Hi all,
I'm a 27 year old girl with a long history of General Anxiety Disorder, OCD, Health Anxiety, and most recently suspected Panic Disorder, which I think has come about from these symptoms. I don't want to ramble on loads about things but I guess this might get quite long as a lot has happened over the past couple of months.
I have had what you could call a stressful time since last October. I had a filling fall out on the 4th and had a bad time with my anxiety then as I'm phobic about dentists. I did end up having it filled, but I was really anxious for the whole two weeks before it happened. After that I went through a period where I was taking on quite a lot - completing my PhD work, looking for a new house to rent with my partner, trying to find a part-time job, and trying to plan our wedding. I had two interviews, and it was about this time where I started to feel off/unwell a couple of times. My ear also blocked up in November, and I put a lot of olive oil in and it eventually unbunged itself after about a week, so I stopped worrying about that. I didn't really register everything at the time but I think on it now in my anxious state.
In January I had a menstrual period that lasted two weeks which is really unusual for me - in times of stress I do sometimes have late periods (I got ill in 2018 and was stressed then and had a couple of late periods) but I've never had that before. As you can imagine as a bit of a hypochondriac with health anxiety I definitely had a mighty stress about this. I did go to the GP, and they gave me a blood test early Feb which said I had low Ferritin (6) and that my platelets were a little over at 407, but she basically put my long period down to stress. I had a couple more instances of feeling unwell in January/Feb - at one point I woke up and felt like I couldn't breathe and thought I was having a panic attack? I was just lying there and then felt I couldn't breathe, sat up, felt a bit better, then when I laid down again it was the same? It really spooked me, even though my oximeter said things were fine. Another time, I thought I had Covid, but the test was inconclusive.
I think things started going downhill from here. In the run up to picking up my iron supplements I think my health anxiety started to go into overdrive. I was really worried about feeling ill, and had also started worrying about my low iron. I kept feeling breathless/lightheaded on and off, and was starting to get panicky about it, thinking it was the iron. I picked up my supplements and started taking them at the end of February, but I was even worried about that as they have Sorbitol in, and I had had bad experiences with Sorbitol in the past due to my IBS. I started taking them anyway, but of course was worried for a lot of the time. About 6 days into doing that, the same ear bunged up again - I think this was the start of a lot of my issues.
So, my ear was blocked. I put olive oil in it for a day, and then the next day it unblocked about 80%. Unfortunately, the next day, I think I had a POTS episode (for those unfamiliar, POTS is a form of autonomic dysfunction and can cause you to feel faint/dizzy when standing due to low blood pressure). I'm normally okay with these episodes, as I've been dealing with them for ten years, but this time I had a panic attack in the bathroom and was convinced I was going to pass out. I felt quite sick, but my partner helped me sit on the bath and calm down a little, and I phoned my mum after - the symptoms dissipated a little, but I found when I got up to go cook dinner I felt like I kept feeling breathless when moving about. I went and got my oximeter and I'm not sure if it just made things worse but I think it said 94 or so and that's when I started to really panic, as I had read somewhere that anything under 95 was bad? My partner tried to convince me I was fine - I hadn't passed out, my colouring was normal and he tried the oximeter on his finger and it said 74, at which I calmed down a little because I thought it just might be broken. But I couldn't calm down entirely for some reason - I still felt sick, and couldn't really eat much, and was terrified to move in case I felt breathless again. I did manage to walk and get to bed later, but I still remember feeling really sick. The next day after this my ear blocked again - I think I laid on it in the night or something.
The sick/breathless feeling persisted for about a week. I kept speaking to my mum and asking her what she thought as it was really freaking me out. We sort of thought it might be the iron supplements, so I stopped taking those and told my GP who said I could try something over the counter instead. After a week it went away for a bit - but I still had a blocked ear. I had been putting olive oil in it, but it was well and truly blocked. Now, I feel like I have to tell you all how absolutely terrified I am of anything to do with my ears. When I was 16, I had an ear infection which resulted in a burst eardrum, and then I got Labyrinthitis and was basically bedbound for 6 months. It was hell for me if I'm honest, and I've been completely terrified of anything similar to that ever happening again for the last ten years.
