Hey everyone. First a little bit about me. I am an 19 year old student. And I am literally worried sick I have vCJD. This really all started about five months ago. I live in DC and go to The American University. Some of you may recall the wild snowstorm that hit DC and most of the East Coast. Basically our university was shut down for a week and I and everyone else was stuck in the dorms. I dont know exactly what happened but i started to feel disconnected with life and started to see spots and like little pin points of light -- like seeing stars. Initially I got worried that I had a brain tumor. But without the headaches, I quickly set upon vCJD (thank you google). Well I worried about that for about an month but got over it. April went pretty well.

Then in May it came back. Throughout May I was worried about I didnt know what to do. I am TERRIFIED I have this disease. I would try to fall asleep at night only to wake up with waves of anxiety coursing though me. I will be sitting still and waves of panic will overcome me. Insomnia is one of the symptoms as well. I feel like my mind is foggy. Like i am slower. I feel like my hand eye coordination is failing -- like i will occasionally miss a door handle if not concentrating on it. I feel like I am slurring speech. I will get aches in my arms sort of like mild growing pains. I have occasional twitches in my thighs, legs and feet. My legs will feel weak. And ever present is the anxiety. When laying in bed, i will get this weird vibrating feeling in my body or parts of it. Like I am moving but it is unobservable to the eye.

Anyway... that continuted through most of May. I felt better for about two or three weeks (in fact I had none of these symptoms). But in the past few days the stressed, anxious, tight feeling has returned. Yesterday afternoon something new happened that freaked me out. I saw double of something. I am trying to pass it off as nothing. After all. It came right after having kept my left eye closed for a long time while I shot some photos in a dark room. I am trying to convince my self that that is what caused it. But it has never happened to me before.

Could this be vCJD? Am I going nuts? I sometimes feel like i cannot breath and like my chest is being constricted. One of the symptoms of vCJD is anxiety and other psychological symptoms. My friends tell me they havent noticed any behavioral changes but I dont believe them -- I certainly have been having heightened levels of anxiety appear for no reason like a constricting feeling all the time which of course is one of the early signs. Could anxiety cause all of these?

I lived in France for 9 years from 2000 to 2009. I know France has a BSE scare in the early 2000s. It has been 10 years since then. I know most of the cases of vCJD have been traced back to the 80s-90s epidemic in England and I had never been to England before 2000 which is why I feel this fear is quite irrational.

What are you thoughts? I feel like I cannot live like this. Thoughts of vCJD CONSUME me day and night. I have dreamed about it. I am sorry if I sound crazy, but i feel like i am loosing my mind -- which i very well could be if i have vCJD. Does anyone know what anxiety from vCJD is like? It is such a rare disease and no one is a survivor so who can you ask? The internet is just vague and unhelpful.

Or... could anxiety (actually stress on the body) be the cause of all of this -- the occasional spots, cloudy fog, tightness in the chest etc.

I have always been an anxious person -- new schools, new places, new situations. But it has never been this bad or this lingering before.

My mom suffered from extreme anxiety/panic attacks when she was my age -- in fact she said it surfaced suddenly too. Can anxiety like this just 'spring up?'

Please help if you can! Thank you!