Careful1
24-12-17, 16:23
I have tired for months to keep my health anxiety in check but I am losing the battle... I am 35 years old and have battled health anxiety since my early 20s. When I was 19 years old, my heart started doing funny things. I was told not to worry, that it was just anxiety and panic attacks but in reality I have heart arrhythmia's and because of all I went through with the doctors, I developed health anxiety. Every little symptom was a sign of something more sinister and in my mind, it was just like with the heart arrhythmia's and they just hadn't found it yet. This went on for years until I realized what I was doing to myself and how miserable I was.. I worked really hard and for the most part freed myself from the constant worry, for the last 6 years I have lived a life pretty much anxiety free.. Well until these last few months.. I have done and continue to do all I can to keep myself from getting sucked into that hole but I have things going on and I am afraid because so far there are no answers and you see that is what feeds health anxiety in the beginning. I do not want to go through this again but I can feel myself losing the control I had to fight so hard for.
In April of this year I started getting some sort of dizzy spells, not room spin dizzy though, more like I felt like i was going to pass out. The spells lasted only seconds but started to hit me several times a day. I was admitted to the hospital because they though perhaps one of my arrhythmia's was the cause. I didn't think so because I didn't feel any palpation's when the spells struck but since I have had arrhythmia's caught on monitors that I didn't feel, I agreed to be admitted. They monitored my heart for a couple days but didn't see anything bad, I had a new echo with normal results, a ct scan without contrast of my brain that was normal, a 1 hour EEG that was normal, an MRI without contrast of my brain that was normal and tons of my blood work... All normal. A few weeks later I started to notice things popping up on my skin and both palms of my hands had turned red. I had no idea what it meant, it was weird but i wasn't very worried at this point because I was still worried about the dizzy spells. I made an appointment with the dermatologist and when I finally got in to see him that is when I got worried. I showed him all the weird things that had popped up recently and he told me I needed to get an appointment with my GP because I had all the skin symptoms of advanced liver disease. He told me, the red palms were something called Palmer Erythmea, The raised red spots on my skin with tons of tiny veins going away from the center was called Spider Nevu and the tiny broken veins on my face were called telangiectasia veins. The only thing that didn't have a proper name were the regular veins that were showing through my skin all over my body, he just called them prominent veins. I have an olive colored skin tone and for the most part my veins have never been visible through my skin but now its like a map on my body and its disturbing to look at. So back to my GP. He ran liver panels and ordered an ultrasound. Blood work came back good and ultrasound showed my liver was enlarged and that I had fatty liver, so he refereed me to gastro. She was concerned and told me my symptoms were seen in people with cirrhosis. She ordered tons more labs, an MRI of my abdomen with contrast, an endoscopy and a fibroscan. MRI confirmed liver was enlarged and of course we knew I had fatty liver but everything else was normal. I asked her if enlarged or fatty liver would cause my symptoms but she assured me they wouldn't.
So here I am, I haven't googled my symptoms because I know where that will lead but none of them have gotten better, in fact they have gotten worse. The red palms and prominent veins are driving me nuts because I can see it. The veins are getting worse. Every day there are more and more. I thought maybe I was going crazy and the veins have always been there (deep down I knew it wasn't the case because i know how my body looks) but I started taking weekly photos of my body and I am not crazy. There are even some really strange looking ones in the bend of my arm and wrist area. They are really small and thin veins. I have never seen veins like these before. It reminds me of those photos you see of embryos, how you can see straight through their skin and see all their veins. I am afraid something is very wrong with me.. I believe them when they say I dont have cirrhosis because i have had lots of testing on my liver.. I mean I do sometimes think what if they are wrong? but then I tell myself that's the anxiety talking. Still I worry though because if its not that then what is it and can it kill me? I dont know what to do. Another thing that freaks me out is both my biological father and his father died at ages 50 and 51 suddenly. I do not know from what because I never met my father and I dont really get straight answers from his side of the family.
I feel like I am on the verge of losing my sanity and i am afraid of that just as much as the symptoms because I do not want to go back to the days of freaking out over every little thing my body does...
Thanks for reading :blush:
In April of this year I started getting some sort of dizzy spells, not room spin dizzy though, more like I felt like i was going to pass out. The spells lasted only seconds but started to hit me several times a day. I was admitted to the hospital because they though perhaps one of my arrhythmia's was the cause. I didn't think so because I didn't feel any palpation's when the spells struck but since I have had arrhythmia's caught on monitors that I didn't feel, I agreed to be admitted. They monitored my heart for a couple days but didn't see anything bad, I had a new echo with normal results, a ct scan without contrast of my brain that was normal, a 1 hour EEG that was normal, an MRI without contrast of my brain that was normal and tons of my blood work... All normal. A few weeks later I started to notice things popping up on my skin and both palms of my hands had turned red. I had no idea what it meant, it was weird but i wasn't very worried at this point because I was still worried about the dizzy spells. I made an appointment with the dermatologist and when I finally got in to see him that is when I got worried. I showed him all the weird things that had popped up recently and he told me I needed to get an appointment with my GP because I had all the skin symptoms of advanced liver disease. He told me, the red palms were something called Palmer Erythmea, The raised red spots on my skin with tons of tiny veins going away from the center was called Spider Nevu and the tiny broken veins on my face were called telangiectasia veins. The only thing that didn't have a proper name were the regular veins that were showing through my skin all over my body, he just called them prominent veins. I have an olive colored skin tone and for the most part my veins have never been visible through my skin but now its like a map on my body and its disturbing to look at. So back to my GP. He ran liver panels and ordered an ultrasound. Blood work came back good and ultrasound showed my liver was enlarged and that I had fatty liver, so he refereed me to gastro. She was concerned and told me my symptoms were seen in people with cirrhosis. She ordered tons more labs, an MRI of my abdomen with contrast, an endoscopy and a fibroscan. MRI confirmed liver was enlarged and of course we knew I had fatty liver but everything else was normal. I asked her if enlarged or fatty liver would cause my symptoms but she assured me they wouldn't.
So here I am, I haven't googled my symptoms because I know where that will lead but none of them have gotten better, in fact they have gotten worse. The red palms and prominent veins are driving me nuts because I can see it. The veins are getting worse. Every day there are more and more. I thought maybe I was going crazy and the veins have always been there (deep down I knew it wasn't the case because i know how my body looks) but I started taking weekly photos of my body and I am not crazy. There are even some really strange looking ones in the bend of my arm and wrist area. They are really small and thin veins. I have never seen veins like these before. It reminds me of those photos you see of embryos, how you can see straight through their skin and see all their veins. I am afraid something is very wrong with me.. I believe them when they say I dont have cirrhosis because i have had lots of testing on my liver.. I mean I do sometimes think what if they are wrong? but then I tell myself that's the anxiety talking. Still I worry though because if its not that then what is it and can it kill me? I dont know what to do. Another thing that freaks me out is both my biological father and his father died at ages 50 and 51 suddenly. I do not know from what because I never met my father and I dont really get straight answers from his side of the family.
I feel like I am on the verge of losing my sanity and i am afraid of that just as much as the symptoms because I do not want to go back to the days of freaking out over every little thing my body does...
Thanks for reading :blush: