Apothael
13-03-17, 18:02
I've been on a half-month long nosedive regarding my health. Apologies. This will be a long one. You really don't have to read anything but the last paragraph but I'm just setting this out so all the information is available.
I was initially worrying over the amount of caffeine, sugar and fast-food I was taking some time in February - as I was getting the occasional pains in my stomach after drinking a bottle of coke every night as well as:
Bubbling sensation and/or warm water feeling in my thigh.
Occasional pulse-like twinge in my palms.
Frothy urine, and occasionally very thirsty.
So with death motivating me, for the first time in a long time I've actually managed to go cold-turkey. Though I was convinced I already had peripheral neuropathy.
So a few days after, and while I am still monitoring every twinge or slight pain in my body I notice that I'm not seeing in the dark as well as I used to. I chalk this up to withdrawal symptoms or something to do with Diabetic Retinopathy.
This evolved from lack of detail in black objects into a blinking afterimage in the centre of my vision 24/7 - especially noticeable in the dark. I couldn't look at people's faces in dim light and this was followed by an influx in floaters.
So I wake up every day hoping the blinking light would disappear and lo and behold it does not so I'm beginning to get panicky. I take a blood pressure test on Saturday, in the middle of which I almost pass out from fear but my BP is perfectly acceptable, then I go to Specsavers on Sunday and take an eye exam - thinking I am going blind - and they find absolutely nothing wrong with my eye.
Though they didn't explain why I was having trouble seeing at night discerning detail in dark objects so I decide to book an appointment with the family optometrist for Friday.
Flash-forward to Wednesday and I'm feeling a little better so I go to the cinema with my friends and have my first panic attack.
I'd read that a symptom of brain tumours was double vision and I was seeing an double around particularly white objects and character's foreheads so I was pretty agitated throughout the experience and then some kid's in the theatre decide it would be a funny idea to light up in the middle of the theatre.
I did not know the smell was real. I thought the smell was I sign I would quickly be hopping on the train to the ever-after.
My head started tingling and I felt really light. I felt like I was going to have a bowel movement too - yet another thing that convinced me of my impending doom.
So I got up and walked down the stairs so I could die in the lobby, or the bathroom or just somewhere else.
On my way out a guy asks me "do you smell it too?" It offers some relief but I'm so shaken up I go fetch my coat and soft-cry in the bathroom before waiting for the movie to end in the lobby so I could lie to my friend and tell him I just felt ill.
That evening I did feel ill. Dizziness. Nausea. I could hardly walk. I felt like throwing up. I convinced myself I wouldn't wake up the next morning.
I did. Got myself a Doctor's appointment. Explain to Doctor. He takes Urine sample. No signs of diabetes. Examines by eyes. No swelling at the back or sign of anything amiss. Deduces anxiety related symptoms. Offers therapy, I say I'll think about it.
Anxiety: So it's not diabetes. Must be a Tumour then.
Rational Thought: But you don't have a headache?
Anxiety: Lots of people with Brain Tumours don't have headaches as their initial symptom.
Rational Thought: Well what symptoms do you have?
Anxiety: Weird eye thingy. Nausea in the morning. No appetite. Although looking here it says another symptom is increased pressure in the skull - maybe you're right I definitely don't have - oh boy that's a lot of pressure that just appeared behind my eye.
Rational Thought: Gee I guess you are dying tonight.
So surprisingly I wake up the next day and have my optician look at my eye. He's very sympathetic and walks me through what he's doing and what he sees in my apparently perfectly healthy retina. He says it probably is stress and anxiety and that the way in which I am thinking about tumours isn't how they come about. Says he really doesn't recommend seeing a neurologist. I was also told to stop googling. Uh oh.
So I feel a little bit better. Ignore the blinking lights and they start to fade away in the daytime though it is still quite hard to see in darker environments.
Starting to feel okay. Go back to cinema again. Thought I heard someone vomit behind me in such a cartoonish overly exaggerated way that I think I may be hallucinating it so I wait for the smell. And wait. Then it hits me with such a delay that I'm convinced that it may not be real. So I move. The people behind me - presumably the vomit people - stay, which is weird. I wait till the end of the movie and look down that row once they've left and I can't see vomit, though I do see the ground is littered with popcorn. I'm too awkward to go and actually see if there actually was vomit because the people who were previously in those seats are looking at me so I just leave - mind buzzing with the thought "did I just hallucinate that smell?"
I'm tired out after being alert 24/7 so I've had no trouble sleeping but when I do go to bed upset I get a whiff of a smell from a bakery I used to frequent with my mum when I was little.
After that I had a pretty bad week.
