Living in another world

[ewodonnell]

So almost a year ago my wife gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.It was truly the happiest day of our lives. But along with a new baby my entire life has taken a turn for the worst, or so it seems. About a month after our little girl was born i started having chest pain. Prior to this I maybe went to the dr once every few years if I needed antibiotics to knock out a cold or the flu but this chest pain came out of no where. Never had this feeling in my life and wasn't exactly sure how to react to it. Since my wife was overly concerned we went to the ER for them to tell me or its nothing you're fine. Not exactly the words I wanted to hear seeing as how I know my body and I know I'm feeling this pain but anyways we leave pain subsides and life goes on. Since then I've had about 12 more of these episodes every time I went them heel the ER aND get told everything is fine. At this point I feel as if I'm going insane. My parents convinced me to make a dr appointment with a family dr and have a full work up done just to be safe. After being seen by my dr she diagnosed me with anxiety but went ahead and scheduled an echo, stress test, ekg, and an xray. A week later results were back and everything looked perfect heart looks great cholesterol levels were perfect everything's just fine. So now I feel as if I really am going crazy. I took the anxiety meds prescribed had a terrible reaction to them she prescribed something else that I don't even bother taking because the side effects just don't seem worth it. So from this point I just started ignoring my pain and fear. My normal symptoms at this point were chest pain, dizzy, nausea, cold sweats, back pain. So months go by and I start getting a lot of pain in my legs. So thanks to google I was convinced I had a blood clot and this was the root of all of my problems. Anyways I go to the dr they do a d dimer comes back clean xray was good all blood work was good. So again I looked like a dumbass. Well the other day I started getting really bad headaches. About a week after these started I noticed a knot of the side of my calf and it was large enough to see. So I ignore it and continue with my day. As my wife and I were checking out at the store I got a sudden pain in my right side all the way up my back and chest it took my breath away so we went back to the dr and again everything was fine. Fast forward to today and I've had the same issues up to this point. However today on our way out of town I felt really sick stopped at a store hot the bathroom relieved myself and continued on our trip. Once at the in laws I started having stabbing pain in my chest well lower left chest or upper abdominal area. Every time I would stand or cough or take a deep breath in just stabbing pain. I've never had this before imy left should started to hurt pretty bad and my back the only relief I got was by laying down and trying not to panic. After a few hours it subsided until I stood up again. I tried walking around for a bit and passed some gas now the pain has basically gone away but I'm still really sore in the area and my head is pounding. My bp is good my pulse is good no obvious signs of something wrong. I'm just terrified that I've had something bad happen and I'm now ignoring it because I've been told 100 times that I'm fine. Someone please help

[Bearinmind]

Big changes in your life that increase your performance expectation can create a generalized anxiety, so it's not a far fetched guess to have anxiety after the birth of a daughter. It's most likely, actually, it's no easy task for a man.

But, if it eases your mind, you could try to see a neurologist to really rule out any possible abnormality (assuming the blood work you did checked for most hormonal diseases), it's the only thing missing from your medical history so far. A inner ear issue can also increase your predisposition for anxiety as there is some correlation between them.

As for the anxiety itself: since you don't want to take meds, a psychological approach would better suit you. Cognitive Behavior Therapy can teach you all the mind tricks to reduce and stop panic attacks, as well cure the generalized anxiety.

However, I do advise that for a better quality of life you at least take "emergency meds", anti-anxiety drugs that you take only to stop one particular panic attack that you find too bothersome to deal on your own and nothing more. I would suggest Alprazolam, it's a very short-fast acting relaxant with few side-effects and better yet, very short effect span, roughly 11 hours of half-life (most anxiety drug stay active in your system for more than a day). Get a very small dosage, like 0,25mg or 0,12mg of alprazolam and take it only when you have a very strong panic attack and no more. The only noticeable side-effect is a very mild muscle relaxation. In the middle of the panic this muscle relaxation will look like the end of the world, but it's all in your head, in 30 minutes, the usual time required for the med to soothe the brain and stop the panic state, it will all go back to normal for the whole day. And mind you, this is advice is coming from a guy who also doesn't take meds for anxiety, I hate their side-effects, I prefer to deal with the anxiety without them (the side-effects would usually cause more anxiety actually.) Still, I have to take some alprazolam if I have a very strong panic attack and have people depending on me that I can't let down, so the alprazolam can be useful when used sparsely.

