shortcake
02-20-2007, 05:44 PM
Hi everyone! I just wanted to say what a great place this is. I found this site about a week ago when I was searching for information on anxiety disorders. I have lived with anxiety since I was about 14 years old. I had my first panic attack and was convinced that I was having a heart attack! I was afraid to go to bed at night because I thought I wouldn't wake up in the morning. My heart would race, chest would get tight, I'd break out in a sweat, etc. My mom had gone through the exact same thing when she was younger and she kept trying to reassure me that it was just a panic attack, but of course I couldn't bring myself to believe her. She took me into the doctor and had all sorts of tests done, all which came back normal. She had the doctor talk to me about it and FINALLY I felt better and wasn't so scared anymore.
My anxiety issues weren't too bad after that. Then a couple years ago after having our son, my husband and I found out that we have HPV. Shortly after, our son was diagnosed with warts. These events seemed to have triggered the anxiety attacks again and I have been suffering greatly. I'm always worried about my beautiful son and that he'll have horrible complications from this. I am in almost constant fear and don't feel like I'm able to live a "normal" life because of it. I'm always thinking of the diseases/illnesses/etc we could all get. Now having said that, I'm still able to "function in society." I've kept my job and have done pretty well with my personal relationships. But inside I feel like I'm a mess.
To give some examples, about 2 months ago, I started having severe rectal pressure. Soon after, the muscles all throughout my body started constantly spasming. I first convinced myself that I had a prolapse of some sort due to having a baby, and that I'd need surgery. Went to the gyno who checked that out and she said I was fine as far as that went. So she scheduled an appointment with an internal med doctor for me. While I was waiting for that appointment, I convinced myself that I had to rectal or colon cancer and would die. Turned out it was just a slight case of internal hemmorhoids. (The muscle spasms in my body were from the huge amount of stress I was under, thinking all of those horrible thoughts.) Shortly after that whole thing, I put some anti-itch eye drops in one of my eyes because it was a little red and itchy. This caused that pupil to dilate more than the other. It stayed that way for several hours. I googled the symptoms and was convinced that I had a brain tumor or some other form of brain disease. My mom was finally able to convince me it was just because of the eye drops.
I was finally feeling okay with things again, when my husband started feeling like he had something stuck in his throat. He went into the ENT where they did a scope and did find a small growth on his vocal cord. My husband has pretty bad acid reflux, and the doctor told him it could very well be something to do with that, or it could be something to do with the HPV. He was told to double his AR meds and if he could still feel it in 6 weeks, to come in and they'd do a biospy. That completely freaked us out and we were both majorly stressing over it. Not even a week after his appointment, I started feeling something stuck in my throat. We both looked online and found something called "globus sensation" which is usually found in people that have anxiety/depression/stress issues. We both have those. It fit our symptoms to a T. So we were a little relieved for a while. Everything we'd read on HPV said that you can't even feel it when it's in your throat and that it certainly doesn't cause pain. If anything, it makes your voice hoarse or you can't get enough air, and neither of us were experiencing any of those things. Plus neither of us have figured out a way that we'd have it in our throats.
Then this last Thursday, the lump in my throat feeling went away but I started feeling this tightness in my chest, along with the wheezy feeling you get with asthma or severe allergies. The thing is, I wasn't actually wheezing. I could breathe fine. But I've been feeling it ever since. It slowly starts to go away as I'm laying in bed at night, and then I don't feel it for about 2 hours after I wake up in the morning.
I went to the doctor today and told him what was going on, and he said it's probably just from the sinus infection I have. He said that people with asthma (I have slight exercise induced asthma that hasn't acted up in years) can sometimes have flare-ups when they have sinus infections. I told him about the HPV and he said those symptoms couldn't be related to it. I'm a bit skeptical though. I've used the inhaler he prescribed for me and it hasn't done anything.
