Serenity1990
02-05-14, 18:52
Apologies in advance for the length of this, in truth I'm writing it as much for my benefit as anything but I hope it can be of use to some on here who have experienced the same sort of things.
Rewind to this time last year. I was a postgrad student in a science subject at one of the best universities in the world. I was on track (just!), had great friends, and amazing prospects in my near future. I was nearing my final exams, and I was understandably nervous but no more so than others were, or than I had been in any other exam period. I had a month to go, and just like this time every other year for as long as I could remember I was in the library eighteen hours a day with books, pads of paper and a calculator. My phone was off, Facebook deactivated, every conceivable distraction removed, but still I couldn't concentrate.
You see, for the past five years or so I'd been burning the candle at both ends. Throughout my undergraduate studies and (to an extent) postgraduate studies I had been trying to fund myself, by working thirty or more hours a week in a high-stress management position, whilst trying to study full time. I seemed to be managing it for a time, though in hindsight it was pretty stupid. I was going out at 8am every morning and not returning until midnight, seven days a week for months on end. There really was no need, I'm lucky enough to come from a relatively wealthy family who would have funded me without any difficulty, and in fairness I wasn't working to fund the necessities I was working to fund what had become quite a lavish lifestyle for a student, with a nice flat to myself in a decent area, performance car, health club membership for a bi-weekly pampering, meals out, etc.
The trouble was that now, nearing the end of my studies and having given up work I simply couldn't be bothered any more. These were the most important exams of my life, I had more time than ever to study for them, and here I was sitting in the library eighteen hours a day doing an hour's worth of work. Tomorrow would be different, I'd tell myself. It never was.
Fast forward to a day before when the exams were supposed to start. I thought I'd done enough just to get through them, but still couldn't really be bothered to push myself. I didn't know what was wrong but I knew something wasn't right. I was really nervous about the exam the next afternoon, could imagine the years of work I'd just done slipping through my fingers. Throughout the day I'd been having a weird, almost stitch-like sensation on the right side of my stomach. I paid as little attention to it as I could, got on with what I needed to do. However around eight o'clock I met my friend in the cafe for a coffee, and found that the stitch was so bad I could barely stand up straight. My friend was laughing at me for being unfit, though I knew something wasn't right. Nonetheless I persevered, got through to about midnight with studying and then went home with plans to sleep it off.
Around 2am I was still in pain and worrying about it. I considered going to hospital but thought it was likely to be something non-serious, and that I'd be wasting their time. However I called NHS Direct just in case, they asked me a few questions and eventually told me that there was a chance I had appendicitis and should go to hospital immediately. I thought about this for all of thirty seconds, before deciding that things like that don't happen to me, whatever it was would probably be cured by a good night's sleep so that's what I got.
The next morning I woke early to have forgotten about the agonising pain. Until I attempted to get up, that was, when I ended up falling back onto the bed. I decided this might be corrected by a hot bath, so ran one and got in it. Then I spent half an hour trying to get out of it as I was in so much pain.
So I went to hospital. I didn't call an ambulance, I went to the hospital across the road from university, fully expecting to be out within a few hours and in my exam. I informed the receptionist I had been advised to go there by NHS Direct because of the possibility of appendicitis, and sat down expecting a long wait. To my surprise I was ushered straight through to be seen by two doctors, who ordered bloods and all sorts of other tests, and confirmed that appendicitis was a strong possibility before even taking the bloods. I didn't hear back from anyone for about an hour, until a hospital porter came in to wheel me somewhere. I didn't question this, until I saw I was being wheeled into the emergency surgery trauma unit. I asked the porter what this meant, and he said "you must be having an operation mate".
So I lay in my bed in my own room of this ominous sounding ward, assumed the bloods had come back and confirmed what everyone seemed to think, and that I was about to have my appendix out. At this point I turned my phone on and made a couple of calls to friends and family to let them know what was happening, and shortly afterwards a doctor came in to let me know that whilst my bloods were not yet back my operation would be as soon as a slot became available, as my symptoms and clinical signs alone were enough to warrant the operation to avoid the risk.
I was glad that my problem had been caught in time, but when he explained about the small risks involved with the operation I became a little nervous. I started to picture myself being that one who died from a complication in a routine procedure, and what that wound do to my parents. Then my main concern was for my exam that afternoon, in fact I asked the doctor if I could be discharged for a few hours and pop back that afternoon for the operation! He talked some sense into me, explained that I was barely fit to stand up straight and certainly not fit enough to write an exam. Luckily he was a professor at the university I attended (it was a university hospital), and therefore knew the procedures and made a couple of phone calls on my behalf. It was decided my exams would be deferred for three months.
