LandItInTheHudson
21-09-15, 01:49
Hi all, I'm new to the forums, as many of you, I discovered this forum while looking for symptoms on Google.
After reading different posts on here, and being able to identify with some of them, I wanted to share a piece of my story.
I've read in other posts that writing about it helps, so here I am.
(Sorry for any grammar errors, English is not my main language).
I've been a healthy individual all my life, I've only had one sinus problem when younger get unnecessarily complicated but was handled and done with it.
About 3 years ago I was in a rough place, possibly the worst time in my life, and started suffering weird dizziness on occasion. I was stressed, not sleeping well, sitting on the computer all day, I'd sleep during the day for 3/4 hours and stay up all night or even for days at a time. I've had about 4 or 5 of those that made me go to the ER because I did not know what was going on, just to leave with a prescription for anti vertigo meds and nothing else.
I decided to get out of the depression I was sitting, and moved across the world. A year and some later I was happy, doing my own thing and met a wonderful person who I married later on.
Everything was fine, but I had to give up all my work, my traveling... I found myself staying at home with nothing to do other than play video games for hours and hours.
Shortly after that, the dizziness episodes came back, every few weeks but very strong.
The ER was 5 minutes away from home so I'd ask my husband to drive me and I'd spend hours at the ER just to have all my blood test, CT scans and x rays come back perfectly clean. Once again I was being sent home with anti vertigo meds and nothing else.
I do have an arachnoid cyst in the back of my head that showed up on my first CT scan at 15 years old but been told it's harmless, so when I started feeling dizzy I got extremely worried. I also suffer from tinnitus and before leaving home to travel I was being evaluated for possible Meniere's (googling I found out those cyst can mimic Meniere's so I was even more worried).
The dizziness started getting worse and worse to the point I was living with it every single day. Usually lightheadedness, but very rarely it would be so bad that I'd lose my balance.
I kept making appointments to see my Dr, I had a complete ENT evaluation and nothing. Blood work, xrays, all came back perfect.
I was getting frustrated and desperate, I was feeling ill and my doctor couldn't tell me what was wrong with me.
Almost a year later, I had a really weird feeling as I was falling asleep, I felt I was spinning out of control, kind of floating and it felt like dying. It happened twice that week. I've never felt anything like that before. I was scared out of my mind.
After laying down all day due to (what I thought was) a panic attack, I was googling and googling and came across the reddit subforum for Hypochondriacs, after going through the threads, and reading other people's stories everything went away. That's when I realized that might be it.
I've noticed in that past year that I've been overreacting to every single thing I felt, so I started thinking, trying to remember: Things like scrolling through my facebook feed and reading about someone dying, would make me feel ill instantly, anxious, I'd have to click on the news or status and find out how they died.
I'll never forget the day I read about the wife of someone dying due to a bad interaction of anxiety pills and back pain meds... That's in my mind whenever I think about looking into medication as a viable way of getting this out of my head. And now every time a Dr prescribes something the first and only thing I ask is about possible interactions, and most of the time I don't take the meds if I read the side effects and they involve nervousness, heart palpitations and stuff like that.
I had just stopped going to therapy so I tried getting it out of my system by myself, but it didn't work, clearly.
I started losing my mind a bit, I was feeling like living a dream, like nothing was real, like I wasn't really there, I was watching my life from a third person perspective, as weird as that might sound.
I was slowly losing my head, I would be driving and as soon as I started feeling weird I'd pray to someone, to please make it all go away. I couldn't live this way.
I wanted to bang my head against the wall. It was unbearable.
About a month ago I was having bad palpitations, ended up going to the ER, as usual, they told me I had a long QT. GOOGLE TO THE RESCUE!, I shouldn't have google'd that. I called my Dr and she called me in the next day, had two EKG done, NOTHING.
At this point I was feeling embarrassed, like she was going to think I'm making all this up.
Anyway, I moved across the country a few weeks ago and right before moving, of course, I landed in the ER because of my dizziness, I saw my Dr the next day for that and pelvic pain, but after extensive pelvic exam and ultrasounds they found nothing (now I don't have that pain anymore, mind you it lasted for about a month until I got all those tests done). A day later I had flu-like symptoms, better make another appointment then! She gave me a cocktail of meds to take on my trip.
Before I moved out, in that short year and some months, I've been to the ER about 15 times, not counting the times I saw my Dr.
I felt embarrassed every single time, I couldn't even look at the nurse's eyes because I knew what they were thinking.
