Add126
07-06-18, 01:12
Hey guys,
i´m 22 years old male and i´m currently studying psychology (ironic i know).as the thread title suggest, i´m deep down the health anxiety rabbit hole.
it has been 2-3 months know that i´m obsessed with this irrational fear of having some terminal or debilitating disease and i´m know at a point, where i just have to talk about my problems with people who maybe face the same issue, just to calm my selfe down a bit. I know i need help and i already made an appointment with a psychotherapist.
So before i will start to tell you my story, i´m in advance apologizing for spelling and grammatical errors since english is not my mother tongue. So please be forgiving :). Also this might take a bit of your time to read, so thanks in advance.
ok, lets start:
it all started when i had a very stressfull, sleepless and exhausting period at my university. in the middle of the preperation for an exam i suddenly started to feel verry dizzy and my brain felt foggy. It was hard to hold on to my thoughts and concentrating on things felt like an impossible task, i became very scatterbrained, had problems remembering things(like where i parked my car or if i brushed my teeth in the morning) and simple logical tasks felt like doing an maths exam. in short, it felt like living in a state between being awake and being asleep all of the time and simultaneously feeling like my IQ has dropped like 30 points.
Additonally i had that constant feeling of pressure on my head and eyes, it almost felt like that pressure would block my thoughts and wont let me think clearly. not to mention the horrible neck and jaw pain i got from constant stress.
somehow i managed to pass my exam and hoped, that this symptoms would stop as soon i get a good nights sleep and had less stress. But unfortunately that was not the case.
thats when anxiety and panic started to kick in.
i started to get panic attacks in my lectures (ironically the topic of that lecture was anxiety disorder and depression)and at night. i literally thought i was going insane.
somehow i was able to calm myselfe down (recognizing it as a panic attack helped me a lot) most of the times.
next i went to see a doctor. all my bloodwork came back normal except one little thing. a parameter that is related (but no a standalone indicator) to wilson disease.
although i already knew that, cause it came up in an older bloodtest and got investigatet further with no conclusive evidence of being wilson disease. Back then they told me, that im probably just a genetic carrier and sent me home and i forgot about it for a good year ( i had no symptoms at all at that time).
But not this time. i started to become obsessed with the thought of having wilson disease.
i spent hours and hours asking dr.google and searching through blogpost, forumposts and what not, if wilson disease could explain my symptoms.
but it did not help me get an definitve answer. the only thing i learned, was, that a lot of symptoms are possible with this disease (mine to) and most diagnostic tests are not safe or easily false negative if not done correctly. great. :yesyes:
so i dragged that worry around for a few days and made another appointment with an wilson expert in my area. unfortunatly that appointment was a whole month away.
from that point on it was like a roller coaster. somedays my symptoms would be better and i thought it isn´t wilsons disease after all. On other days, when my symptoms where much worse, i fall back in that hole again.
at that point i was really stressed out. University on its one is stressfull enough, but with that constant feeling of cognitive impairment and fear it just was to much to handle and so i decided to take a break from university and relax. a little time passed and somehow i managed to push that thought of being sick aside and really felt a bit better for the first time and i thought it might just has been the stress after all.
but that shouldn´t last. somehow i ended up with googling my symptoms again and i found MS(multiple sclerosis). great. another disease with a ton of different symptoms and, at the same time, really hard to diagnose.
Know i was convinced of having MS. i went to an neurologist, got an EEG and MRI scan of my head which both came back normal. the neurologist told me, that it was highly unlikely that i have MS and sent me back home.
But of course "highly unlikley" wasn´t nearly enough to calm me down. So again i spent hours and hours searching the web for signs and answers, if i had MS or not with, again, no definitv conclusion leaving me in a state of "could or could not be" again, which didn´t help at all.
Despite all that, I started to go back to university again, became occupied with my studies and managed (again) to push that thoughts of being sick a side. at least for a short time.
fast forward one month. my symptoms where better sometimes and somtimes worse, bett never really gone. in the meantime i started to notice more and more other things that could be wrong with me. At somepoint i lost the ability and trust in me to differentiate between normal and worrisome body signs. i started being afraid of becoming schizophrenic or having fibromyalgia. two good weeks passed and just yesterday i started to notice some twitching and weak feelings in my left arm. i googled it and guess what, i found ALS. i took at least 4 hours of searching through the web about ALS today. and of course feeling of weakness and twitching could be early symptom of ALS. Also symptoms of cognitive impairment are possible. So now i´m deep down the ALS rabbit hole.
somehow writing all this made me realise how stupid all of this is.
logically it is perfectly clear to me, that having even one of these rare diseases is highly unlikley, not to mention having all of them.
But somehow i just cant manage to put these irrational thoughts aside once and for all.
This uncertainty is driving me insane. where my symptoms caused by exessive stress (having 60-80 hours of work every week for almost 2 years with practically no vacation at all) and are maintained by my fears now? or maybe it is MS, wilson disease, fibromyalgia and ALS all combined :yahoo:.
so thats my story of the last 2-3 months until today. i had my appointment with the wilson expert this week and for the sake of my sanity, he agreed to make some further tests (as the first doctor, he was of the oppinion, that i´m just an genetic carrier). So we will see, how this turns out.
thanks for reading all that. Maybe you can give me some advice how to cope with this shit a little better (obviously everything i have learned from my studies so far is not working) :D.