I was pumped full of strong morphine, so given how out of it I was I decided to have a kip. The next thing I knew I was being wheeled somewhere by a porter, presumably for my operation. However I was actually being wheeled to another ward upstairs, where I was spoken to by a nurse. I asked her what was going on and whether my operation would be that evening, she just frowned at me, looked at my notes and told me there was nothing there to indicate I was going to have an operation. I explained everything that had happened, she made a couple of phone calls, and gathered that at some point when I was asleep my bloods had come back normal and there was nothing to indicate appendicitis. She said I was being kept under observation and would be awaiting an ultrasound for suspected biliary colic.
Long story short, I was in there for three days nil by mouth and they didn't find a slot for me to have the scan. Desperately in need of the bed a doctor discharged me with an outpatient's appointment for an ultrasound six weeks away and a massive prescription of codeine.
The next few weeks were spent mostly in bed. The pain only returned occasionally and not to the extent it did; I took the codeine for a bit but quickly stopped as it was making me really drowsy. Before I knew it I was back sitting at a desk most waking hours again revising for these (now deferred) exams. And again, struggling to find motivation.
The time came to take the exams. I had since moved out of my flat by the university and had moved back in with my parents, so I was staying in a hotel over the fortnight of my exams. Every night over this fortnight (and a few weeks before) I couldn't sleep until 5am. From laying down until this time I just kept dropping off to sleep, and semi-concious having the vivid sensation of falling off a building. This was my first inkling that I might have some sort of serious anxiety issue, and I began to wonder whether the pain I had experienced three months before was something similar.
In fact it reminded me of something that had happened the night before an exam the year before. I had felt really weird in the library (a sensation I now know to be "unreality"), went home, went straight to bed and just lay on my back with my eyes open and my body was totally paralysed. I was like that for about four hours before snapping out of it, and I went to the exam that time without any actual sleep. I got through that exam anyway and happened to do well, so I had completely forgotten about this experience.
Anyway, back to last year, and I got through five of my six exams with what little sleep I had under my belt. It was coming up the the final one and I was exhausted. I finished all of what I needed to do in the library and headed back to my hotel. All of a sudden my heart started pounding in my chest, getting faster and faster. It got to a point where I was feeling breathless and clutched my chest, and the heartbeats were going so quickly they almost felt like they were merging into one. I was really worried I was about to have a heart attack, luckily I didn't and I now know it to have been a panic attack, my first and one of very few.
Anyway I got through that final exam, scraped through the grade I needed (which in hindsight is a miracle given I had no more than twenty hours sleep in the two weeks), and crashed in bed for a fortnight. I was starting a new job, an amazing new job that paid about four times as much as I thought I was really worth and required virtually no hours comparative to what I'd been used to. From September last year until December I really had it all. However I was tired all the time, and still couldn't really find the effort to do anything. I was excelling in my new job simply because I'd had the education I'd had from the place I'd had it, I was probably putting no more than ten hours a week real work into it. I thought I was just burnt out because of the hectic life I'd been leading for five or six years without a proper break.
Over this period I had, however, developed profound worries about my heart. I was going to the gym three times a week to do cardio (five miles on a treadmill each time), and throughout this I was constantly worried about my heart rate, feeling my pulse, my heart was pounding in my chest and I strapped myself up to all the heart monitors on the equipment. Despite the fact my heart was always regular and never exceeded 180bpm on a sprint (I had a really healthy rhr of 60), I couldn't shake the obsession. Whenever I was at work I would feel a tremendous pressure on my chest, only to pull my shirt away from my chest to find it was just the sensation of that but greatly exaggerated. I knew it was nothing to worry about but couldn't rationalise it.
Come Christmas and I finally had what I'd needed for so long, some time off! I was looking forward to it so much. On the first day of my time off I actually had to fly to another country because I'd been head-hunted for another amazing position and I needed to attend an interview. In truth I could have done without this, but I got up at 6am anyway, headed to the airport in a taxi, and again was getting that weird pressure from the shirt on my chest. There was bad traffic on the motorway so I just about got to the airport in time and into the plane. As the plane was taxiing to take off I started to worry the plane might crash. In context I'd been on planes countless times before and never ever had an issue with flying. My heart started to race, and again I thought I might have a heart attack. Again, I didn't and we landed safely. As I got off the plane I felt really weird and weak, and wasn't with it at all. I managed to spark a security alert by somehow leaving all of my luggage on the bus that took us from the plane to the terminal, and in my confused state managed to find my way to the car hire place to pick up a car.
I went straight to the interview from there. I wasn't nervous about it at all, I don't get nervous about interviews as I've done enough from the other side of the table when I was in management. But the interview went awfully. There were a number of role-play type scenarios, which generally I think are a load of ******** but somehow this time I found myself unable to hide my feelings toward them and participated noticeably begrudgingly. Throughout the rest of the interview I just felt really tired, my participation was minimal my answers made my come across like I really hadn't done my research. I left the interview knowing I hadn't got the job, not overly bothered by the fact, and headed for the hotel I'd booked myself into.