I've heard "what's wrong now?" so many times I didn't even want to get out of my house ever again.
I moved out and I was happy because I thought it'd be a fresh start. I was feeling great for the first week, no more "living a dream" sensations.
I went down with a cold, no fever though, got some cold meds and went on my way, but deep down inside I was freaking out, I haven't had a cold in over 3 years...
Three days later, after grabbing a bite during a break of unpacking, I started shaking really bad, laid down, wasn't going away... started over-worrying, as usual, nausea, dizziness, decided for the first time to call 911, my husband was on the phone and I didn't even want to tell him to take me to the ER, I knew he'd get frustrated and probably think I'm crazy.
Ambulance came, they hooked me to a heart monitor and one of the paramedics told me I was showing signs of PVC, my husband offered to take me to the hospital and after 2 blood tests, xrays, 2 EKGS and hours of waiting, everything was fine, no sings of PVC or Long QTs. Just slightly high blood pressure as soon as they checked me in but normal when they checked 2 hours later.
I often feel palpitations and I can't just ignore them. Back pains are terrible, been having severe headaches for months, nausea is gone but comes back at times. Every time I try to be aware of my body I find that my abs and shoulders are locked in a tense position, so I try to relax, but as soon as I forget, my muscles tense up again.
Last night I slept on the floor in the living room because I was having trouble breathing, had a wheezing, but for the first time I decided not to run to the ER, knowing that I'm seeing my new Dr. on Monday.
I'm embarrassed, I'm exhausted, I'm frustrated. I feel like I have no control of my life. I can't leave the house without feeling sick at some point. I'm used to laying down as soon as I start feeling dizzy or nauseous.
This has been interfering with my personal and social life for a bit over a year now and I can't have it anymore.
The reason I got here today was because I decided to look at my belly in the mirror and OF COURSE, I found some weird red, bloody like dots on my skin (rare on me). Off to google! and all I could read was cancer, leukemia, and tons of other terminal illnesses.
I'm tired of living like this, I started therapy again last week so hopefully it'll help, I'm looking into mindfulness meditation, doing some yoga again, anything to get me back to who I was two years ago.
My husband gets very frustrated every single time the words "Can you take me to the ER?" come out of my mind because he knows we'll be stuck there for hours just to leave with the doctor saying "everything is fine".
I know I should be happy to hear those words, and I am at the moment, but it only lasts for so long.
I've told him I suffer from some sort of health anxiety but I haven't completely opened up about how I feel and stuff. Not yet.
Health Anxiety is ruining my life. Even though I'm 100% conscious of what's going on with me, that I'm fine and this is all the result of my anxiety, I can't help to ignore it.
I realized I've been living my life convinced I have a terminal illness. For some reason my mind just accepted it and I never doubted it. I embraced it.
It doesn't help that I also suffer from OCD, which I've had since I can remember. "You didn't do this! gdang it now you're going to get really sick!"
It's a snowball. I can't stop it.
I wonder why even though I'm aware of what is it, why can't I stop the symptoms?
I've tried breathing and calming down when I'm feeling really dizzy, but it feels like I'm going to die and I end up in the ER.
Why can't I stop it?
I read some cases and some people usually have very specific attacks, then they go away.
I have this headache and pressure in my head following me around almost all day, every day. That worries me the most. Is it really anxiety or is something wrong with my brain? How come I feel it all the time?
I've never ever had high blood pressure before, now I've heard I had "slight high blood pressure" twice in a month and a half.
I'm freaking out a bit right now because these red dots are not a normal thing on me, and it's hard not to want to drive to the ER but it calms me that I'm seeing my new Dr. tomorrow. After reading some posts on here I decided I'm going to be 100% honest with her and tell her about my anxiety, but that I want to make sure everything is completely fine with me before moving on to treating my anxiety.
I'm done with living embarrassed, I'm done with feeling guilty every time I ask my husband to drive me to the ER. This has got to stop and I'm going to fight it with all I have.
I know there's people that have been dealing with this for years, or even their whole life and I admire you, because this is a horrible struggle no one should ever have to go through. We're supposed to live our lives to the fullest, how can we do that when we're lying in bed terrified that we might die the very next second?
I've decided to start my fight against this once and for all, and I'm looking into possibly starting a blog with it to help get this out of my system, and hopefully, be able to help other people too, because there's something about knowing you're not alone, that someone can understand what you're going through, even though your family or friends may not.
Reading you, guys, helped me a lot today, so thank you.