The symptoms you describe are all classic symptoms of anxiety, and as your ECG and Echo came back normal, it's very likely to be anxiety. ECG would easily spot deadly arrhythmias hidden in your pulse, and echo not only checks for structural abnormalities in your heart but also checks it's efficiency, how much blood your heart can work with (diseases that damage your heart reduce it's efficiency to pump blood: heart failure). If your echo came back normal, you definitely don't have anything to worry about your heart. The stress test checks for heart performance on stress but also checks for signs of systemic diseases that can be tasking on your metabolic system (if you have systemic diseases your performance on the stress test is way below average, even below a sedentary person).

Again, assuming your blood work did a good check on metabolic diseases (like diabetes, hyperthyroidism, renal-adrenal gland health and etc) you really don't have much of a reason to worry about your health. The only thing missing right now would be a neurological check up, but the neurologist can rule almost anything in one examination and no machine tests, so it's quick at least.

Bad diet can also heighten anxiety: try eating more whole foods and eating more frequently but in less amount, people with anxiety tend to suffer more if we go for long periods of time on a fast.

And the last thing: exercise can help a lot. Not gym or "fitness" new age exercise, just, regular old exercise. People with anxiety tend to avoid exercising because we believe that the metabolic stress the exercise tasks on our bodies can trigger a deadly condition we might have hidden within ourselves and cause a deadly shock. The immediate side-effects of exercising can also increase the anxiety and panic attacks. But when done in the right way, it's actually the opposite. Exercise helps with anxiety mostly because of it's aftereffects. If you do a good session, your brain itself will release many analgesic and relaxing chemicals on your system for many hours, to deal with the muscle aches. These chemicals will also soothe your mind naturally as a side-effect, greatly reducing most of the anxiety.

If the metabolic stress is worrisome to you, then go for muscle exercise only, resistance training. Forget about cardio and try to get your muscles sore on sheer force. Resistance training, specially if done slowly, bears no weigh on your metabolic system. It's only problematic for people with blood pressure issues (too low or too high blood pressure) or predisposition for stroke (very thick or very thin blood, or very hard arterial walls), for them, light cardiovascular exercise is better. But for anxiety muscle exercise is better because what matters the most is the chemicals released by our system to deal with the muscle aches. You don't need to go to the gym or buy equipment, just search for good old fashioned calisthenics on the internet and will find great resources of muscle exercises that you can do at home with no equipment or weights and little time investment.

I know you must have been told this many times, but the from symptoms you show us, it does look like anxiety.

[ewodonnell]

Thank you so much for the reply it really does help. The only other issue I've been having is extreme back pain and I mean bad enough to where it's all you can think about while at work back pain. When I get home lay down and relax it's not as bad but if I'm up moving around a lot its killing me. They gave me some non narcotic pain killer and muscle relaxers but they don't even touch this its like trying to piss out a forest fire. I could very well be wrong but I feel like it's my back pain that it's radiating and causing my chest discomfort.

I definitely want to avoid any and all medication that I can. I'm not a huge fan of taking something with a lot of side effects so I will mention the anti anxiety meds you have mentioned. I'm also not sure what all blood work has been done the many times I've been to the er but I know the only blood work my family dr has done was to check my cholesterol levels which were perfect.

I'm not at a state of truly thinking I'm going to have a heart attack and die, but I do have those days. I'm more at the state of about to have a mental breakdown because I feel like I'm losing my mind. I honestly feel as if I'm just slowly wading through life and missing so much because of all of this.

I don't do half of the things I used to because now I'm afraid of being to far away from medical assistance if I need it. I used to go trail riding on my atv all the time with the wife and now I don't even want to do that because I'm afraid something will happen while we are out there and no one can get there in time or we won't have cell signal.

I do want to try therapy as I feel that may be a better approach to my issues. I feel like I need to gain control back over myself. I feel as though the real me has packed his bags and left. It's almost like a zombie like state I guess. I have 0 emotions anymore I don't get sad or depressed or mad or even happy for that matter. Because I either legitimatly have something going on or I have fully convinced myself that I have something wrong and the Dr's just aren't catching it. It's just the simple fact that the pain I'm feeling is real. I know that it's real because I feel it. It's not like I see a commercial about cancer and think I have cancer I'm not a hypo but when my body is telling me something is wrong and I keep getting told that everything is fine I start to lose my mind.

[Bearinmind]

I can very much relate to what you talk about. Health anxiety, even when it's not hypocondriac, can easily cause a disconcerting level of agoraphobia. And personally I think that is very tasking on the mind of a man, we're engineered to search for independence and power, to have people relying on us, anxiety can be pretty emasculating on that aspect. It's a terrible situation when we can't provide comfort and fun for our wives because we're too worried about ourselves.

If you can't trust your doctors that much I think you really should do some definitive tests. Even if the doctors can't be trusted, the tests at least can as their results are very much impartial. Get test for common diseases that can mimic anxiety, like hyperthyroidism, diabetes, check for liver health, adrenal gland health and so on. If you're sound enough, it should at least show to you that anxiety can be the only logical explanation.