It was still mid-afternoon, I went to the bar, bought a pint and took it to my room, with a view to calling a few friends I had in the city to catch up. I managed to drink half my pint and fell asleep on the bedclothes, to awaken the next morning around 10am having slept about seventeen hours.
I felt refreshed and like I'd needed the sleep, so headed to the airport for a flight home. I had similar worries when on the plane home about crashing and my heart, felt very breathless all the way back and when I got off the plane I felt just as strange. When I got to the terminal building I felt really light-headed, and the heart palpitations were still going strong. I sat down in a Costa for a couple of hours buying countless bottles of water (I never stopped feeling thirsty), and eventually resolved to get myself checked out. I was seen by the airport's first aider, who decided I was absolutely fine other than a slightly raised heart rate, and he sent me on my way. I felt really ill all the way home, but when I managed to get some sleep I was fine by the morning.
I spent an incredible amount of the next couple of weeks in bed feeling drained, but generally OK. I went to the gym a few times, my heart was pounding even more than usual and I got really breathless on one jog, which I couldn't find a logical explanation for. On Xmas eve I had to drive up north to pick up my grandad. I am very very used to motorway driving, I'm a very confident driver (I used to do track driving as a hobby), and I was in a brand new £30k car with radar-guided cruise control, so it basically drives itself. But somehow I was getting stressed out about what other drivers were doing, almost a 'scared' sensation though I wasn't actually scared of anything. I felt breathless the whole journey, and eventually had to pull over as I was also getting chest pains. Upon the completion of my journey I went to a NHS walk-in centre, who sent me to A&E to make sure I hadn't had an aneurism. I went to the hospital and after a chest X-ray, multiple blood tests etc it was eventually deiced that I was in perfect health, and the pains I had been experiencing were best explained by pleurisy, as I had had a very bad upper respiratory tract infection recently. I was told to rest for a month and then I'd be fine.
So I did that, I still wasn't fine. I kept getting chest pains, and spells where it felt the world around be wasn't real. I went to an osteopath as I'd read online the fluid causing the pleuretic pain can be drained by osteopathy. She found a rib was slightly out of place, and she started doing something to manipulate that. I felt a huge amount better, headed home and all was well.
Then that evening I started getting the chest pressure sensation again. This is when I started googling. I don't know why, but I was convinced I wasn't getting the full picture, and if I was to believe doctors a healthy man in his early twenties had had all these horrible things in the past year. Dr. Google told me I had either heart failure and five years to live or angina and coronary heard disease.
As I was sitting down to dinner, I was convinced of this. Suddenly my entire right side went numb and weak, I felt confused, and I was having severe chills and eventually the shakes. The chest pain returned, and my heartbeat was pounding. An ambulance was called as these were the signs of a stroke, and they rushed me to hospital. I was seen my a junior doctor, who started talking to me about TIAs. He called in a stroke specialist, who after a long examination told me she was extremely confident I had not had a stroke. However I had to have all sorts of tests for the possibility of a heart attack and other things. When all came back clear she told me she thought I was suffering from anxiety, but booked me an MRI for a month's time for my own piece of mind.
Over the next few days I was having splitting headaches, from the back of my neck around my head and into my eyes. Once again my entire right side went weak, once again I was rushed to hospital, and the doctor asked me if I was "a worrier". I responded that I wasn't. He said that it was good I was having an MRI as they needed to rule out a brain tumour, but he thought it was severe anxiety. So off home I went to google the symptoms of brain tumours, and hey presto I was a perfect match. So I now had a three week wait for an MRI scan, another week wait for the results, and the little of me that wasn't broken up to this point was now. I was a mess.
It was around this time Dr. Google suggested to me I might have MS. He mentioned dexterity loss in the fingers, and it happened to be the case that I'd noticed this off and on for the past year or so but thought little of it. He mentioned the MS Hug, which would explain that pressure on my chest. He mentioned tingling, burning sensations, all sorts of stuff that I had been experiencing. He mentioned the twitches, those twitches that actually I have been getting an awful lot lately and coming to think of it I've been getting off and on for the past year. It was all falling into place!
So I went to my GP who dismissed this possibility, and my logical brain thought it best to therefore visit a neurologist privately. Not any old neurologist either, the best and most expensive MS specialist I could find. I turned up, went through all my symptoms, he did a through exam, and sat down. He told me that my examination was completely normal, and that he thought my symptoms could be explained by a post viral inflammatory condition. I asked him if there was a possibility it could be MS, as there was a history of it in the family, he said "no". He told me that he suspected my MRI results would come back clear, and when they did to just try and get on with life.
The MRI did indeed come back clear, and I was reassured for all of a day. Then I started on all the MS forums, read of those who eventually got diagnosed with it with clear MRIs and neuro exams, and then I read that you really need to contrast to detect it and I didn't have the contrast, and I was back to stage one.
