Chest tight/SOrt breath anxiety vs. Covid-19?

[4bready]

Hey guys
So I am 44 year old male, I feel like I'm in good shape, Crossfit regularly. I obviously have health anxiety. Im in Charlotte, NC so we are just starting to ramp up with Covid-19 cases. So last night I woke up around 3:30am with hot flash and feeling nauseous and stomach hurt, fear hit me and I was like oh no its COVID. Earlier today I felt little blah which went away but All day today I have felt tight chest, upper stomach and upper back. I feel like short breath. I have no fever, cough, etc. Of course Im scared I have COvid now. My wife is a cancer survivor and I have two daughters that is making me more worried. Is there a link that compared anxiety shortness of breath/chest tightness to Covid-19? Does anyone know if shortness of breath with COVID come with fever, cough etc. Sorry guys Ive been stressed so bad today.

[DaisyFay]

Hi,

I don’t know a lot about the symptoms of covid-19 but I can relate to the anxiety.
My anxiety has been really well managed for years and only just started to play up recently again. However, I woke up in the night a couple weeks ago feeling awful like I was coming down with something, hot flushes, tight chest, short of breath. I drank water and paced around the house. Even the next day I felt like I was short of breath and dizzy etc.
I kept saying to myself “if I didn’t know about covid-19, would I be as worried about these symptoms normally” and eventually they passed. I haven’t experienced them since.
Like you, I have two children who are very young and looking back I now know it was anxiety. It was hard to tell at the time as I hadn’t suffered from anxiety for a while and I wasn’t feeling anxious when I went to bed that night BUT I had been reading stories for weeks so my subconscious mind was obviously being affected! I had definitely pushed myself too far with all of the stories I had been reading and it obviously hit me that night.
If you are prone to anxiety, it most likely is anxiety. Take everything a day at a time.
Would you be worrying about how you feel if you didn’t know about covid-19?
Treating it as anxiety and doing what you would normally do to help your anxiety. See if that works.

Also, I may be wrong here, but I thought the breathlessness came after the fever and coughing as the lungs became more affected. But I could be wrong!

I’m not sure if this will help but I’m trying to break it down in the mind by thinking:
My family are VERY unlikely to catch it.
If we do, we are VERY unlikely to become poorly enough to need to go to hospital.
If we did go to hospital, we would be VERY unlikely to not get better.
By breaking it down into steps it is making me feel less like every cold symptom I get instantly equals certain doom.

I hope you are feeling much better soon.

[Panicattacka]

I don't think you would go straight to the breathing difficulties stage without first going through the fever/coughing stages. Maybe some people do, but I think the vast majority of cases have other symptoms before reaching that stage.