And if you sat through my whole wall of text, I'm sorry but thanks for reading.
After reading different posts on here, and being able to identify with some of them, I wanted to share a piece of my story.
I've read in other posts that writing about it helps, so here I am.
(Sorry for any grammar errors, English is not my main language).
I've been a healthy individual all my life, I've only had one sinus problem when younger get unnecessarily complicated but was handled and done with it.
About 3 years ago I was in a rough place, possibly the worst time in my life, and started suffering weird dizziness on occasion. I was stressed, not sleeping well, sitting on the computer all day, I'd sleep during the day for 3/4 hours and stay up all night or even for days at a time. I've had about 4 or 5 of those that made me go to the ER because I did not know what was going on, just to leave with a prescription for anti vertigo meds and nothing else.
I decided to get out of the depression I was sitting, and moved across the world. A year and some later I was happy, doing my own thing and met a wonderful person who I married later on.
Everything was fine, but I had to give up all my work, my traveling... I found myself staying at home with nothing to do other than play video games for hours and hours.
Shortly after that, the dizziness episodes came back, every few weeks but very strong.
The ER was 5 minutes away from home so I'd ask my husband to drive me and I'd spend hours at the ER just to have all my blood test, CT scans and x rays come back perfectly clean. Once again I was being sent home with anti vertigo meds and nothing else.
I do have an arachnoid cyst in the back of my head that showed up on my first CT scan at 15 years old but been told it's harmless, so when I started feeling dizzy I got extremely worried. I also suffer from tinnitus and before leaving home to travel I was being evaluated for possible Meniere's (googling I found out those cyst can mimic Meniere's so I was even more worried).
The dizziness started getting worse and worse to the point I was living with it every single day. Usually lightheadedness, but very rarely it would be so bad that I'd lose my balance.
I kept making appointments to see my Dr, I had a complete ENT evaluation and nothing. Blood work, xrays, all came back perfect.
I was getting frustrated and desperate, I was feeling ill and my doctor couldn't tell me what was wrong with me.
Almost a year later, I had a really weird feeling as I was falling asleep, I felt I was spinning out of control, kind of floating and it felt like dying. It happened twice that week. I've never felt anything like that before. I was scared out of my mind.
After laying down all day due to (what I thought was) a panic attack, I was googling and googling and came across the reddit subforum for Hypochondriacs, after going through the threads, and reading other people's stories everything went away. That's when I realized that might be it.
I've noticed in that past year that I've been overreacting to every single thing I felt, so I started thinking, trying to remember: Things like scrolling through my facebook feed and reading about someone dying, would make me feel ill instantly, anxious, I'd have to click on the news or status and find out how they died.
I'll never forget the day I read about the wife of someone dying due to a bad interaction of anxiety pills and back pain meds... That's in my mind whenever I think about looking into medication as a viable way of getting this out of my head. And now every time a Dr prescribes something the first and only thing I ask is about possible interactions, and most of the time I don't take the meds if I read the side effects and they involve nervousness, heart palpitations and stuff like that.
I had just stopped going to therapy so I tried getting it out of my system by myself, but it didn't work, clearly.
I started losing my mind a bit, I was feeling like living a dream, like nothing was real, like I wasn't really there, I was watching my life from a third person perspective, as weird as that might sound.
I was slowly losing my head, I would be driving and as soon as I started feeling weird I'd pray to someone, to please make it all go away. I couldn't live this way.
I wanted to bang my head against the wall. It was unbearable.
About a month ago I was having bad palpitations, ended up going to the ER, as usual, they told me I had a long QT. GOOGLE TO THE RESCUE!, I shouldn't have google'd that. I called my Dr and she called me in the next day, had two EKG done, NOTHING.
At this point I was feeling embarrassed, like she was going to think I'm making all this up.
Anyway, I moved across the country a few weeks ago and right before moving, of course, I landed in the ER because of my dizziness, I saw my Dr the next day for that and pelvic pain, but after extensive pelvic exam and ultrasounds they found nothing (now I don't have that pain anymore, mind you it lasted for about a month until I got all those tests done). A day later I had flu-like symptoms, better make another appointment then! She gave me a cocktail of meds to take on my trip.
Before I moved out, in that short year and some months, I've been to the ER about 15 times, not counting the times I saw my Dr.
I felt embarrassed every single time, I couldn't even look at the nurse's eyes because I knew what they were thinking.
I've heard "what's wrong now?" so many times I didn't even want to get out of my house ever again.