It was only through reading this board and another that I started to convince myself that it was all just anxiety, and I started to get better. Two members who sadly no longer visit here who I must thank for this are RLR and itoldyouiwasill. They helped me realise that MS symptoms do not come and go (at least not in the early years), rather they come and gradually improve. They do not alter symptom presentation, as mind had up to this point. They helped me realise that the reason the symptoms of anxiety and MS can appear very similar is what's basically happened when anxiety presents itself in this way is your nervous system is hyperactive and/or exhausted, it starts to misfire, if you like. Because the symptoms of MS are resultant of damage to that same nervous system the list of possible symptoms are pretty much identical, and if you go goggling these symptoms MS will pop up. The key difference, the difference that google doesn't tell us until we've googled so much we've turned ourselves insane, is the pattern of these symptoms. MS symptoms occur because of damage to the myelin that coats neurones, this damage can repair itself over a period of weeks but what it can't do its come and go over the space of minutes or hours.
So I was on the road to recovery around March time. I should add at this point I hadn't been able to work since Xmas. I was starting to go out, see my friends, and enjoy life just a bit. I started seeing a councillor who helped me on my way, and I seemed to be getting better. Then suddenly came the sad news that my grandad was seriously ill and had just weeks to live.
I went up to see him, and spent a lot of time up there. However I started to get this overwhelming tiredness out of nowhere, then this tightness in my lower ribcage. At the hotel I was staying at near the hospital my arm went weak again and I struggled to lift my fork. I started getting really bad jelly legs, and felt stiff when trying to walk. Low and behold my MS fears were back. In fact I was in such a state that in his last few days I was so down I have real regrets about my lack of interaction with him, even though I was there.
So after all that, I came home pretty much resigned to my fate. In fact I had never been so convinced I'd had it, to the extent that I laughed at how stupid I'd been to think it might have been anxiety.
I started reading a lot about the scientific research into the disease. I found a neurologist (whose name is in the swear filter on here for some reason) who had treated his MS patients with diet alone over the course of four decades with a 95% success rate. I found a lady on PheonixRising (ME forum) who had written a book about the biological processes what caused autoimmune disease and how to avoid these with diet. I found a businessman who had cured himself of PP MS, a doctor who had cured herself of SP MS, all with diet. I found that researchers in the US had treated 28 patients with stem cell therapy for the disease in 2006 and none had had any symptoms since, and that this was being trailed by very serious universities in the US and UK and could well be available as a cure within a decade.
You know what? The next morning I felt massive amounts better. It was now that I realised just how powerful anxiety was. As soon as I had taught my brain that what it was worried about could be fixed, I was better.
That was about a month ago. Since then I've been up and down, still getting the rib sensations every now and then, IBS, bloatedness, and the hand thing. However this past week or two I've realised when I accept the rib thing, IBS and bloatedness as anxiety symptoms they go. Not immediately, but when I truly accept they're gone within a day.
That leaves the hand sensation. Last week I decided to pamper myself and go for a massage. The massage therapist told me my neck was very tight, which could be down to stress, and asked if I was having any weird sensations into my arms. I told her about the hand think, and she recommended a physio who might be able to diagnose whether I had a trapped nerve in the neck or shoulder. I saw him a few days ago, he told me I had a trapped nerve in my cervical spine, he's treating it and gave me some exercises, and it's almost completely better. I also mentioned the rib thing to him, he cracked my ribs on my left side and guess what, now I only get it on the right.
These past couple of days are the first in a very long time I'm beginning to feel like my old self. I genuinely feel like I'm well on the road to recovery, and I just wanted to share my story so that others might benefit, however that might be.
I've not mentioned all my physical symptoms above as it's long enough as it is, but I'll list them below.
Headaches (all over, and localised to virtually any part of the head you care to think of)
Stabbing, throbbing eye pain
Shooting pains all over
Back pain
Rib pain
Tight band around ribs
Fasciculations all over
Migrating pains
Neck pain
Visual Snow
Blurred vision (for a few seconds)
Double vision (for a few minutes)
Tinitus
Heart palpitations
Breathlessness
One-sided weakness
One-sided numbness
Buzzing sensation (in one or more limbs or all over)
Burning sensations
Heat sensations (localised)
Chills
Tremor
Hives appearing in the body part in worried about
Whole body shaking as dropping off to sleep
Leg jerks
Jelly legs
Word-finding difficulties
Swollen tongue
Sleep paralysis
Extreme fatigue that isn't relieved by rest
Dry eyes
Constant thirst
Insomnia
Sleep apnea
Tingling (localised)
Irritability
Pressure on chest
Exploding head syndrome
Falling sensations
Chest pain
Unreality
Stuttering
TMJ
Fear of flying
Fear of going crazy
Giddiness
Feel like one ear is blocked
Increased number of dreams
Waking up very early naturally
Metallic taste in mouth
Constipation/IBS
Lack of appetite
Hungry all the time
Post-nasal drip
Sinusitis
GERD
Stomach constantly rumbling
Bloatedness
Eczema on palms of hands and soles of feet
And plenty more I've probably missed!
