Plugging (Corrupted?) USB flash drive into MacBook Pro = crash/invisibilty

Hello (and thank you in advance)! This concerns a SanDisc Ultra USB 256GB drive set up to run Mojave on my old Macbook Pro (mid-2015 Intel) with Monterey. The SanDisc wasn't loaded up with applications or files (of the 256GB, I think 140GB were available) but I did run a DAW which was a RAM hog.

Mojave started up and ran just fine for a few months, but in the last week the USB drive started running slow (spinning wheel). I had previously installed CleanMyMac in Mojave and ran it regularly to keep it going smoothly, but over the last few days, even that didn't seem to make a difference. After a couple days of slow-running, it started freezing up, leaving me no option but to force quit out of the drive. After this happened a couple of times, the drive seemingly "broke" or corrupted, whereby when I plug it, it crashes the Mac, forcing it to automatically restart. Other than the alert that the Mac was "unexpectely shut down" Monterey runs fine after the restart, except that the drive doesn't appear anywhere.

The same thing happens in safe mode: the SanDisc crashes the Mac, then auto restart with USB drive absent. It doesn't show up in recovery mode either. The Monterey MBP, including the USB ports function normally otherwise.

Although I'm not much of a programmer, what stood out on the crash report was mention of a "panicked task". I'm hoping that I can restore the drive, or at least reformat it, but I don't know how to access it. Again, anything you can share or suggest would be very much appreciated!