Louise1984
02-10-15, 23:16
Hello, I'm new to this forum. I'll try to keep my post and question as brief as possible but hopefully sufficiently clear.
For about 5 months this year, between April and September, I had anxious thoughts and imaginations every single day because it seemed like something was going progressively wrong with my "private parts" (to put it politely) and to make it worse I felt too anxious and afraid to even properly look and examine in order to see and feel in detail for myself what the situation was. Not surprisingly, this just intensified the anxiety as I was having to depend solely on my imagination (which it turned out later was completely and severely wrong and mistaken) and basically on how things "felt."
To start with I didn't think I had cancer but guessed it was probably just some sort of mild infection that would soon clear up. But it seemed not to and lots of peculiar things and sensations and discomforts started happening. I suppose I'll never know whether there ever was actually anything at all wrong or if it was all just the result of a fearful imagination.
But the feeling of increasing physical abnormality in that area was really starting to eat me up...and it did so literally as well as metaphorically!
By the start of July (about 2 1/2 months after the daily worries and symptoms began) I'd lost half a stone and was starting to have unusual fat loss in different areas of my face. It was like certain pockets or areas of fat were being eaten up...first with my eyes sinking back in the sockets, then losing fat on the cheeks, around the nose, even the lining inside the nose, around the mouth, and also my top lip lost all its fat and became just thin and flat as if it had been deflated.
Finally I went to be examined by a doctor. I'd hoped that things would just sort themselves out by themselves but it all "felt" as if things were just getting worse and I'd built up such a phobia of seeing what I imagined would be something horrible and awful that I wasn't able to look for myself. I told the doctor I couldn't look while he examined me and so I didn't. But he told me that I'd built up a delusion as everything was normal, fine and healthy and without any sign of anything being wrong and no indication of cancer which was what I'd started to think was wrong by that time.
I was relieved but I could never really believe him because things still felt the same to me and I still wasn't able to look as the fear remained. The doctor helped to arrange some counselling for me but I would have to wait almost 2 months. And I was prescribed Citalopram 20mg a day anti-anxiety medication but only took it for 2 days as the side effects were so unpleasant.
I had blood tests done, all the ones available from the GP, to try to investigate the weight loss and fat wasting. My skin all over my body became increasingly softer and thinner and changed texture several times over the summer. My weight stayed constant for more than a month but I was still losing fat and looking increasingly thin, so that people were commenting on my weight loss but there actually wasn't any! I've always been very thin anyway and underweight so now it was all the more noticeable. For me to lose even half a stone is quite drastic and has the effect of making me look ill.
All the blood test results were normal though and as the physical examination had also been normal the doctors attributed the weight/fat loss to anxiety. I was sure that there must be something physically wrong with me and the whole situation was so disturbing that I began having panic attacks, for the first time in my life, and lots of other typical anxiety symptoms. At first I thought those were something indicative of serious physical illness too because I'd never experienced them before. For about 5 weeks I could only sleep 3-4 hours a night because anxiety in various forms kept me awake and caused all sorts of strange reactions in my system.
Things carried on. Where there'd previously been at least some thin layer of fat between my skin and my bones, I was now becoming skin and bone quite literally and it was frightening. The fat or tissue depletion in my face and in my mouth at the top of my upper gum was such that my upper gum began going progressively lower in my mouth so that both my top and bottom teeth started increasingly knocking together. It also changed my appearance even more to have my top teeth so prominent and visible now instead of being up in their usual position. It also seemed like my muscles were becoming increasingly soft and saggy like typical muscle wasting. Bones were visible in my arms and hands that I'd never previously known I had and one of my legs even became a bit shorter than the other, causing noticeable although slight unevenness when walking. I doubt it really literally became shorter than the other but maybe it had always been a little shorter and was now more apparent because of the fat loss round the joints. I don't know.
I went back to the doctors several times and pleaded for a CT scan or something that could investigate inside to see what was happening to me but was refused and again told that everything pointed to anxiety. It was becoming so unbearable that I finally agreed to try taking the Citalopram again and have now been on it for about 5 weeks.
This has ended up longer than I thought but I'm coming to the end now so please hold on!
After 12 days on Citalopram (the side effects were better and shorter this time) I finally felt able to face my fears and looked at my privates and physically examined myself with my own hands. To my surprise as well as great relief, the doctor had been right and everything was fine and normal and healthy...no sign of any growths, lumps or abnormalities. The phobia is conquered, the anxiety about all that is gone after very nearly 5 months and I now have a healthy mental relationship with my whole body again.
