Nervous About Dizziness / Brain Tumor

[RaverNeko]

Hi everyone,

I've lurked around this forum for quite a while and it's helped calm my nerves about a plethora of problems that I keep thinking I have, even though I obviously don't have them. One of my recent, unrelenting fears I have is brain tumors, and the reason why I'm afraid of it is because of my recent dizziness and headaches in the past. I apologize about the wall-o-text. You can skip ahead to the "Now that you've gotten this far..." section if you want,

Let me share with you guys my story. About two months ago I started to get a very dull one sided headache. It didn't really hurt or anything, in fact I'd say it was just a measly two out of ten on the pain scale. You could easily ignore it if you were preoccupied with other things. The scary thing was that Advil or Motrin wouldn't do anything for it at all. One day I got so nervous that I rushed to a clinic and asked them what was wrong, and the doctor there said that I had TMJ and gave me 600mg of Ibuprofen to take to help with the headaches.

This calmed my nerves for a couple of weeks, but the headaches still persisted. The 600mg of Ibuprofen literally did nothing for me, so I made an appointment with my primary care doctor, which had a three week waiting period. Each long, excruciating day leading up to that appointment made me feel worse and worse because I continuously feared that I had a brain tumor. The day before I went to the doctor, I was shivering profusely. I was just so terribly nervous and it wasn't a pleasant feeling at all.

When I walked into the doctor's office and explained my symptoms to her, she completely understood my nervousness and told me that my headaches were due to very stiff neck/shoulder muscles. She told me that, despite what Dr. Google says, these types of tension headaches can be one sided and it's not because of a brain tumor. I asked her the symptoms of brain tumors, and she told me that if I had a brain tumor, I would have problems walking (practically falling down), losing control over one part of your body, seizures, etc. She took a look and felt the muscles in my neck/shoulder and said that they were extremely hard and full of knots, and the remedy for those headaches was to simply exercise.

After she told me this, I began to feel better already. I wasn't worried for quite a while and things were starting to look up. About a week later, I came in contact with another doctor that my father met and told my story to him. He, again, reassured me that I didn't have a brain tumor and he would also get headaches like the ones that I would have and the way he dealt with them was to exercise. This doctor is an authority on the subject because he is a cancer doctor. He described to me the symptoms of a brain tumor which, none of them I had.

After the third doctor told me about how exercise helped him with his headaches, I started to go to the gym. After running on the treadmill for thirty minutes and using various machines that were designed for neck and shoulder muscles, I felt my headache go away! Hurray! It was such a relief and everything was great!

Now if you've gotten this far, you're probably wondering why I'm making a post on here in the first place. Well, interestingly enough, a couple of hours after hitting the gym, I started to get tension headaches. These headaches fit the definition of a tension headache perfectly, especially the ones on Wikipedia and WebMD. I would pop a Motrin to take care of them and usually they went away, but there was something else that accompanied those headaches soon after: dizziness. I started to get dizzy spells in the evening after going to the gym, and now I'm practically dizzy all the time. I'm able to walk and function fine, but the dizziness is enough for me to grab my head and go "Woah, I'm pretty dizzy." For the last couple of days, I started noticing that my back, especially between my shoulderblades, feels like it's trembling and shaking. I'm thinking that this dizziness is caused from very tight neck/shoulder muscles restricting bloodflow to my head.

This dizziness is causing me to worry, again, that I have a brain tumor. I feel like I should have no reason to worry, especially since three doctors completely assured me that I don't have a tumor, but I feel like it'd be a big help for me to get some support/advice on this sort of thing from helpful people on this wonderful forum. I apologize again for the wall-o-text, but yeah...

[Mrs Panda]

Hi there! I too have these issues with dizziness. Not always there but when it is, it's certainly enough to freak me out! I also have very tight muscles in the shoulders and neck and when they start to feel knotty and hard like cement, I notice the dizziness off balance feeling. I can't afford weekly massages so I just get my husband to massage them for a few minutes every few days to stop them getting too tense. I also went to a chiropractor the other day and he stretched my neck on both sides and told me I need to that myself every day to keep the muscles relaxed. You will be able to find neck stretch videos on you tube. The most basic one he taught me is to put your right hand on top of your head so that your fingers are resting near the left ear and the just gently pull your head towards your right shoulder as far as comfortable, hold for 10 seconds and repeat on the other side. Once or twice daily. I also had fluid in my ear once and that can cause a full kind of feeling on one side of your head/face and throw of your balance and make you feel dizzy. Hope this helps you

