pringle
16-06-10, 21:13
Hey all,
I apologise for the length of it, please just skim read and/or skip to the bottom if you so wish!
As someone who is (hopefully) just about pulling himself out of a draining, life sapping 3 month health anxiety episode I thought I'd post a message in case anyone is going through anything similar and is on the lookout for reassurance.
2 years ago I went through a few months where I'd managed to convince myself I had bowel cancer or something equally nasty after finding a tiny bit of blood in my stool. The panic that this caused took me massively by surprise as I hadn't felt anything like it before, exacerbated by the near constant googling of symptoms (I know, I know). I won't go into the details of that period but basically I had a seemingly never ending string of symptoms conveniently queuing up to take over my life and my thoughts - I'd wake up with completely numb hands and arms most days, a strange dizziness, ringing in one ear almost constantly, back pain (had to bring a cushion into work), constant pain in my right arm, stiff neck, really bloated, abdominal pain where it felt like I had a lump beneath my rib cage, nausea, numb foot for 2 weeks, the list goes on! I should point out that these symptoms tended to usually just be one a time, as I'd be fixating on one at a time. As someone who had never experienced anything like this before, it was terrifying and seemingly self perpetuating. To cut a long story slightly shorter I ended up having all manner of blood tests, ECG, x-rays, ultrasound and general probing. My mum even drove me to A&E one night because she was so worried about me. I couldn't quite believe all this was linked to the discovery of the blood. This culminated in me having a particularly uncomfortable flexible sigmoidoscopy. When I was given the all clear with this, it almost immediately triggered a recovery and over a few days the symptoms dried up almost completely. It was about this time I became more and more convinced this was something to do with health anxiety, as I've always felt like a very anxious person generally and this seemed to fit. I discovered this site and began to realise the true havoc that anxiety can wreak on people. My parents were still unconvinced and still thought it was some sort of mystery virus.
Anyway, other than a few slightly minor episodes which I won't go into in this post, the past 2 years have been relatively symptom free. This was until the end of March when I suddenly got a strange bout of dizziness as well as a feeling in my head like I was always on the verge of a headache. This developed into a particularly nasty headache after a week that was unlike any I'd had before, it lasted for 3 full days and absolutely no pain medication would even touch it. This put my anxiety through the roof, I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat and all I could do was google symptoms, despite how much I knew I shouldn't and immediately came to the conclusion I had a brain tumour. After these 3 days I still didn't feel right, I had a remaining pressure in my head which refused to go away at all. I found it hard to describe to anyone, other than it being like the space in between my brain and skull was filled with glue. The sensation would change all the time as well, sometimes feeling like someone was pushing down on top of my head and other times like a tight band all around. There were numerous other weird sensations on top of this. Obviously the fixation kicked in and the last 2 and a half months have again been pretty bloody horrible with a constant pressure/pain of some kind in my head as well as various other symptoms that I'd read about related to brain tumours which suddenly sprang to life like magic. Anyway this ended with me having an MRI scan last week where they found precisely nothing. Guess what, suddenly the symptoms have all but gone. I feel shame and embarrassment about obviously wasting the medical time, but I really felt like I had no way out.
I believe I'm generally a rational, logical person- but yet I am never able to fully convince myself that it's just the anxiety. I can keep on telling myself this over and over again and to some extent that knowledge is comforting but it's like my brain never fully believes it and until I have the hard evidence on a piece of paper in front of me, then these things drag on and on basically putting my life in limbo for months on end. I sympathise with all you fellow sufferers.
My aim of this message was to
a) potentially comfort someone who may be having similar symptoms and is worried about them. I know this can be comforting because I obsessively spent hours trawling forums looking for people with similar symptoms.
b) Ask a question about medication- Obviously I've been to the doctors about this a sack load of times and the inevitable question about medication as one possible aid with this is going to come up when I go next week. I've taken diazepam a few times, mainly to just help me sleep and I was considering asking for some more of this, if only just so I know its there. Does anyone have any experience with this or any other medications that may be better for someone in my situation? I really don't want to have to start taking something regularly.
Anyway, that is all. Phew.
If anyone does want to PM me, please feel free to do so. I don't know anyone in my personal life that can really understand what it's like so am keen to discuss further.