Within just a week of that, people were starting to comment on how I looked and seemed better and how I seemed to be getting back to normal. I felt increasingly well inwardly and outwardly, even feeling a bit stronger and more energetic physically and no longer having to sleep during the daytime like I had been doing. Maybe I should add that I'm unemployed at the moment so all this was going on without affecting my work in any way. And as I'm single and don't live with family it was quite a private affair although a few people did know a few of the details. My appetite increased and I now eat more and better than ever.
That was just over 3 weeks ago that I beat the fear and found out for myself and with my own eyes that everything was fine and that I'd just been living under a massive fearful delusion for nearly half a year, which had been destroying my life and my mind and emotions.
But...I've now lost another half a stone in just the past 2 weeks and my skin is still getting thinner and I'm still losing fat in different areas. THIS isn't a delusion by the way as I had it confirmed by a consultant endocrinologist that the strange fat loss is definitely a physical objective thing that's really happening to me and not just a subjective perception. This past week I had an abdominal ultrasound scan and lots of detailed blood tests to check hormonal levels, including cortisol, and I've also been checked for ketosis and glucose etc. but to my surprise everything came back normal and not just normal but "exceptionally good" as the doctor said.
So for now they can't find any physical cause whatsoever for what's happening. I'll be having a urinalysis, stool analysis, and lipase blood test next and then if those are all clear too the last option is endoscopy and colonoscopy, which I don't really want to have.
So what I want to ask your opinion about is...
(1) Has anyone else here experienced the type of fat atrophy that I've been describing? I don't just mean weight loss but very abnormal fat depletion including in different and seemingly random areas at a time like the nostrils then followed a few days later by the chin and so on? Mine was really rapid and is still going on although not as rapid now as there's not much left to be eaten up!
(2) Do you think it's really possible that all that could just be caused by the anxiety? I can see how it probably could be, as 5 months of daily worrying is bound to produce significant physical effects, but surely there would be something detectable in tests like elevated hormone levels or something? Surely at least something like that would show up? How can anxiety produce definite changes in the skin tissue in a direct way without an intermediary agent?
(3) Do you think everything will stabilise and get back to normal now I no longer have that fear? If so, how long might it take? If it took 2 1/2 months of the daily anxiety before the first noticeable physical signs of deterioration began, should I expect it to be 2 1/2 months before the deterioration stops and things start to normalise? Or is there just no way of knowing?
Please can you share your thoughts and opinions with me? No doctors seem able to give me any real advice or suggestions about it but you all probably have more experience and real knowledge about these things than most doctors. Thank you very much in advance; I'll be truly grateful for any help.
For about 5 months this year, between April and September, I had anxious thoughts and imaginations every single day because it seemed like something was going progressively wrong with my "private parts" (to put it politely) and to make it worse I felt too anxious and afraid to even properly look and examine in order to see and feel in detail for myself what the situation was. Not surprisingly, this just intensified the anxiety as I was having to depend solely on my imagination (which it turned out later was completely and severely wrong and mistaken) and basically on how things "felt."
To start with I didn't think I had cancer but guessed it was probably just some sort of mild infection that would soon clear up. But it seemed not to and lots of peculiar things and sensations and discomforts started happening. I suppose I'll never know whether there ever was actually anything at all wrong or if it was all just the result of a fearful imagination.
But the feeling of increasing physical abnormality in that area was really starting to eat me up...and it did so literally as well as metaphorically!
By the start of July (about 2 1/2 months after the daily worries and symptoms began) I'd lost half a stone and was starting to have unusual fat loss in different areas of my face. It was like certain pockets or areas of fat were being eaten up...first with my eyes sinking back in the sockets, then losing fat on the cheeks, around the nose, even the lining inside the nose, around the mouth, and also my top lip lost all its fat and became just thin and flat as if it had been deflated.
Finally I went to be examined by a doctor. I'd hoped that things would just sort themselves out by themselves but it all "felt" as if things were just getting worse and I'd built up such a phobia of seeing what I imagined would be something horrible and awful that I wasn't able to look for myself. I told the doctor I couldn't look while he examined me and so I didn't. But he told me that I'd built up a delusion as everything was normal, fine and healthy and without any sign of anything being wrong and no indication of cancer which was what I'd started to think was wrong by that time.
I was relieved but I could never really believe him because things still felt the same to me and I still wasn't able to look as the fear remained. The doctor helped to arrange some counselling for me but I would have to wait almost 2 months. And I was prescribed Citalopram 20mg a day anti-anxiety medication but only took it for 2 days as the side effects were so unpleasant.
I had blood tests done, all the ones available from the GP, to try to investigate the weight loss and fat wasting. My skin all over my body became increasingly softer and thinner and changed texture several times over the summer. My weight stayed constant for more than a month but I was still losing fat and looking increasingly thin, so that people were commenting on my weight loss but there actually wasn't any! I've always been very thin anyway and underweight so now it was all the more noticeable. For me to lose even half a stone is quite drastic and has the effect of making me look ill.