Rewind to this time last year. I was a postgrad student in a science subject at one of the best universities in the world. I was on track (just!), had great friends, and amazing prospects in my near future. I was nearing my final exams, and I was understandably nervous but no more so than others were, or than I had been in any other exam period. I had a month to go, and just like this time every other year for as long as I could remember I was in the library eighteen hours a day with books, pads of paper and a calculator. My phone was off, Facebook deactivated, every conceivable distraction removed, but still I couldn't concentrate.
You see, for the past five years or so I'd been burning the candle at both ends. Throughout my undergraduate studies and (to an extent) postgraduate studies I had been trying to fund myself, by working thirty or more hours a week in a high-stress management position, whilst trying to study full time. I seemed to be managing it for a time, though in hindsight it was pretty stupid. I was going out at 8am every morning and not returning until midnight, seven days a week for months on end. There really was no need, I'm lucky enough to come from a relatively wealthy family who would have funded me without any difficulty, and in fairness I wasn't working to fund the necessities I was working to fund what had become quite a lavish lifestyle for a student, with a nice flat to myself in a decent area, performance car, health club membership for a bi-weekly pampering, meals out, etc.
The trouble was that now, nearing the end of my studies and having given up work I simply couldn't be bothered any more. These were the most important exams of my life, I had more time than ever to study for them, and here I was sitting in the library eighteen hours a day doing an hour's worth of work. Tomorrow would be different, I'd tell myself. It never was.
Fast forward to a day before when the exams were supposed to start. I thought I'd done enough just to get through them, but still couldn't really be bothered to push myself. I didn't know what was wrong but I knew something wasn't right. I was really nervous about the exam the next afternoon, could imagine the years of work I'd just done slipping through my fingers. Throughout the day I'd been having a weird, almost stitch-like sensation on the right side of my stomach. I paid as little attention to it as I could, got on with what I needed to do. However around eight o'clock I met my friend in the cafe for a coffee, and found that the stitch was so bad I could barely stand up straight. My friend was laughing at me for being unfit, though I knew something wasn't right. Nonetheless I persevered, got through to about midnight with studying and then went home with plans to sleep it off.
Around 2am I was still in pain and worrying about it. I considered going to hospital but thought it was likely to be something non-serious, and that I'd be wasting their time. However I called NHS Direct just in case, they asked me a few questions and eventually told me that there was a chance I had appendicitis and should go to hospital immediately. I thought about this for all of thirty seconds, before deciding that things like that don't happen to me, whatever it was would probably be cured by a good night's sleep so that's what I got.
The next morning I woke early to have forgotten about the agonising pain. Until I attempted to get up, that was, when I ended up falling back onto the bed. I decided this might be corrected by a hot bath, so ran one and got in it. Then I spent half an hour trying to get out of it as I was in so much pain.
So I went to hospital. I didn't call an ambulance, I went to the hospital across the road from university, fully expecting to be out within a few hours and in my exam. I informed the receptionist I had been advised to go there by NHS Direct because of the possibility of appendicitis, and sat down expecting a long wait. To my surprise I was ushered straight through to be seen by two doctors, who ordered bloods and all sorts of other tests, and confirmed that appendicitis was a strong possibility before even taking the bloods. I didn't hear back from anyone for about an hour, until a hospital porter came in to wheel me somewhere. I didn't question this, until I saw I was being wheeled into the emergency surgery trauma unit. I asked the porter what this meant, and he said "you must be having an operation mate".
So I lay in my bed in my own room of this ominous sounding ward, assumed the bloods had come back and confirmed what everyone seemed to think, and that I was about to have my appendix out. At this point I turned my phone on and made a couple of calls to friends and family to let them know what was happening, and shortly afterwards a doctor came in to let me know that whilst my bloods were not yet back my operation would be as soon as a slot became available, as my symptoms and clinical signs alone were enough to warrant the operation to avoid the risk.
I was glad that my problem had been caught in time, but when he explained about the small risks involved with the operation I became a little nervous. I started to picture myself being that one who died from a complication in a routine procedure, and what that wound do to my parents. Then my main concern was for my exam that afternoon, in fact I asked the doctor if I could be discharged for a few hours and pop back that afternoon for the operation! He talked some sense into me, explained that I was barely fit to stand up straight and certainly not fit enough to write an exam. Luckily he was a professor at the university I attended (it was a university hospital), and therefore knew the procedures and made a couple of phone calls on my behalf. It was decided my exams would be deferred for three months.
I was pumped full of strong morphine, so given how out of it I was I decided to have a kip. The next thing I knew I was being wheeled somewhere by a porter, presumably for my operation. However I was actually being wheeled to another ward upstairs, where I was spoken to by a nurse. I asked her what was going on and whether my operation would be that evening, she just frowned at me, looked at my notes and told me there was nothing there to indicate I was going to have an operation. I explained everything that had happened, she made a couple of phone calls, and gathered that at some point when I was asleep my bloods had come back normal and there was nothing to indicate appendicitis. She said I was being kept under observation and would be awaiting an ultrasound for suspected biliary colic.
