Hey everyone. I'm new to the forum so I will start off with a little history first. I'm 19 and live in the US. I'm male, 5'11, about 140 lbs. I've always been very slender but muscular. I have never smoked anything, nor do I drink. I have suffered with motor tics since I was about 12, never diagnosed, but they seem to be much worse when I'm highly stressed. For most all my life, I have been very physically active. I was a ballet dancer for 12 years. However, I recently quit a couple years ago because I just didn't have the passion for it anymore. When I was 15, I was out of state at a dance school, and I had an energy drink, no different than ones I had drank in the past, but this time was much different. I began breaking out in cold sweats, my heart starting beating so irregularly. Needless to say, I was straight up terrified. I had about 3 panic attacks on separate occasions after that. I moved on with my life and didn't have any health related worries for a while. Then all of this started. In November of last year (2012) I became obsessed with the fear the I could have contracted HIV. After about a week of agonizing worry, checking my tongue and thinking that any white coating is a sure sign of the first onset of HIV, always checking to see if my throat was getting sore, I bought a 10 minute HIV home test and it came out negative (longest damn 10 minutes of my life!( by the way, I was past the 3-5 month period of time for the antibodies to show up), so I became much more relaxed after the negative result, and my previously weeklong elevated heart rate dropped back to its normal rate (around 52 bps) However, not long afterwards, I became obsessed with the lymph nodes in my neck and convinced myself I had lymphoma because I thought they were swollen. Well, I had them checked out by a family doctor, and she said they weren't even swollen a little bit! Well that fear soon passed, but was replaced by my fear of ALS. I convinced myself that I had "left side weakness" and felt unstable and my muscles were twitching. I was sure this was onset of ALS and I was soon going to be confined to a wheelchair and die soon (to put it bluntly). Well, after turning to my friend Dr. Google, I did enough mind numbing search hours, numerous strength tests, and even had my girlfriend perform neurological reflex tests on me! I finally was able to conclude that my weakness must be perceived and not clinical. My next fear was a brain tumor/brain cancer. This was right around the time I started Zoloft, which was about 3 weeks ago. My vision felt off, my head was heavy, my neck ached, and I had several right sided headaches, and my "left sided weakness" was still there. Anyways, now I'm onto my current fear which is pancreatic cancer. I keep trying to tell myself that this is my most irrational fear yet, but I still cannot shake my awful fear. For the past 3 days, I have been experiencing tightness and pressure in my sternum, just uneasy nausea feelings in my stomach, and pain in both sides of my back. For some reason, the pain subsided today when I ate something, and it seems to also subside when I distract myself a lot. I have no jaundice, vomiting, dark stools or dark urine at all. I'm just so scared that I could have pancreatic cancer. I'm so scared of always thinking I have a terminal illness, despite the fact that I'm otherwise healthy (I think) and only 19. I wish my mind didn't always think the worst. It always takes me down a path I don't want to go. I just want to be able to not wake up every morning wondering how I feel and wondering when my constant worry and fear is going to go away. Is this tightness and pain in my upper abdomen and occasional pain in my back something to worry about? Should a 19 year old be worried about pancreatic cancer?? I don't have any family history for anything except anxiety and depression. By the way, I have never had any MRI's, CT, PET or any type of scan. I did have blood work done last year because a doctor heard a small heart murmur (bloodwork was fine). I also had an ECG, and a carotid doppler test, both of which were completely fine. Thank you for reading my novel, and I hope most of it made sense. Please reply and let me know your stories and opinions.
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