Rmahon27
15-03-17, 19:31
Hi everyone, my name is Ryan and I'm 19 years old (I'll be 20 in just a couple months). I have health anxiety (among other anxieties) and over the past couple of months I have been really freaking out over certain symptoms I have been having. I first have to explain a bit of my history though so you know what I have dealt with and still deal with. When I was 3 my mother died of ovarian cancer, unfortunately I was never able to really get to know her myself. My grandmother (fathers mother) had severe MS and died well before I was ever born. I myself got a disease called Rheumatic Fever when I was 7. I had to go the hospital for a couple weeks, missed a few months of school and it was an overall terrible experience. It damaged my heart a little bit, however it has since made an almost full recovery. Since then I have had to basically get yearly heckups, I have to take peniciilan every day as a preventative and I also had a minor relapse of rheumatic fever when I was 13.
All of this probably led to me having pretty bad health anxiety. I constantly worry about diseases and feel like it's inevitable I will get disease which will kill me. Let me also say though that rheumatic fever has no real effect on me. You wouldn't know I ever had it unless I told you. I can run, swim, play sports etc. I have no limitations from the disease. I also have to live with Tinnitus which is incredibly annoying but at the end of the day not a big deal.
The last couple months have been pretty hectic for me. I'm going to try to explain to the best of my ability exactly what happened and how it happened. I had kept tinnitus a secret for 5 years. I'm not sure exactly why, I guess I just felt like there was no point in telling anyone since there's really no treatment for it. However in late December and early January. I started to feel like everything should be a bit louder and convinced myself I was starting to have hearing loss. I freaked out and told my dad, and we went to an audiologist to get my hearing tested. Turns out I don't have any hearing loss whatsoever, since I have gotten the results of that test, any fear I had of hearing loss has obviously gone away.
During this time though when I was fearing hearing loss, something really weird happened. One day in January I was watching tv as normal and eating food as normal. Suddenly I tried to swallow the food and realized i was having difficulty swallowing, I had to run to my bathroom and spit the food out. It freaked me out, but I continued eating the food after and there didn't seem to be any difficulties. I know that I was very anxious during this time period, but I wasn't very anxious at that moment while watching TV. After this happened I started really worrying about ALS, since I know difficulties swallowing can be an early sign of ALS.
I should also tell you that I have had acid reflux for the past few years. I looked up the symtoms of Acid Reflux and found that acid reflux can occasionally make you feel this sensation of having difficulty swallowing. After I got this information, I decided to just forget about it and hope it didn't happen again. After the first time it did happen about 1-2 more times in the week or so after. However when it happened it was nowhere near as bad as the first time and I didn't have to spit it out. I also did started feeling a bit of pain in my throat, but not for long and I don't have any pain when swallowing.
About a week or so later, I started noticing that I was having a bit of an irregular heartbeat. With my history this was obviously a bit of a concern. We thought it could be the start of a minor relapse of rheumatic fever so I started taking a bit extra penicillin to see if that helped. It didn't help, I got very anxious and the heartbeat got worse. It got very bad to the point where it felt like my heart was hitting a brick wall. Rheumatic Fever is typically accompanied by joint pain and I wasn't having any, which would be weird for rheumatic fever. Anyway we went to the hospital to see my cardiologist. I got the usual echocardiogram, EKG, bloodwork, and I also had to take a stress test to see how my heart reacted. It turns out this wasn't rheumatic fever. I have something called a left bundle branch block, which is a relatively minor issue. What's weird though is it typically isn't accompanied by much symptoms and I was having very bad heart palpitations.
Now the fear of ALS comes back again. About a day after the hospital visit (this is now like early February btw) I started feeling tingling in my arms. In addition I felt light headed, dizzy at times and very tired. I was also still having a little bit of an irregular heartbeat. I also a bit of pain in addition to the tingling in the arms. I also started noticing that my right calf muscle felt very tight and even occasionally cramped up. I remembered the issue I had with swallowing a few weeks earlier and started freaking out about ALS/MS etc. The next few days, the tightness in my leg got worse, however the irregular heartbeat went away. Also the tingling/ pain in my arms would occasionally come back. I started feeling like my leg was almost weaker in some way or wasn't properly planting (even though it was). I also started giving myself constant strength tests to test my calf muscle.