---------- Post added at 15:22 ---------- Previous post was at 15:19 ----------

Ps... Great work on going to the gym! I'm too scared to exercise but one day I hope to get back into it. Also....you could give yoga a try....there are stretch yoga workouts on you tube that help to ease muscle tension and to help you relax

[RaverNeko]

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and reply to my post! It's reassuring to know that others have/are going through the same thing I'm dealing with right now and that it's really nothing serious. I'm curious, with your tight neck and shoulder muscles, do you ever get a "trembling" feeling right between, and slightly above, your shoulder blades? I'm noticing that too along with my dizziness and I'm curious if my tight muscles are causing that. I'd love to go to a chiropractor/massage place but, just like you, I can't afford it either. My grandmother allowed me to borrow her little massage chair which helps a little bit, but it could be better. I've looked at a couple of those stretching tutorials on YouTube before and they don't really help too much, but I bet if I do it more it'll begin to help,

Edit: I figured out a way to describe the "trembling" between my shoulders. Flex a muscle for a little bit. Do you notice how it shakes after a while? It's kinda like that. Nothing serious, but it's worrying and annoying.

[Mrs Panda]

You're welcome for the reply. As for the stretching exercises, they won't help straight away...you have to keep doing them every day to make sure you keep them relaxed....kind of like if you lift weights once you won't see the muscles straight away I'm impatient too and always want relief like right now!!! haha....

I haven't noticed that feeling you've described around the shoulder blades but sometimes I get like a weird kind of vibrating sensation in different areas of my body....along with muscle twitches you can actually see. I've been told that is due to a lack of magnesium. I've been taking a supplement regularly now for about a month and it has helped significantly to lessen them

[NotCool]

I've had a crazy brain tumor fear from December last year all up to summer this year. It was the time of maximum health anxiety for me, and brain tumor phobia was on the top of my list. I was experiencing headaches, memory problems, deja vus, sleep disorders with weird head sensations when I was waking up, occasional nausea, dizzines, and twice what I thought were some kind of seizures during sleep.

Well, over time, I somehow "grew" out of the fear, and the symptoms subsided. I still havememory problems, and my sleep is not of very good quality, but after self-diagnosing myself, I believe that sleep apnea is to blame for that.

Anyway, health anxiety amplifies the symptoms so much, and there's SO MUCH of the symptoms that can be caused by anxiety alone - which is a hormone disturbance, a psycho-somatic causing symptoms, and sending your body into a kind of overdrive mode, where you're tense all the time. A lot of that tension builds up in the shoulders and the neck, and radiate towards the head. As for dizziness, go ahead and put "dizziness" into the Search mode in this board - you'll find tons of threads, just like this. I doubt someone reported back with an actual diagnosis of a BT.

Point is, that you're on the right track with exercising and trusting the doctors, so don't let yourself fall into the BT-worry spiral again with your dizziness. It can take weeks or even months after anxiety, for your body to return to normal, because you have to realize that most of anxiety happens on a subconscious level.

[RaverNeko]

You're welcome for the reply. As for the stretching exercises, they won't help straight away...you have to keep doing them every day to make sure you keep them relaxed....kind of like if you lift weights once you won't see the muscles straight away I'm impatient too and always want relief like right now!!! haha....

I haven't noticed that feeling you've described around the shoulder blades but sometimes I get like a weird kind of vibrating sensation in different areas of my body....along with muscle twitches you can actually see. I've been told that is due to a lack of magnesium. I've been taking a supplement regularly now for about a month and it has helped significantly to lessen them

For the last couple of days I've been massaging my back using one of those cheap-o chair massagers. They really don't help that much, but I'm sure it's better than nothing. I totally understand what you mean by instant relief, haha. I actually, believe it or not, found a spot on my neck that, when rubbed, will help alleviate the dizziness a bit. I still get dizzy from time to time, but it doesn't seem constant 24/7 like it was.

I really want to mention something else too... I got so nervous yesterday when reading people's brain tumor horror stories. I'm sure you've seen them before. They amplified my fears tenfold and I really wanted to cry. It's astounding on how much anxiety can warp and twist aspects about you. Those websites are just as bad, if not worse, than WebMD. I'm going to go to a health clinic tomorrow and talk with the doctors there. I have a fear in the back of my head if like... Let's say they gave me a CT scan... What if it came back bad instead of good? Ahh even talking about this is making me uneasy, :'(

---------- Post added at 18:45 ---------- Previous post was at 18:33 ----------

I've had a crazy brain tumor fear from December last year all up to summer this year. It was the time of maximum health anxiety for me, and brain tumor phobia was on the top of my list. I was experiencing headaches, memory problems, deja vus, sleep disorders with weird head sensations when I was waking up, occasional nausea, dizzines, and twice what I thought were some kind of seizures during sleep.

