Get out of jQuery IF context

I modified this code from another project. I want a slider that goes both directions. I did not want to siled all panels at once. Like I see a lot of sliders do. I wanted the content to show in kind of an “in-demand” once requested way. This being one of my first jQuery projects, I figured I would learn, so I tried it out. I seem to get pretty much what I wanted. The place I am stuck with is this. I cannot seem to get out of the IF statement context in the sliderMultipanel function. I need this, so I can determine the direction the animation should flow in, based on the click. I have read a lot and learned some about bubbling and (stopping) propagation, but I don’t know if I am going down the correct path. The IF statement seems to keep on starting the counting over. This makes for unexpected results. So what gets evaluated by the IF is only sometime correct, also it does random weird behavior. However, it is correct if its context is outside of the IF or click function (see lines 66-73). Can some show a way this can be done? To be clear I want to properly determine the number of the nav button click so the slider can go in the requested direction. Thanks

https://codepen.io/pctechtv/pen/KrxoOQ