All the blood test results were normal though and as the physical examination had also been normal the doctors attributed the weight/fat loss to anxiety. I was sure that there must be something physically wrong with me and the whole situation was so disturbing that I began having panic attacks, for the first time in my life, and lots of other typical anxiety symptoms. At first I thought those were something indicative of serious physical illness too because I'd never experienced them before. For about 5 weeks I could only sleep 3-4 hours a night because anxiety in various forms kept me awake and caused all sorts of strange reactions in my system.
Things carried on. Where there'd previously been at least some thin layer of fat between my skin and my bones, I was now becoming skin and bone quite literally and it was frightening. The fat or tissue depletion in my face and in my mouth at the top of my upper gum was such that my upper gum began going progressively lower in my mouth so that both my top and bottom teeth started increasingly knocking together. It also changed my appearance even more to have my top teeth so prominent and visible now instead of being up in their usual position. It also seemed like my muscles were becoming increasingly soft and saggy like typical muscle wasting. Bones were visible in my arms and hands that I'd never previously known I had and one of my legs even became a bit shorter than the other, causing noticeable although slight unevenness when walking. I doubt it really literally became shorter than the other but maybe it had always been a little shorter and was now more apparent because of the fat loss round the joints. I don't know.
I went back to the doctors several times and pleaded for a CT scan or something that could investigate inside to see what was happening to me but was refused and again told that everything pointed to anxiety. It was becoming so unbearable that I finally agreed to try taking the Citalopram again and have now been on it for about 5 weeks.
This has ended up longer than I thought but I'm coming to the end now so please hold on!
After 12 days on Citalopram (the side effects were better and shorter this time) I finally felt able to face my fears and looked at my privates and physically examined myself with my own hands. To my surprise as well as great relief, the doctor had been right and everything was fine and normal and healthy...no sign of any growths, lumps or abnormalities. The phobia is conquered, the anxiety about all that is gone after very nearly 5 months and I now have a healthy mental relationship with my whole body again.
Within just a week of that, people were starting to comment on how I looked and seemed better and how I seemed to be getting back to normal. I felt increasingly well inwardly and outwardly, even feeling a bit stronger and more energetic physically and no longer having to sleep during the daytime like I had been doing. Maybe I should add that I'm unemployed at the moment so all this was going on without affecting my work in any way. And as I'm single and don't live with family it was quite a private affair although a few people did know a few of the details. My appetite increased and I now eat more and better than ever.
That was just over 3 weeks ago that I beat the fear and found out for myself and with my own eyes that everything was fine and that I'd just been living under a massive fearful delusion for nearly half a year, which had been destroying my life and my mind and emotions.
But...I've now lost another half a stone in just the past 2 weeks and my skin is still getting thinner and I'm still losing fat in different areas. THIS isn't a delusion by the way as I had it confirmed by a consultant endocrinologist that the strange fat loss is definitely a physical objective thing that's really happening to me and not just a subjective perception. This past week I had an abdominal ultrasound scan and lots of detailed blood tests to check hormonal levels, including cortisol, and I've also been checked for ketosis and glucose etc. but to my surprise everything came back normal and not just normal but "exceptionally good" as the doctor said.
So for now they can't find any physical cause whatsoever for what's happening. I'll be having a urinalysis, stool analysis, and lipase blood test next and then if those are all clear too the last option is endoscopy and colonoscopy, which I don't really want to have.
So what I want to ask your opinion about is...
(1) Has anyone else here experienced the type of fat atrophy that I've been describing? I don't just mean weight loss but very abnormal fat depletion including in different and seemingly random areas at a time like the nostrils then followed a few days later by the chin and so on? Mine was really rapid and is still going on although not as rapid now as there's not much left to be eaten up!
(2) Do you think it's really possible that all that could just be caused by the anxiety? I can see how it probably could be, as 5 months of daily worrying is bound to produce significant physical effects, but surely there would be something detectable in tests like elevated hormone levels or something? Surely at least something like that would show up? How can anxiety produce definite changes in the skin tissue in a direct way without an intermediary agent?
(3) Do you think everything will stabilise and get back to normal now I no longer have that fear? If so, how long might it take? If it took 2 1/2 months of the daily anxiety before the first noticeable physical signs of deterioration began, should I expect it to be 2 1/2 months before the deterioration stops and things start to normalise? Or is there just no way of knowing?
Please can you share your thoughts and opinions with me? No doctors seem able to give me any real advice or suggestions about it but you all probably have more experience and real knowledge about these things than most doctors. Thank you very much in advance; I'll be truly grateful for any help.