During this time I also noticed something else, my fingers started twitching. My left arm also felt weird, almost like it was weaker or something. Anyway, in the middle of this, I also had to go get an MRI of my heart to make sure nothing else worse was going on. The results for that also showed the left bundle branch block. But back to the finger twitching. I would noticed that if I moved my middle finger in my right hand it would twitch, and also the thumbs in both my hands twitch/tremor if I move them closer to my hand. Another really weird thing started happening, I noticed that I felt my muscles twitching in my Calf muscles, biceps and pretty much all over to be honest. Naturally I saw that muscle twitching is a symptom of ALS and freaked out even more.
I continued giving myself strength tests for my legs, arms and fingers and have passed most of them. In addition to the finger twitching I noticed that when I try to raise my fingers I feel a bit of stiffness and tension. Since the finger twitching started, it has seemingly spread to all of my fingers. Let me also note that I play guitar, and I still am able to play guitar. But when I play guitar, the fingers that are raised and not being used twitch, tremble, shake etc and it has made it a bit harder to play guitar. My fingers don't seem to twitch as bad when not playing guitar so I'm not sure whether or not the anxiety makes it worse
About a week or so ago the stiffness in my right calf went away. This didn't get rid of my ALS fear though. I remembered that I felt what I thought was a bit of weakness in my left arm and started worrying about als possibly being in my hands and arms. I started lifting weights and various things every day to see if they were weaker. I then started feeling like my right arm was weaker when holding various objects (which I know is completely contradictory to what i thought earlier about the left arm, but I guess the mind doesn't think rationally when anxious). I continued to constantly test the strength of my arms by picking up various objects that are heavy.
Anyway, after doing this a few days it doesn't seem that I have any muscle weakness at all. Because of this I'm not too worried about ALS anymore. I still have the twitching in my fingers though, occasional muscle twitches in my biceps, calf, eyelids, other areas. I also still have lots of stiffness in my fingers/ hand and I try to raise my fingers. My fear has now shifted from ALS to Parkinson's or maybe MS. I don't know what this means or if it could just be anxiety. If anybody has any information to help, I would be very greatful. I also apologize if this was too long. I was just trying to explain exactly what has transpired over the past couple months so you know how I got to this point. Oh btw, I have also just started seeing a psychoanalyst for my various anxieties.
All of this probably led to me having pretty bad health anxiety. I constantly worry about diseases and feel like it's inevitable I will get disease which will kill me. Let me also say though that rheumatic fever has no real effect on me. You wouldn't know I ever had it unless I told you. I can run, swim, play sports etc. I have no limitations from the disease. I also have to live with Tinnitus which is incredibly annoying but at the end of the day not a big deal.
The last couple months have been pretty hectic for me. I'm going to try to explain to the best of my ability exactly what happened and how it happened. I had kept tinnitus a secret for 5 years. I'm not sure exactly why, I guess I just felt like there was no point in telling anyone since there's really no treatment for it. However in late December and early January. I started to feel like everything should be a bit louder and convinced myself I was starting to have hearing loss. I freaked out and told my dad, and we went to an audiologist to get my hearing tested. Turns out I don't have any hearing loss whatsoever, since I have gotten the results of that test, any fear I had of hearing loss has obviously gone away.
During this time though when I was fearing hearing loss, something really weird happened. One day in January I was watching tv as normal and eating food as normal. Suddenly I tried to swallow the food and realized i was having difficulty swallowing, I had to run to my bathroom and spit the food out. It freaked me out, but I continued eating the food after and there didn't seem to be any difficulties. I know that I was very anxious during this time period, but I wasn't very anxious at that moment while watching TV. After this happened I started really worrying about ALS, since I know difficulties swallowing can be an early sign of ALS.