Hearing more of your story I should stress further: Muscle exercise could really help in your case. Back pain is the symbol of idiopathic symptoms in modern medicine, but even though nobody can exactly pinpoint the cause for the dreadful back pain so common and mysterious these days, almost every good doctor knows how to fix it - develop your muscles further.

Almost all back pains are caused by stress, which causes involuntary muscle tension, which tasks your muscular system, which will bear down real hard on your most underdeveloped muscles. That can be specially true when there is dizziness involved. Dizziness will create a sense of instability when standing, a small sway when standing or walking, to prevent that sway from getting too big we involuntarily contract all of our standing muscles, the muscles that help us maintain a standing upright posture. And that will cause headaches if the weak muscles are on the upper back (shoulders muscles or neck muscles) and back pain if they on the lower back (hips or back of the legs as well).

Pilates, Tai Chi and yoga are schools of exercise that target a lot of back muscles and develop them easily, it can help if that is your kind of thing. If it's not, just do some back calisthenics at home, the many variations of the Bridge exercise can target the whole range of back body muscles, from heel to neck.

Functional exercise also helps to deal with anxiety in one additional way. If talk to a psychoanalyst about the common root of health anxiety, most of them will tell you: the false belief that we have a weak body.

People like us that suffer from health anxiety have some unconscious belief that our bodies can't deal with most situations and that we are the ill-starred unlucky child of the universe. That our bodies are not like the ones from the "normal people", because we're the unlucky ones. That's why reading statistics doesn't help much, it doesn't matter if we're on the low risk group, we believe we can be pretty much that one unlucky ******* that has that serious, hard-to-spot disease on an uncommon group. That we only get bad doctors and nobody believes us or knows what we feel. That there's no way some anxiety can be creating all these very real sensations.

That is the false belief which can be the root for a health anxiety. Exercise can help you get rid of that belief by showing you first hand how much your body can improve and how much punishment your body can take. It will show that even if something serious happen to it, it has the resilience to stand up. It really helps with agoraphobia and the health anxiety.

[ewodonnell]

So it's been awhile since I've been here I skimmed through my previous post and just kinda wanted to give an update on my situation.

So last September after being referred to a cardiologist and then he referred me to an intervential cardiologist due to an echo I had done being abnormal the interventialist decided it was best to do a heart cath. So we did that everything looked great, and that put my mind at a lot of ease. But the chest pain still carried on. I was also having a feeling if my throat closing up on me. So I was referred to a ENT.

The ENT said my throat was really inflamed but nothing serious that he could see and said I probably needed to see a G.I to have a endo done to rule out ulcers and so on.

So I go to the G.I have a endoscopy done I do have a peptic ulcer and esophoghites, if that's how you spell it, so they prescribed me a stomach pill which did more harm than good so I stopped taking it.

The good news is up to this point no ER visits. I was also referred to a long specialist who believes I have asthma so had me on a once a day inhaler. After seeing all these doctors I basically told myself hey this shit is in your head calm down. My pcp prescribed me klonopin I took a half a mg a day even though she prescribed 1mg 3 times a day. But the half did me fine.

Life went on as normal up until last week. Again I was having unbearable chest pain at work. So after work I went to local ER near my work and they told me o had an abnormal EKG, but let me leave due to having a heart cath last September. The next day I call my cardiologist and they referred me back to the ER where I live everything came back fine. I also had a 30 day Holter monitor that came back fine as well.

Since this recent episode I've been getting extremely light headed disoriented feeling top heavybad balance and my eyes are twitching uncontrollably. I have upped my dose of klonopin from a half a pill that I didn't always remember to take to now I'm taking 2 or 3 per day just to get through the day.

I continue to have these strange feelings in my head and a pin and needles feeling on the left side. Now I truly feel as if I am losing my shit. My mind is telling me something is wrong and I keep convincing myself that it's not. I was doing so good up until this last episode and I can't shake these strange feelings in my head. But due to me overburdening my local hospital anytime I'm seen it's just thrown up to anxiety. My CBC is always normal everything is always normal.

Yesterday while eating everything was fine and then for maybe a 3 minute period it was like I forgot how to swallow I literally couldn't swallow my food like it wouldn't allow me to. And then it went away and left me feeling really strange. I constantly feel off balance and like I'm wading through water my vision feels weird and idk if it's my anxiety causing all of this or if there may be something going on I need to get checked but I am trying to avoid Dr's unless absolutely necessary.

Thanks for reading my book and any help would be greatly appreciated