Well, over time, I somehow "grew" out of the fear, and the symptoms subsided. I still havememory problems, and my sleep is not of very good quality, but after self-diagnosing myself, I believe that sleep apnea is to blame for that.

Anyway, health anxiety amplifies the symptoms so much, and there's SO MUCH of the symptoms that can be caused by anxiety alone - which is a hormone disturbance, a psycho-somatic causing symptoms, and sending your body into a kind of overdrive mode, where you're tense all the time. A lot of that tension builds up in the shoulders and the neck, and radiate towards the head. As for dizziness, go ahead and put "dizziness" into the Search mode in this board - you'll find tons of threads, just like this. I doubt someone reported back with an actual diagnosis of a BT.

Point is, that you're on the right track with exercising and trusting the doctors, so don't let yourself fall into the BT-worry spiral again with your dizziness. It can take weeks or even months after anxiety, for your body to return to normal, because you have to realize that most of anxiety happens on a subconscious level.

The symptoms you talked about seem very similar to mine, but like you said it seems to get worse whenever I start to have anxiety over my brain tumor fears. If I get reassurance from a doctor that I don't have a tumor, a large amount of those symptoms seem to just vanish and I find myself to be in a much better mood. Tomorrow I'm going to go to a walk in clinic and talk to the doctors for reassurance. One thing I will do though, and maybe I'll post it on here too, is make a video of the doctor explaining to me why I don't have a tumor and watch it whenever I start to get scared over the whole brain tumor fear.

You're completely right about the stress/anxiety/tension going on your shoulders and radiating on your head. That's what the doctor told me about my constant tension headache on the left side of my head. What sucks is that my mom has a lot of tension on her shoulders and neck but she doesn't get dizzy, although I bet people respond to stress/anxiety/tension differently. The thing that you told me about the dizziness threads on here makes me feel a little better. I've checked out a couple of them and practically nobody has ever reported back with a brain tumor diagnosis. F****** WebMD/Google scaring the crap out of me all the time with these sort of things...

Have you ever taken anxiety medication to help alleviate your symptoms and get yourself recovered faster? If so, how much did it help?

_________________________________________

Edit: When browsing some threads on here, I actually stumbled upon some of the threads that you created when you had your brain tumor fears. I also noticed that you were going through back tingling and lightheadedness too. It seems as though our symptoms are very similar and are just from anxiety.

Edit 2: I called the cancer doctor that I mentioned on here. I swear, he's such a lifesaver and a really good resource for me to have. I talked to him about my symptoms and he told me, just like I was expecting, that it was nothing to worry about. The thing he said is that the symptoms wouldn't be itty bitty things like my mild lightheadedness or mild headaches, they would be so debilitating that you'd KNOW something was wrong. For instance, with the lightheadedness, you'd be so dizzy that you'd almost seem drunk or be on the ground because you can't stand up. With the headaches, they'd get progressively worse really fast and it'd turn into the worst headache of your life. For my dizziness causes, he told me that people can suffer from types of vertigo that lasts for a week or two. This type of dizziness is called benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), at least that's what the doctor told me. Another thing one should keep in mind is that not only doctors, but other people as well, would look at you and say "Hey something's not right here." The day before I called the doctor, I got a deep tissue massage and it really helped with the headaches and dizziness, so I'd look into that if anyone's having the same symptoms as me. Another thing I wanted to mention was for my dizziness, it seemed like it got better as the days went on. At first it was constant, then it was only in the morning, then it went away after I got my massage.

Edit 3: When browsing through some threads on here, another user mentioned this:

happens a lot to me its called a tension headache its subconscious contractions of the scalp muscles and the forehead and they become tense happens to me a lot

I did a Google search for "subconscious contractions of the scalp muscles" and guess what came up? There's a type of headache called Muscle Contraction Headache and it fit my headache description perfectly! If anybody is dealing with the types of headaches that I described on here, then maybe that's what you have.

[RaverNeko]

I'm not sure if you're allowed to bump threads on here, but that's what I'm gonna do now. I added in some information that I think people with my kind of anxiety can use to help themselves,

[worryworryworry]

Thanks for posting this - I keep re reading the edit you have done. It does calm me to know it would be more than just headaches that indicate a brain tumour.

B x

[RaverNeko]

Thanks for posting this - I keep re reading the edit you have done. It does calm me to know it would be more than just headaches that indicate a brain tumour.

B x

Glad to know that I've been helping! If I may recommend some things that'll help you even more, drink some nice soothing hot tea. It works wonders whenever I'm really stressed/anxious about something. If you can, give your neck and shoulders a massage. That helped me greatly,