I should also tell you that I have had acid reflux for the past few years. I looked up the symtoms of Acid Reflux and found that acid reflux can occasionally make you feel this sensation of having difficulty swallowing. After I got this information, I decided to just forget about it and hope it didn't happen again. After the first time it did happen about 1-2 more times in the week or so after. However when it happened it was nowhere near as bad as the first time and I didn't have to spit it out. I also did started feeling a bit of pain in my throat, but not for long and I don't have any pain when swallowing.
About a week or so later, I started noticing that I was having a bit of an irregular heartbeat. With my history this was obviously a bit of a concern. We thought it could be the start of a minor relapse of rheumatic fever so I started taking a bit extra penicillin to see if that helped. It didn't help, I got very anxious and the heartbeat got worse. It got very bad to the point where it felt like my heart was hitting a brick wall. Rheumatic Fever is typically accompanied by joint pain and I wasn't having any, which would be weird for rheumatic fever. Anyway we went to the hospital to see my cardiologist. I got the usual echocardiogram, EKG, bloodwork, and I also had to take a stress test to see how my heart reacted. It turns out this wasn't rheumatic fever. I have something called a left bundle branch block, which is a relatively minor issue. What's weird though is it typically isn't accompanied by much symptoms and I was having very bad heart palpitations.
Now the fear of ALS comes back again. About a day after the hospital visit (this is now like early February btw) I started feeling tingling in my arms. In addition I felt light headed, dizzy at times and very tired. I was also still having a little bit of an irregular heartbeat. I also a bit of pain in addition to the tingling in the arms. I also started noticing that my right calf muscle felt very tight and even occasionally cramped up. I remembered the issue I had with swallowing a few weeks earlier and started freaking out about ALS/MS etc. The next few days, the tightness in my leg got worse, however the irregular heartbeat went away. Also the tingling/ pain in my arms would occasionally come back. I started feeling like my leg was almost weaker in some way or wasn't properly planting (even though it was). I also started giving myself constant strength tests to test my calf muscle.
During this time I also noticed something else, my fingers started twitching. My left arm also felt weird, almost like it was weaker or something. Anyway, in the middle of this, I also had to go get an MRI of my heart to make sure nothing else worse was going on. The results for that also showed the left bundle branch block. But back to the finger twitching. I would noticed that if I moved my middle finger in my right hand it would twitch, and also the thumbs in both my hands twitch/tremor if I move them closer to my hand. Another really weird thing started happening, I noticed that I felt my muscles twitching in my Calf muscles, biceps and pretty much all over to be honest. Naturally I saw that muscle twitching is a symptom of ALS and freaked out even more.
I continued giving myself strength tests for my legs, arms and fingers and have passed most of them. In addition to the finger twitching I noticed that when I try to raise my fingers I feel a bit of stiffness and tension. Since the finger twitching started, it has seemingly spread to all of my fingers. Let me also note that I play guitar, and I still am able to play guitar. But when I play guitar, the fingers that are raised and not being used twitch, tremble, shake etc and it has made it a bit harder to play guitar. My fingers don't seem to twitch as bad when not playing guitar so I'm not sure whether or not the anxiety makes it worse
About a week or so ago the stiffness in my right calf went away. This didn't get rid of my ALS fear though. I remembered that I felt what I thought was a bit of weakness in my left arm and started worrying about als possibly being in my hands and arms. I started lifting weights and various things every day to see if they were weaker. I then started feeling like my right arm was weaker when holding various objects (which I know is completely contradictory to what i thought earlier about the left arm, but I guess the mind doesn't think rationally when anxious). I continued to constantly test the strength of my arms by picking up various objects that are heavy.
Anyway, after doing this a few days it doesn't seem that I have any muscle weakness at all. Because of this I'm not too worried about ALS anymore. I still have the twitching in my fingers though, occasional muscle twitches in my biceps, calf, eyelids, other areas. I also still have lots of stiffness in my fingers/ hand and I try to raise my fingers. My fear has now shifted from ALS to Parkinson's or maybe MS. I don't know what this means or if it could just be anxiety. If anybody has any information to help, I would be very greatful. I also apologize if this was too long. I was just trying to explain exactly what has transpired over the past couple months so you know how I got to this point. Oh btw, I have also just started seeing a psychoanalyst for my various anxieties.