Luke
I apologise for the length of it, please just skim read and/or skip to the bottom if you so wish!
As someone who is (hopefully) just about pulling himself out of a draining, life sapping 3 month health anxiety episode I thought I'd post a message in case anyone is going through anything similar and is on the lookout for reassurance.
2 years ago I went through a few months where I'd managed to convince myself I had bowel cancer or something equally nasty after finding a tiny bit of blood in my stool. The panic that this caused took me massively by surprise as I hadn't felt anything like it before, exacerbated by the near constant googling of symptoms (I know, I know). I won't go into the details of that period but basically I had a seemingly never ending string of symptoms conveniently queuing up to take over my life and my thoughts - I'd wake up with completely numb hands and arms most days, a strange dizziness, ringing in one ear almost constantly, back pain (had to bring a cushion into work), constant pain in my right arm, stiff neck, really bloated, abdominal pain where it felt like I had a lump beneath my rib cage, nausea, numb foot for 2 weeks, the list goes on! I should point out that these symptoms tended to usually just be one a time, as I'd be fixating on one at a time. As someone who had never experienced anything like this before, it was terrifying and seemingly self perpetuating. To cut a long story slightly shorter I ended up having all manner of blood tests, ECG, x-rays, ultrasound and general probing. My mum even drove me to A&E one night because she was so worried about me. I couldn't quite believe all this was linked to the discovery of the blood. This culminated in me having a particularly uncomfortable flexible sigmoidoscopy. When I was given the all clear with this, it almost immediately triggered a recovery and over a few days the symptoms dried up almost completely. It was about this time I became more and more convinced this was something to do with health anxiety, as I've always felt like a very anxious person generally and this seemed to fit. I discovered this site and began to realise the true havoc that anxiety can wreak on people. My parents were still unconvinced and still thought it was some sort of mystery virus.
Anyway, other than a few slightly minor episodes which I won't go into in this post, the past 2 years have been relatively symptom free. This was until the end of March when I suddenly got a strange bout of dizziness as well as a feeling in my head like I was always on the verge of a headache. This developed into a particularly nasty headache after a week that was unlike any I'd had before, it lasted for 3 full days and absolutely no pain medication would even touch it. This put my anxiety through the roof, I couldn't sleep, I could barely eat and all I could do was google symptoms, despite how much I knew I shouldn't and immediately came to the conclusion I had a brain tumour. After these 3 days I still didn't feel right, I had a remaining pressure in my head which refused to go away at all. I found it hard to describe to anyone, other than it being like the space in between my brain and skull was filled with glue. The sensation would change all the time as well, sometimes feeling like someone was pushing down on top of my head and other times like a tight band all around. There were numerous other weird sensations on top of this. Obviously the fixation kicked in and the last 2 and a half months have again been pretty bloody horrible with a constant pressure/pain of some kind in my head as well as various other symptoms that I'd read about related to brain tumours which suddenly sprang to life like magic. Anyway this ended with me having an MRI scan last week where they found precisely nothing. Guess what, suddenly the symptoms have all but gone. I feel shame and embarrassment about obviously wasting the medical time, but I really felt like I had no way out.
I believe I'm generally a rational, logical person- but yet I am never able to fully convince myself that it's just the anxiety. I can keep on telling myself this over and over again and to some extent that knowledge is comforting but it's like my brain never fully believes it and until I have the hard evidence on a piece of paper in front of me, then these things drag on and on basically putting my life in limbo for months on end. I sympathise with all you fellow sufferers.
My aim of this message was to
a) potentially comfort someone who may be having similar symptoms and is worried about them. I know this can be comforting because I obsessively spent hours trawling forums looking for people with similar symptoms.
b) Ask a question about medication- Obviously I've been to the doctors about this a sack load of times and the inevitable question about medication as one possible aid with this is going to come up when I go next week. I've taken diazepam a few times, mainly to just help me sleep and I was considering asking for some more of this, if only just so I know its there. Does anyone have any experience with this or any other medications that may be better for someone in my situation? I really don't want to have to start taking something regularly.
Anyway, that is all. Phew.
If anyone does want to PM me, please feel free to do so. I don't know anyone in my personal life that can really understand what it's like so am keen to discuss further.
Luke