I moved out and I was happy because I thought it'd be a fresh start. I was feeling great for the first week, no more "living a dream" sensations.
I went down with a cold, no fever though, got some cold meds and went on my way, but deep down inside I was freaking out, I haven't had a cold in over 3 years...
Three days later, after grabbing a bite during a break of unpacking, I started shaking really bad, laid down, wasn't going away... started over-worrying, as usual, nausea, dizziness, decided for the first time to call 911, my husband was on the phone and I didn't even want to tell him to take me to the ER, I knew he'd get frustrated and probably think I'm crazy.
Ambulance came, they hooked me to a heart monitor and one of the paramedics told me I was showing signs of PVC, my husband offered to take me to the hospital and after 2 blood tests, xrays, 2 EKGS and hours of waiting, everything was fine, no sings of PVC or Long QTs. Just slightly high blood pressure as soon as they checked me in but normal when they checked 2 hours later.
I often feel palpitations and I can't just ignore them. Back pains are terrible, been having severe headaches for months, nausea is gone but comes back at times. Every time I try to be aware of my body I find that my abs and shoulders are locked in a tense position, so I try to relax, but as soon as I forget, my muscles tense up again.
Last night I slept on the floor in the living room because I was having trouble breathing, had a wheezing, but for the first time I decided not to run to the ER, knowing that I'm seeing my new Dr. on Monday.
I'm embarrassed, I'm exhausted, I'm frustrated. I feel like I have no control of my life. I can't leave the house without feeling sick at some point. I'm used to laying down as soon as I start feeling dizzy or nauseous.
This has been interfering with my personal and social life for a bit over a year now and I can't have it anymore.
The reason I got here today was because I decided to look at my belly in the mirror and OF COURSE, I found some weird red, bloody like dots on my skin (rare on me). Off to google! and all I could read was cancer, leukemia, and tons of other terminal illnesses.
I'm tired of living like this, I started therapy again last week so hopefully it'll help, I'm looking into mindfulness meditation, doing some yoga again, anything to get me back to who I was two years ago.
My husband gets very frustrated every single time the words "Can you take me to the ER?" come out of my mind because he knows we'll be stuck there for hours just to leave with the doctor saying "everything is fine".
I know I should be happy to hear those words, and I am at the moment, but it only lasts for so long.
I've told him I suffer from some sort of health anxiety but I haven't completely opened up about how I feel and stuff. Not yet.
Health Anxiety is ruining my life. Even though I'm 100% conscious of what's going on with me, that I'm fine and this is all the result of my anxiety, I can't help to ignore it.
I realized I've been living my life convinced I have a terminal illness. For some reason my mind just accepted it and I never doubted it. I embraced it.
It doesn't help that I also suffer from OCD, which I've had since I can remember. "You didn't do this! gdang it now you're going to get really sick!"
It's a snowball. I can't stop it.
I wonder why even though I'm aware of what is it, why can't I stop the symptoms?
I've tried breathing and calming down when I'm feeling really dizzy, but it feels like I'm going to die and I end up in the ER.
Why can't I stop it?
I read some cases and some people usually have very specific attacks, then they go away.
I have this headache and pressure in my head following me around almost all day, every day. That worries me the most. Is it really anxiety or is something wrong with my brain? How come I feel it all the time?
I've never ever had high blood pressure before, now I've heard I had "slight high blood pressure" twice in a month and a half.
I'm freaking out a bit right now because these red dots are not a normal thing on me, and it's hard not to want to drive to the ER but it calms me that I'm seeing my new Dr. tomorrow. After reading some posts on here I decided I'm going to be 100% honest with her and tell her about my anxiety, but that I want to make sure everything is completely fine with me before moving on to treating my anxiety.
I'm done with living embarrassed, I'm done with feeling guilty every time I ask my husband to drive me to the ER. This has got to stop and I'm going to fight it with all I have.
I know there's people that have been dealing with this for years, or even their whole life and I admire you, because this is a horrible struggle no one should ever have to go through. We're supposed to live our lives to the fullest, how can we do that when we're lying in bed terrified that we might die the very next second?
I've decided to start my fight against this once and for all, and I'm looking into possibly starting a blog with it to help get this out of my system, and hopefully, be able to help other people too, because there's something about knowing you're not alone, that someone can understand what you're going through, even though your family or friends may not.
Reading you, guys, helped me a lot today, so thank you.
And if you sat through my whole wall of text, I'm sorry but thanks for reading.