[LIST]
I am now getting phantom smells from my past pretty often. I never had them before this and then suddenly after my panic attack everything landslides. They usually only last a sniff or maybe several seconds - and sometimes they are the cliche brain tumour smell of smoke or burning. Sometimes I get three in the span of a minute.
My eyesight has gotten a little bit better but now I actually do have very faint monocular double vision in both eyes. It's very noticeable in mirrors and makes it seem like I have ten digits on each hand but not really noticeable in day to day life or when there is a lot of light.
Convinced myself my left arm is definitely weaker and my fingers are less dextrous than before.
During the week I had an upset stomach and wasn't digesting food that well - and was burping all day. Nausea gradually receded every morning and It is now barely there a week and a half after my panic attack.
I went to bed early and woke up early every day since my attack. This has not stopped.
Most of my earlier symptoms that I was scared of at the end of February such as the weird sensations in my leg have stopped while they have been replaced by these new things which seem so very real. The Phantom Smells and Double Vision have me worried more than anything else as I either recognise the smell or have deja vu - which is specifically linked to temporal lobe tumours though when exploring that train of thought I wonder why I have sight problems if the Temporal Lobe isn't responsible for sight. I have also had difficulty remembering to do things lately but that could also be due to stress.
Last Paragraph
The main thing that's been worrying me lately is that I've had days that I'm still getting symptoms despite feeling relatively "Flat" rather than shaky and nervy and at death's door as I was earlier in the week. I'm used to a pretty objective reality and the Phantom Smells thing is really freaking me out as the scents are usually so utterly specific and often give me a feeling of what I felt like at the time the smells were common in my life. I had a similar thing one time long ago where I would smell the perfume of the girl I liked all over the place - most noticeably at my all-boys school incase you're thinking that another girl must be wearing the same scent (or maybe she wore aftershave :shrug:). I believe this may be due to emotions and the sense of smell apparently being very closely linked in the brain. Anyway, I can rationally go through everything in my head and arrive at the conclusion that that these symptoms must be psychosomatic - but if so when will they go away? I know the answer to that question is different for everybody - and I'm scared that by letting go of obsessing over these things that I could be putting my life in danger if it isn't predetermined to end soon already. I cycle between terminal illness and hope every hour but am much more sad about it now - with the fear being buried deeper. I just wanted to ask if anybody is going though/has been through anything similar and has any thoughts or advice on what my next move should be? And also if symptoms of your anxiety usually persisted in the subconcious despite even when you felt otherwise "okay." This forum has been my lifeline since my future started seeming myopic.
Thank you so much for reading it even if you skimmed :)
I was initially worrying over the amount of caffeine, sugar and fast-food I was taking some time in February - as I was getting the occasional pains in my stomach after drinking a bottle of coke every night as well as:
Bubbling sensation and/or warm water feeling in my thigh.
Occasional pulse-like twinge in my palms.
Frothy urine, and occasionally very thirsty.
So with death motivating me, for the first time in a long time I've actually managed to go cold-turkey. Though I was convinced I already had peripheral neuropathy.
So a few days after, and while I am still monitoring every twinge or slight pain in my body I notice that I'm not seeing in the dark as well as I used to. I chalk this up to withdrawal symptoms or something to do with Diabetic Retinopathy.
This evolved from lack of detail in black objects into a blinking afterimage in the centre of my vision 24/7 - especially noticeable in the dark. I couldn't look at people's faces in dim light and this was followed by an influx in floaters.
So I wake up every day hoping the blinking light would disappear and lo and behold it does not so I'm beginning to get panicky. I take a blood pressure test on Saturday, in the middle of which I almost pass out from fear but my BP is perfectly acceptable, then I go to Specsavers on Sunday and take an eye exam - thinking I am going blind - and they find absolutely nothing wrong with my eye.
Though they didn't explain why I was having trouble seeing at night discerning detail in dark objects so I decide to book an appointment with the family optometrist for Friday.
Flash-forward to Wednesday and I'm feeling a little better so I go to the cinema with my friends and have my first panic attack.
I'd read that a symptom of brain tumours was double vision and I was seeing an double around particularly white objects and character's foreheads so I was pretty agitated throughout the experience and then some kid's in the theatre decide it would be a funny idea to light up in the middle of the theatre.
I did not know the smell was real. I thought the smell was I sign I would quickly be hopping on the train to the ever-after.
My head started tingling and I felt really light. I felt like I was going to have a bowel movement too - yet another thing that convinced me of my impending doom.
So I got up and walked down the stairs so I could die in the lobby, or the bathroom or just somewhere else.
On my way out a guy asks me "do you smell it too?" It offers some relief but I'm so shaken up I go fetch my coat and soft-cry in the bathroom before waiting for the movie to end in the lobby so I could lie to my friend and tell him I just felt ill.