Long story short, I was in there for three days nil by mouth and they didn't find a slot for me to have the scan. Desperately in need of the bed a doctor discharged me with an outpatient's appointment for an ultrasound six weeks away and a massive prescription of codeine.
The next few weeks were spent mostly in bed. The pain only returned occasionally and not to the extent it did; I took the codeine for a bit but quickly stopped as it was making me really drowsy. Before I knew it I was back sitting at a desk most waking hours again revising for these (now deferred) exams. And again, struggling to find motivation.
The time came to take the exams. I had since moved out of my flat by the university and had moved back in with my parents, so I was staying in a hotel over the fortnight of my exams. Every night over this fortnight (and a few weeks before) I couldn't sleep until 5am. From laying down until this time I just kept dropping off to sleep, and semi-concious having the vivid sensation of falling off a building. This was my first inkling that I might have some sort of serious anxiety issue, and I began to wonder whether the pain I had experienced three months before was something similar.
In fact it reminded me of something that had happened the night before an exam the year before. I had felt really weird in the library (a sensation I now know to be "unreality"), went home, went straight to bed and just lay on my back with my eyes open and my body was totally paralysed. I was like that for about four hours before snapping out of it, and I went to the exam that time without any actual sleep. I got through that exam anyway and happened to do well, so I had completely forgotten about this experience.
Anyway, back to last year, and I got through five of my six exams with what little sleep I had under my belt. It was coming up the the final one and I was exhausted. I finished all of what I needed to do in the library and headed back to my hotel. All of a sudden my heart started pounding in my chest, getting faster and faster. It got to a point where I was feeling breathless and clutched my chest, and the heartbeats were going so quickly they almost felt like they were merging into one. I was really worried I was about to have a heart attack, luckily I didn't and I now know it to have been a panic attack, my first and one of very few.
Anyway I got through that final exam, scraped through the grade I needed (which in hindsight is a miracle given I had no more than twenty hours sleep in the two weeks), and crashed in bed for a fortnight. I was starting a new job, an amazing new job that paid about four times as much as I thought I was really worth and required virtually no hours comparative to what I'd been used to. From September last year until December I really had it all. However I was tired all the time, and still couldn't really find the effort to do anything. I was excelling in my new job simply because I'd had the education I'd had from the place I'd had it, I was probably putting no more than ten hours a week real work into it. I thought I was just burnt out because of the hectic life I'd been leading for five or six years without a proper break.
Over this period I had, however, developed profound worries about my heart. I was going to the gym three times a week to do cardio (five miles on a treadmill each time), and throughout this I was constantly worried about my heart rate, feeling my pulse, my heart was pounding in my chest and I strapped myself up to all the heart monitors on the equipment. Despite the fact my heart was always regular and never exceeded 180bpm on a sprint (I had a really healthy rhr of 60), I couldn't shake the obsession. Whenever I was at work I would feel a tremendous pressure on my chest, only to pull my shirt away from my chest to find it was just the sensation of that but greatly exaggerated. I knew it was nothing to worry about but couldn't rationalise it.
Come Christmas and I finally had what I'd needed for so long, some time off! I was looking forward to it so much. On the first day of my time off I actually had to fly to another country because I'd been head-hunted for another amazing position and I needed to attend an interview. In truth I could have done without this, but I got up at 6am anyway, headed to the airport in a taxi, and again was getting that weird pressure from the shirt on my chest. There was bad traffic on the motorway so I just about got to the airport in time and into the plane. As the plane was taxiing to take off I started to worry the plane might crash. In context I'd been on planes countless times before and never ever had an issue with flying. My heart started to race, and again I thought I might have a heart attack. Again, I didn't and we landed safely. As I got off the plane I felt really weird and weak, and wasn't with it at all. I managed to spark a security alert by somehow leaving all of my luggage on the bus that took us from the plane to the terminal, and in my confused state managed to find my way to the car hire place to pick up a car.
I went straight to the interview from there. I wasn't nervous about it at all, I don't get nervous about interviews as I've done enough from the other side of the table when I was in management. But the interview went awfully. There were a number of role-play type scenarios, which generally I think are a load of ******** but somehow this time I found myself unable to hide my feelings toward them and participated noticeably begrudgingly. Throughout the rest of the interview I just felt really tired, my participation was minimal my answers made my come across like I really hadn't done my research. I left the interview knowing I hadn't got the job, not overly bothered by the fact, and headed for the hotel I'd booked myself into.
It was still mid-afternoon, I went to the bar, bought a pint and took it to my room, with a view to calling a few friends I had in the city to catch up. I managed to drink half my pint and fell asleep on the bedclothes, to awaken the next morning around 10am having slept about seventeen hours.