When I couldn't get the blocked ear to go away, I began to get really anxious and panicky. I became convinced I was going to get another ear infection, get Labyrinthitis again and become bedbound. The thought consumed me. I went back to my GP to ask if she could see any infection and she told me there was just a lot of wax in there and she couldn't see the eardrum. I started to feel sick and breathless on and off again about this time. I kept going forwards and backwards on what it might be - was it the other iron supplements I'd been taking? Was I having some weird allergic reaction to the olive oil I'd been putting in? Was it an ear infection causing it? I kept phoning the NHS 111 service and asking what I should do. At this point, two weeks into everything, I started to feel dizzy - that's when everything started to fall apart.
The dizziness at first was intermittent, but it was enough to really trigger that anxiety. I started worrying about it more and more, and immediately connected it with the fact that my ear was still blocked. I started to feel more sick at this point. Three days before I I reluctantly saw an audiologist about the wax, I woke up at the weekend and couldn't eat anything - the thought of food and the act of even putting anything in my mouth made me feel so sick that I just couldn't. I forced myself to eat some little things over the next couple of days, and actually had some of the wax removed at the end of March, but they couldn't get everything as the procedure itself made me dizzy - which only made things 100% in my head as now I associated that with being dizzy AND having a blocked ear with being dizzy, so now I felt trapped.
My doctor prescribed me Omeprezole at this point as she thought that I might have Gastritis due to all of the worry and stress. About this time I also started getting weird vision things - after images were stronger and I kept getting little flashes of lights like when you look at the glare off of a car. I did feel a little better on the omprezole for a week or so, and went back to eating normally again, but went downhill again before my next Audiology appointment. I tried to go back a couple of times and have it removed, but I was in such a state of panic that I couldn't do it. The dizziness was slowly becoming more noticeable about this point, and my panic was only increasing. The last time I went back to her at the end of April she suggested putting some more olive oil in instead. In her office, I was feeling quite dizzy, but when I left I actually felt better for the first time in a while. When I got home I barely felt dizzy, and went about my day almost as normal, until I had a horrible intrusive thought that evening before bed which sparked my anxiety off again.
The next day, I put olive oil in with no real issue, and then later noticed I had a red ear. This ramped up my anxiety again and I phoned 111 as I thought I must obviously have an infection now. I was stupid as it was just ear flushing, but then I stopped eating properly again here. I put more olive oil in the next day - I remember tilting my head and feeling a bit dizzy doing this, and this sparked my anxiety as I thought 'will putting olive oil in make me dizzy?' and sure enough about 5 hours after I started feeling dizzy. I became inconsolable at this point, and everything that felt off with my ear became another reason to panic - if it clicked or popped, or made a noise, or fluttered, I panicked. If wax came out, or I touched it even, I panicked.
The week after this, I tried to go home to London as my mental health was really worsening and I just wanted my mum. My partner tried to drive me, but we got 20 minutes down the road and I just could not go any further because I felt dizzy. I called my mum in a panic, and she actually came to me where I am in Wales as she was so worried about me. She stayed for three days, and we saw an out of hours GP on Sunday. I had a massive panic attack in her office, and they said they thought it was all anxiety related.
Since then, my anxiety has only gotten worse and worse. I had originally only been worried about my blocked ear and the wax causing dizziness, and about how I was going to rectify it as the fix only made me more dizzy. In May however, I started to think that it might be something else making me dizzy. The usual happened - at first I was scared of Aortic Regurgitation (I have joint hypermobility syndrome/hEDS which can come with some risks, and my mind justified this). I went back to my GP who told me she was really concerned about the fact that I had lost a lot of weight (I had been about 42 kilos, and at the time I saw her was about 38) and my fast heartbeat - she worried that I was dehydrated or potassium deficient, so sent me over the hospital where they took blood and did 2 ECGs - all blood work was normal and the ECGs were too, so at least this got rid of my heart worries.