That evening I did feel ill. Dizziness. Nausea. I could hardly walk. I felt like throwing up. I convinced myself I wouldn't wake up the next morning.
I did. Got myself a Doctor's appointment. Explain to Doctor. He takes Urine sample. No signs of diabetes. Examines by eyes. No swelling at the back or sign of anything amiss. Deduces anxiety related symptoms. Offers therapy, I say I'll think about it.
Anxiety: So it's not diabetes. Must be a Tumour then.
Rational Thought: But you don't have a headache?
Anxiety: Lots of people with Brain Tumours don't have headaches as their initial symptom.
Rational Thought: Well what symptoms do you have?
Anxiety: Weird eye thingy. Nausea in the morning. No appetite. Although looking here it says another symptom is increased pressure in the skull - maybe you're right I definitely don't have - oh boy that's a lot of pressure that just appeared behind my eye.
Rational Thought: Gee I guess you are dying tonight.
So surprisingly I wake up the next day and have my optician look at my eye. He's very sympathetic and walks me through what he's doing and what he sees in my apparently perfectly healthy retina. He says it probably is stress and anxiety and that the way in which I am thinking about tumours isn't how they come about. Says he really doesn't recommend seeing a neurologist. I was also told to stop googling. Uh oh.
So I feel a little bit better. Ignore the blinking lights and they start to fade away in the daytime though it is still quite hard to see in darker environments.
Starting to feel okay. Go back to cinema again. Thought I heard someone vomit behind me in such a cartoonish overly exaggerated way that I think I may be hallucinating it so I wait for the smell. And wait. Then it hits me with such a delay that I'm convinced that it may not be real. So I move. The people behind me - presumably the vomit people - stay, which is weird. I wait till the end of the movie and look down that row once they've left and I can't see vomit, though I do see the ground is littered with popcorn. I'm too awkward to go and actually see if there actually was vomit because the people who were previously in those seats are looking at me so I just leave - mind buzzing with the thought "did I just hallucinate that smell?"
I'm tired out after being alert 24/7 so I've had no trouble sleeping but when I do go to bed upset I get a whiff of a smell from a bakery I used to frequent with my mum when I was little.
After that I had a pretty bad week.
[LIST]
I am now getting phantom smells from my past pretty often. I never had them before this and then suddenly after my panic attack everything landslides. They usually only last a sniff or maybe several seconds - and sometimes they are the cliche brain tumour smell of smoke or burning. Sometimes I get three in the span of a minute.
My eyesight has gotten a little bit better but now I actually do have very faint monocular double vision in both eyes. It's very noticeable in mirrors and makes it seem like I have ten digits on each hand but not really noticeable in day to day life or when there is a lot of light.
Convinced myself my left arm is definitely weaker and my fingers are less dextrous than before.
During the week I had an upset stomach and wasn't digesting food that well - and was burping all day. Nausea gradually receded every morning and It is now barely there a week and a half after my panic attack.
I went to bed early and woke up early every day since my attack. This has not stopped.
Most of my earlier symptoms that I was scared of at the end of February such as the weird sensations in my leg have stopped while they have been replaced by these new things which seem so very real. The Phantom Smells and Double Vision have me worried more than anything else as I either recognise the smell or have deja vu - which is specifically linked to temporal lobe tumours though when exploring that train of thought I wonder why I have sight problems if the Temporal Lobe isn't responsible for sight. I have also had difficulty remembering to do things lately but that could also be due to stress.
Last Paragraph
The main thing that's been worrying me lately is that I've had days that I'm still getting symptoms despite feeling relatively "Flat" rather than shaky and nervy and at death's door as I was earlier in the week. I'm used to a pretty objective reality and the Phantom Smells thing is really freaking me out as the scents are usually so utterly specific and often give me a feeling of what I felt like at the time the smells were common in my life. I had a similar thing one time long ago where I would smell the perfume of the girl I liked all over the place - most noticeably at my all-boys school incase you're thinking that another girl must be wearing the same scent (or maybe she wore aftershave :shrug:). I believe this may be due to emotions and the sense of smell apparently being very closely linked in the brain. Anyway, I can rationally go through everything in my head and arrive at the conclusion that that these symptoms must be psychosomatic - but if so when will they go away? I know the answer to that question is different for everybody - and I'm scared that by letting go of obsessing over these things that I could be putting my life in danger if it isn't predetermined to end soon already. I cycle between terminal illness and hope every hour but am much more sad about it now - with the fear being buried deeper. I just wanted to ask if anybody is going though/has been through anything similar and has any thoughts or advice on what my next move should be? And also if symptoms of your anxiety usually persisted in the subconcious despite even when you felt otherwise "okay." This forum has been my lifeline since my future started seeming myopic.
Thank you so much for reading it even if you skimmed :)