I felt refreshed and like I'd needed the sleep, so headed to the airport for a flight home. I had similar worries when on the plane home about crashing and my heart, felt very breathless all the way back and when I got off the plane I felt just as strange. When I got to the terminal building I felt really light-headed, and the heart palpitations were still going strong. I sat down in a Costa for a couple of hours buying countless bottles of water (I never stopped feeling thirsty), and eventually resolved to get myself checked out. I was seen by the airport's first aider, who decided I was absolutely fine other than a slightly raised heart rate, and he sent me on my way. I felt really ill all the way home, but when I managed to get some sleep I was fine by the morning.
I spent an incredible amount of the next couple of weeks in bed feeling drained, but generally OK. I went to the gym a few times, my heart was pounding even more than usual and I got really breathless on one jog, which I couldn't find a logical explanation for. On Xmas eve I had to drive up north to pick up my grandad. I am very very used to motorway driving, I'm a very confident driver (I used to do track driving as a hobby), and I was in a brand new £30k car with radar-guided cruise control, so it basically drives itself. But somehow I was getting stressed out about what other drivers were doing, almost a 'scared' sensation though I wasn't actually scared of anything. I felt breathless the whole journey, and eventually had to pull over as I was also getting chest pains. Upon the completion of my journey I went to a NHS walk-in centre, who sent me to A&E to make sure I hadn't had an aneurism. I went to the hospital and after a chest X-ray, multiple blood tests etc it was eventually deiced that I was in perfect health, and the pains I had been experiencing were best explained by pleurisy, as I had had a very bad upper respiratory tract infection recently. I was told to rest for a month and then I'd be fine.
So I did that, I still wasn't fine. I kept getting chest pains, and spells where it felt the world around be wasn't real. I went to an osteopath as I'd read online the fluid causing the pleuretic pain can be drained by osteopathy. She found a rib was slightly out of place, and she started doing something to manipulate that. I felt a huge amount better, headed home and all was well.
Then that evening I started getting the chest pressure sensation again. This is when I started googling. I don't know why, but I was convinced I wasn't getting the full picture, and if I was to believe doctors a healthy man in his early twenties had had all these horrible things in the past year. Dr. Google told me I had either heart failure and five years to live or angina and coronary heard disease.
As I was sitting down to dinner, I was convinced of this. Suddenly my entire right side went numb and weak, I felt confused, and I was having severe chills and eventually the shakes. The chest pain returned, and my heartbeat was pounding. An ambulance was called as these were the signs of a stroke, and they rushed me to hospital. I was seen my a junior doctor, who started talking to me about TIAs. He called in a stroke specialist, who after a long examination told me she was extremely confident I had not had a stroke. However I had to have all sorts of tests for the possibility of a heart attack and other things. When all came back clear she told me she thought I was suffering from anxiety, but booked me an MRI for a month's time for my own piece of mind.
Over the next few days I was having splitting headaches, from the back of my neck around my head and into my eyes. Once again my entire right side went weak, once again I was rushed to hospital, and the doctor asked me if I was "a worrier". I responded that I wasn't. He said that it was good I was having an MRI as they needed to rule out a brain tumour, but he thought it was severe anxiety. So off home I went to google the symptoms of brain tumours, and hey presto I was a perfect match. So I now had a three week wait for an MRI scan, another week wait for the results, and the little of me that wasn't broken up to this point was now. I was a mess.
It was around this time Dr. Google suggested to me I might have MS. He mentioned dexterity loss in the fingers, and it happened to be the case that I'd noticed this off and on for the past year or so but thought little of it. He mentioned the MS Hug, which would explain that pressure on my chest. He mentioned tingling, burning sensations, all sorts of stuff that I had been experiencing. He mentioned the twitches, those twitches that actually I have been getting an awful lot lately and coming to think of it I've been getting off and on for the past year. It was all falling into place!
So I went to my GP who dismissed this possibility, and my logical brain thought it best to therefore visit a neurologist privately. Not any old neurologist either, the best and most expensive MS specialist I could find. I turned up, went through all my symptoms, he did a through exam, and sat down. He told me that my examination was completely normal, and that he thought my symptoms could be explained by a post viral inflammatory condition. I asked him if there was a possibility it could be MS, as there was a history of it in the family, he said "no". He told me that he suspected my MRI results would come back clear, and when they did to just try and get on with life.
The MRI did indeed come back clear, and I was reassured for all of a day. Then I started on all the MS forums, read of those who eventually got diagnosed with it with clear MRIs and neuro exams, and then I read that you really need to contrast to detect it and I didn't have the contrast, and I was back to stage one.