PS: Sorry again for mistakes, it is 2am in the morning where i life and i really should get some rest now.
i´m 22 years old male and i´m currently studying psychology (ironic i know).as the thread title suggest, i´m deep down the health anxiety rabbit hole.
it has been 2-3 months know that i´m obsessed with this irrational fear of having some terminal or debilitating disease and i´m know at a point, where i just have to talk about my problems with people who maybe face the same issue, just to calm my selfe down a bit. I know i need help and i already made an appointment with a psychotherapist.
So before i will start to tell you my story, i´m in advance apologizing for spelling and grammatical errors since english is not my mother tongue. So please be forgiving :). Also this might take a bit of your time to read, so thanks in advance.
ok, lets start:
it all started when i had a very stressfull, sleepless and exhausting period at my university. in the middle of the preperation for an exam i suddenly started to feel verry dizzy and my brain felt foggy. It was hard to hold on to my thoughts and concentrating on things felt like an impossible task, i became very scatterbrained, had problems remembering things(like where i parked my car or if i brushed my teeth in the morning) and simple logical tasks felt like doing an maths exam. in short, it felt like living in a state between being awake and being asleep all of the time and simultaneously feeling like my IQ has dropped like 30 points.
Additonally i had that constant feeling of pressure on my head and eyes, it almost felt like that pressure would block my thoughts and wont let me think clearly. not to mention the horrible neck and jaw pain i got from constant stress.
somehow i managed to pass my exam and hoped, that this symptoms would stop as soon i get a good nights sleep and had less stress. But unfortunately that was not the case.
thats when anxiety and panic started to kick in.
i started to get panic attacks in my lectures (ironically the topic of that lecture was anxiety disorder and depression)and at night. i literally thought i was going insane.
somehow i was able to calm myselfe down (recognizing it as a panic attack helped me a lot) most of the times.
next i went to see a doctor. all my bloodwork came back normal except one little thing. a parameter that is related (but no a standalone indicator) to wilson disease.
although i already knew that, cause it came up in an older bloodtest and got investigatet further with no conclusive evidence of being wilson disease. Back then they told me, that im probably just a genetic carrier and sent me home and i forgot about it for a good year ( i had no symptoms at all at that time).
But not this time. i started to become obsessed with the thought of having wilson disease.
i spent hours and hours asking dr.google and searching through blogpost, forumposts and what not, if wilson disease could explain my symptoms.
but it did not help me get an definitve answer. the only thing i learned, was, that a lot of symptoms are possible with this disease (mine to) and most diagnostic tests are not safe or easily false negative if not done correctly. great. :yesyes:
so i dragged that worry around for a few days and made another appointment with an wilson expert in my area. unfortunatly that appointment was a whole month away.
from that point on it was like a roller coaster. somedays my symptoms would be better and i thought it isn´t wilsons disease after all. On other days, when my symptoms where much worse, i fall back in that hole again.
at that point i was really stressed out. University on its one is stressfull enough, but with that constant feeling of cognitive impairment and fear it just was to much to handle and so i decided to take a break from university and relax. a little time passed and somehow i managed to push that thought of being sick aside and really felt a bit better for the first time and i thought it might just has been the stress after all.
but that shouldn´t last. somehow i ended up with googling my symptoms again and i found MS(multiple sclerosis). great. another disease with a ton of different symptoms and, at the same time, really hard to diagnose.
Know i was convinced of having MS. i went to an neurologist, got an EEG and MRI scan of my head which both came back normal. the neurologist told me, that it was highly unlikely that i have MS and sent me back home.
But of course "highly unlikley" wasn´t nearly enough to calm me down. So again i spent hours and hours searching the web for signs and answers, if i had MS or not with, again, no definitv conclusion leaving me in a state of "could or could not be" again, which didn´t help at all.
Despite all that, I started to go back to university again, became occupied with my studies and managed (again) to push that thoughts of being sick a side. at least for a short time.
fast forward one month. my symptoms where better sometimes and somtimes worse, bett never really gone. in the meantime i started to notice more and more other things that could be wrong with me. At somepoint i lost the ability and trust in me to differentiate between normal and worrisome body signs. i started being afraid of becoming schizophrenic or having fibromyalgia. two good weeks passed and just yesterday i started to notice some twitching and weak feelings in my left arm. i googled it and guess what, i found ALS. i took at least 4 hours of searching through the web about ALS today. and of course feeling of weakness and twitching could be early symptom of ALS. Also symptoms of cognitive impairment are possible. So now i´m deep down the ALS rabbit hole.
somehow writing all this made me realise how stupid all of this is.
logically it is perfectly clear to me, that having even one of these rare diseases is highly unlikley, not to mention having all of them.
But somehow i just cant manage to put these irrational thoughts aside once and for all.
This uncertainty is driving me insane. where my symptoms caused by exessive stress (having 60-80 hours of work every week for almost 2 years with practically no vacation at all) and are maintained by my fears now? or maybe it is MS, wilson disease, fibromyalgia and ALS all combined :yahoo:.
so thats my story of the last 2-3 months until today. i had my appointment with the wilson expert this week and for the sake of my sanity, he agreed to make some further tests (as the first doctor, he was of the oppinion, that i´m just an genetic carrier). So we will see, how this turns out.
thanks for reading all that. Maybe you can give me some advice how to cope with this shit a little better (obviously everything i have learned from my studies so far is not working) :D.
PS: Sorry again for mistakes, it is 2am in the morning where i life and i really should get some rest now.