However, the new worry took over. I started looking back at all my feelings of being unwell/my period that lasted 2 weeks/ etc and the brain tumour fear came on quickly, and is still here now. I know that people have heard this all before on loads of different threads, and I don't want to insult anyone or anything, but I've genuinely convinced myself that I have one, and that nothing can be done to help me. I've been calling my parents to tell them that I love them and to say goodbye and spend all day on Skype with them because I'm scared to miss any time with them. I think it's probably playing on my mind that one of my cousins died of a brain tumour too, so it's something close to me.
Over the time I've been experiencing this chronic anxiety and panic, my dizziness has gradually became more noticeable until it just feels constant. It's a sort of lightheaded/sway-y/unsteady feeling where I feel like I'm moving backwards and forwards, especially standing still (I developed a compulsion I assume through my OCD of 'checking' the dizziness, where I would stand still and look at an object in my house to see if it was still there). I don't notice it so much when, for ex I'm on my phone in bed or on the sofa, or maybe doing the washing up or things like that, but it's like I know its there...maybe because I am fixated on it? I don't know. I saw an ENT two weeks ago who cleaned my ear for me, told me they look completely normal inside, and mentioned that it could be a multitude of things making me dizzy - he wanted me to be referred to look at my POTS again, another iron test, and mentioned my anxiety and something called PPPD, or Persistent Postural Perceptual Dizziness.
As of now, I'm under the care of the Community Mental Health team, including an OT. I weigh about 39 kilos, which I know is low. I am eating better recently, three meals a day and some snacks, and I've put on two kilos in a week, which my OT is happy with. They want my BMI to be 15-17 before they think I can actively participate in therapy, so I'm just trying to concentrate on eating properly. My GP, my mum, and the Community Mental Health team here think that my dizziness is anxiety related, but for some reason I just cant seem to believe them - all I can think is that I know it's something horrible. I'm waiting for a CT scan, but I'm terrified of that too. I had more blood tests done yesterday at the request of my therapist and OT and I rang them to get the results and all she said was 'there was one thing a little bit out but not anything you would have to worry about' - i asked her what it was but she said she didn't have it up on her screen and couldn't remember. Obviously, this is on my mind again now.
My mum tells me all the time that I shouldn't worry about the more horrible things, but it washes over me and I can't seem to sustain that thought. I feel so scared all the time, like I'm a kid again. I cry a lot because I feel like I'll never be happy again. I keep thinking about sitting in the back garden with my parents and the dog and the sun is out and that's all I want, but it makes me upset because I genuinely feel I will never get to do that again. Sometimes I wish I could step out of my body and give myself a hug. I dont really know why.
I'm sorry for such a long rant. I feel like I'm trying - trying to eat, trying to sleep (even though I find it really difficult), waiting for therapy - I just can't seem to believe that anxiety could do this to me. Why doesn't the dizziness go away when I try to calm down? If it doesn't go away, then that surely means its something bad? I keep doing neurological tests on myself like trying to stand on one leg with my eyes closed and I fall and that only reaffirms things in my head. Somewhere deep inside I know I'm not a doctor and I wouldn't know how to interpret things, but I still do them because I just want to feel some sort of comfort. It's really hard when you feel so convinced that something is wrong and everyone else is telling you there isn't.
I know a lot of this is depression talking. But I guess a lot of it is also fear. I guess my question is can all this really be anxiety? Can it make you feel dizzy like this all the time, all day, everyday for months? Can it give you weird vision stuff like after images and flashes of light and light trails when I wave my phone in the dark? I have tinnitus still even after the wax being taken out, which obviously worries me too. I wish I could just make it go away. I want my life back so badly but I feel like at this point I have to accept I won't get it.
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