It was only through reading this board and another that I started to convince myself that it was all just anxiety, and I started to get better. Two members who sadly no longer visit here who I must thank for this are RLR and itoldyouiwasill. They helped me realise that MS symptoms do not come and go (at least not in the early years), rather they come and gradually improve. They do not alter symptom presentation, as mind had up to this point. They helped me realise that the reason the symptoms of anxiety and MS can appear very similar is what's basically happened when anxiety presents itself in this way is your nervous system is hyperactive and/or exhausted, it starts to misfire, if you like. Because the symptoms of MS are resultant of damage to that same nervous system the list of possible symptoms are pretty much identical, and if you go goggling these symptoms MS will pop up. The key difference, the difference that google doesn't tell us until we've googled so much we've turned ourselves insane, is the pattern of these symptoms. MS symptoms occur because of damage to the myelin that coats neurones, this damage can repair itself over a period of weeks but what it can't do its come and go over the space of minutes or hours.
So I was on the road to recovery around March time. I should add at this point I hadn't been able to work since Xmas. I was starting to go out, see my friends, and enjoy life just a bit. I started seeing a councillor who helped me on my way, and I seemed to be getting better. Then suddenly came the sad news that my grandad was seriously ill and had just weeks to live.
I went up to see him, and spent a lot of time up there. However I started to get this overwhelming tiredness out of nowhere, then this tightness in my lower ribcage. At the hotel I was staying at near the hospital my arm went weak again and I struggled to lift my fork. I started getting really bad jelly legs, and felt stiff when trying to walk. Low and behold my MS fears were back. In fact I was in such a state that in his last few days I was so down I have real regrets about my lack of interaction with him, even though I was there.
So after all that, I came home pretty much resigned to my fate. In fact I had never been so convinced I'd had it, to the extent that I laughed at how stupid I'd been to think it might have been anxiety.
I started reading a lot about the scientific research into the disease. I found a neurologist (whose name is in the swear filter on here for some reason) who had treated his MS patients with diet alone over the course of four decades with a 95% success rate. I found a lady on PheonixRising (ME forum) who had written a book about the biological processes what caused autoimmune disease and how to avoid these with diet. I found a businessman who had cured himself of PP MS, a doctor who had cured herself of SP MS, all with diet. I found that researchers in the US had treated 28 patients with stem cell therapy for the disease in 2006 and none had had any symptoms since, and that this was being trailed by very serious universities in the US and UK and could well be available as a cure within a decade.
You know what? The next morning I felt massive amounts better. It was now that I realised just how powerful anxiety was. As soon as I had taught my brain that what it was worried about could be fixed, I was better.
That was about a month ago. Since then I've been up and down, still getting the rib sensations every now and then, IBS, bloatedness, and the hand thing. However this past week or two I've realised when I accept the rib thing, IBS and bloatedness as anxiety symptoms they go. Not immediately, but when I truly accept they're gone within a day.
That leaves the hand sensation. Last week I decided to pamper myself and go for a massage. The massage therapist told me my neck was very tight, which could be down to stress, and asked if I was having any weird sensations into my arms. I told her about the hand think, and she recommended a physio who might be able to diagnose whether I had a trapped nerve in the neck or shoulder. I saw him a few days ago, he told me I had a trapped nerve in my cervical spine, he's treating it and gave me some exercises, and it's almost completely better. I also mentioned the rib thing to him, he cracked my ribs on my left side and guess what, now I only get it on the right.
These past couple of days are the first in a very long time I'm beginning to feel like my old self. I genuinely feel like I'm well on the road to recovery, and I just wanted to share my story so that others might benefit, however that might be.
I've not mentioned all my physical symptoms above as it's long enough as it is, but I'll list them below.
Headaches (all over, and localised to virtually any part of the head you care to think of)
Stabbing, throbbing eye pain
Shooting pains all over
Back pain
Rib pain
Tight band around ribs
Fasciculations all over
Migrating pains
Neck pain
Visual Snow
Blurred vision (for a few seconds)
Double vision (for a few minutes)
Tinitus
Heart palpitations
Breathlessness
One-sided weakness
One-sided numbness
Buzzing sensation (in one or more limbs or all over)
Burning sensations
Heat sensations (localised)
Chills
Tremor
Hives appearing in the body part in worried about
Whole body shaking as dropping off to sleep
Leg jerks
Jelly legs
Word-finding difficulties
Swollen tongue
Sleep paralysis
Extreme fatigue that isn't relieved by rest
Dry eyes
Constant thirst
Insomnia
Sleep apnea
Tingling (localised)
Irritability
Pressure on chest
Exploding head syndrome
Falling sensations
Chest pain
Unreality
Stuttering
TMJ
Fear of flying
Fear of going crazy
Giddiness
Feel like one ear is blocked
Increased number of dreams
Waking up very early naturally
Metallic taste in mouth
Constipation/IBS
Lack of appetite
Hungry all the time
Post-nasal drip
Sinusitis
GERD
Stomach constantly rumbling
Bloatedness
Eczema on palms of hands and soles of feet
And plenty more I've probably missed!