Call me Edwin
21-02-20, 09:39
Hello everyone.
This is my first post but I have lurked around reading various threads from time to time over the years, and found it all helpful.
I am 60 years old and have suffered on and off with Health Anxiety most of my life, although it wasn't identified as such until a few years ago. Previously I have worried about stomach cancer and bowel cancer, but not now.
In 2016 my partner was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which was a horrible experience (as it would be for anyone). Fortunately it was benign and operable and she was soon home and back to normal. This obviously hypersensitised me to brain tumour thoughts.
In 2017 I started to get a high-pitched, white-noise kind of non-directional tinnitus which gets worse if I press on my skull, twist my neck or yawn.
Then I started to get what I call is the "kick in the head", a sort of jolt whenever I move head or eyes. This was followed by occasional very brief bouts of vertigo and, rarely, double vision which I could stop by closing my eyes to sort of reboot them.
I have no externally visible symptoms - I can talk and write legibly, walk around without falling over, do the dishes without breaking them and drive a car.
I was referred to an ENT specialist (principally because of the tinnitus) and had a scan of the back of my head which showed nothing suspicious. I think this was about 18 months ago although I can't now find the paperwork.
I was still troubled by HA, so last winter my GP referred me to a talking therapy service called iTalk. I had 12 sessions of CBT which I found very helpful, getting me to challenge my assumptions and generally putting in on the road to what I thought might be a full recovery. I was happier in 2019 than I had been for years after learning how to downplay the attention I paid to the symptoms.
But last month it came back, and it was a smasher. I now notice my symptoms feel worse than ever and I am in terrible fear - fear of the fear. I have booked a GP appointment for next week and I thought by re-reading and practising some of the CBT material I would be able to park my problems until then. After all, whatever I've got isn't going to kill me in the next 6 days as its progress is slow.
That has worked up to a point during the daytime. But my nights have become awful. I typically go to bed only when I am very tired, then read a book until I can't keep my eyelids open any longer. I then settle down. But I can't get off to sleep. The fear of the fear grows and grows. I drift off for a few minutes here and there, but keep jolting back to wakefulness after terrifying nightmares. I also dry-vomit in the night (something that has stayed with me when I'm upset ever since the long-gone stomach cancer fear years) - I think that's just a natural fight-or-flight reaction. Last night my best effort was a sleep of about 1hr from 4 until 5 with another distressing nightmare. I am exhausted but can't relax.
I am on 150mg of Dothiepin nightly, it's a tricyclic antidepressant that is not now prescribed to new patients because accidental overdoses are more dangerous than other drugs of its class. I can also tell you that I've tried to come off it a few times in the last 30 years by gradually reducing the dose, but have failed.
So, can anyone give me any tips on how to get to sleep at nights? And thanks to all readers for bearing with me this long, I imagine some of you will have found this very tedious but I wanted to get the facts off my chest.
This is my first post but I have lurked around reading various threads from time to time over the years, and found it all helpful.
I am 60 years old and have suffered on and off with Health Anxiety most of my life, although it wasn't identified as such until a few years ago. Previously I have worried about stomach cancer and bowel cancer, but not now.
In 2016 my partner was diagnosed with a brain tumour, which was a horrible experience (as it would be for anyone). Fortunately it was benign and operable and she was soon home and back to normal. This obviously hypersensitised me to brain tumour thoughts.
In 2017 I started to get a high-pitched, white-noise kind of non-directional tinnitus which gets worse if I press on my skull, twist my neck or yawn.
Then I started to get what I call is the "kick in the head", a sort of jolt whenever I move head or eyes. This was followed by occasional very brief bouts of vertigo and, rarely, double vision which I could stop by closing my eyes to sort of reboot them.
I have no externally visible symptoms - I can talk and write legibly, walk around without falling over, do the dishes without breaking them and drive a car.
I was referred to an ENT specialist (principally because of the tinnitus) and had a scan of the back of my head which showed nothing suspicious. I think this was about 18 months ago although I can't now find the paperwork.
I was still troubled by HA, so last winter my GP referred me to a talking therapy service called iTalk. I had 12 sessions of CBT which I found very helpful, getting me to challenge my assumptions and generally putting in on the road to what I thought might be a full recovery. I was happier in 2019 than I had been for years after learning how to downplay the attention I paid to the symptoms.
But last month it came back, and it was a smasher. I now notice my symptoms feel worse than ever and I am in terrible fear - fear of the fear. I have booked a GP appointment for next week and I thought by re-reading and practising some of the CBT material I would be able to park my problems until then. After all, whatever I've got isn't going to kill me in the next 6 days as its progress is slow.
That has worked up to a point during the daytime. But my nights have become awful. I typically go to bed only when I am very tired, then read a book until I can't keep my eyelids open any longer. I then settle down. But I can't get off to sleep. The fear of the fear grows and grows. I drift off for a few minutes here and there, but keep jolting back to wakefulness after terrifying nightmares. I also dry-vomit in the night (something that has stayed with me when I'm upset ever since the long-gone stomach cancer fear years) - I think that's just a natural fight-or-flight reaction. Last night my best effort was a sleep of about 1hr from 4 until 5 with another distressing nightmare. I am exhausted but can't relax.
I am on 150mg of Dothiepin nightly, it's a tricyclic antidepressant that is not now prescribed to new patients because accidental overdoses are more dangerous than other drugs of its class. I can also tell you that I've tried to come off it a few times in the last 30 years by gradually reducing the dose, but have failed.
So, can anyone give me any tips on how to get to sleep at nights? And thanks to all readers for bearing with me this long, I imagine some of you will have found this very tedious but I wanted to get the facts off my chest.