was NOT cabin pressure change but rather hyperventilation (in his usual 'talking her down from a bad acid trip' voice he instructed me to breathe into and out of the vomit bag) and I was able to confront my fear (kinda) and act on it. Today I can (mostly) fly without a nerve pill and/or a vodka tonic if I put my mind to it. So on this day in history, you can imagine my interest perking up when I saw the front page of the NYT where a story describes an actual jet that mysteriously developed a gigantic hole in its underbelly, a.k.a. fuselage. And I quote: Passengers described a loud bang and the emergency oxygen masks deploying in the cabin before the plane, a Boeing 747-400, started a controlled descent to a lower altitude and changed course for Manila. “There was a terrific boom and bits of wood and debris just flew forward into” the first class area “and the oxygen masks dropped down," a passenger, Dr. June Kane, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp from Manila. “Just forward of the wing, there’s a gaping hole from the wing to the underbody," she said. "It’s about two meters by four meters and there’s baggage hanging out so you assume that there’s a few bags that may have gone missing...“At approximately 29,000 feet, the crew were forced to conduct an emergency descent after a section of the fuselage separated and resulted in a rapid decompression of the cabin,” the safety agency said. “The crew descended the aircraft to 10,000 feet in accordance with established procedures and diverted the aircraft to Manila where a safe landing was carried out. The aircraft taxied to the terminal unassisted, where the passengers and crew disembarked. There were no reported injuries.” If you get a chance today to view a passenger-made video on CNN.com of said plane's cabin, I would say it probably worth doing. I am astounded at the amount of calm people in the video. I would hazard a guess it may end up on YouTube, should you miss it. Darned if those masks really DO come down! It's a damned miracle.