So here are my symptoms:
With the lump-in-throat feeling - feeling of a lump in the base of my throat; neck muscles frequently tense up in the front and sides of my neck; sometimes feels like I have to strain to talk, like the muscles in my neck and the back of my tongue are strained; sometimes feel like I have mucous in my throat that I need to swallow but there's really nothing there; clear my throat sometimes frequently
With the weird chest feeling - tightness; wheezy feeling without actually wheezing; sometimes cough because of that tight/wheezy feeling; sometimes get "pains" (not sharp pains, but pains) that start at the base of my throat and up my throat and under my chin
In addition, I'm also having moderate panic attacks, usually 2 or 3 weekly. I feel very stressed because of all of this. My heartbeat is usually beating pretty fast, exactly when I had the first panic attacks. I frequently feel jittery and antsy. I've also been getting headaches.
If anyone has any input, I'd greatly appreciate it. My husband and I don't have insurance so we can't exactly go running off and spending $500 at the doctor's office every month we think there's something wrong! I'd be so relieved if I knew it was just anxiety and stress. I have, of course, convinced myself that I have something horrible like lung cancer. (I've probably only smoked like a total of 20 cigarettes and very rarely drink, so I know that this is practically impossible.)
So very sorry this is so long!!!
My anxiety issues weren't too bad after that. Then a couple years ago after having our son, my husband and I found out that we have HPV. Shortly after, our son was diagnosed with warts. These events seemed to have triggered the anxiety attacks again and I have been suffering greatly. I'm always worried about my beautiful son and that he'll have horrible complications from this. I am in almost constant fear and don't feel like I'm able to live a "normal" life because of it. I'm always thinking of the diseases/illnesses/etc we could all get. Now having said that, I'm still able to "function in society." I've kept my job and have done pretty well with my personal relationships. But inside I feel like I'm a mess.
To give some examples, about 2 months ago, I started having severe rectal pressure. Soon after, the muscles all throughout my body started constantly spasming. I first convinced myself that I had a prolapse of some sort due to having a baby, and that I'd need surgery. Went to the gyno who checked that out and she said I was fine as far as that went. So she scheduled an appointment with an internal med doctor for me. While I was waiting for that appointment, I convinced myself that I had to rectal or colon cancer and would die. Turned out it was just a slight case of internal hemmorhoids. (The muscle spasms in my body were from the huge amount of stress I was under, thinking all of those horrible thoughts.) Shortly after that whole thing, I put some anti-itch eye drops in one of my eyes because it was a little red and itchy. This caused that pupil to dilate more than the other. It stayed that way for several hours. I googled the symptoms and was convinced that I had a brain tumor or some other form of brain disease. My mom was finally able to convince me it was just because of the eye drops.
I was finally feeling okay with things again, when my husband started feeling like he had something stuck in his throat. He went into the ENT where they did a scope and did find a small growth on his vocal cord. My husband has pretty bad acid reflux, and the doctor told him it could very well be something to do with that, or it could be something to do with the HPV. He was told to double his AR meds and if he could still feel it in 6 weeks, to come in and they'd do a biospy. That completely freaked us out and we were both majorly stressing over it. Not even a week after his appointment, I started feeling something stuck in my throat. We both looked online and found something called "globus sensation" which is usually found in people that have anxiety/depression/stress issues. We both have those. It fit our symptoms to a T. So we were a little relieved for a while. Everything we'd read on HPV said that you can't even feel it when it's in your throat and that it certainly doesn't cause pain. If anything, it makes your voice hoarse or you can't get enough air, and neither of us were experiencing any of those things. Plus neither of us have figured out a way that we'd have it in our throats.
Then this last Thursday, the lump in my throat feeling went away but I started feeling this tightness in my chest, along with the wheezy feeling you get with asthma or severe allergies. The thing is, I wasn't actually wheezing. I could breathe fine. But I've been feeling it ever since. It slowly starts to go away as I'm laying in bed at night, and then I don't feel it for about 2 hours after I wake up in the morning.
I went to the doctor today and told him what was going on, and he said it's probably just from the sinus infection I have. He said that people with asthma (I have slight exercise induced asthma that hasn't acted up in years) can sometimes have flare-ups when they have sinus infections. I told him about the HPV and he said those symptoms couldn't be related to it. I'm a bit skeptical though. I've used the inhaler he prescribed for me and it hasn't done anything.
So here are my symptoms:
With the lump-in-throat feeling - feeling of a lump in the base of my throat; neck muscles frequently tense up in the front and sides of my neck; sometimes feels like I have to strain to talk, like the muscles in my neck and the back of my tongue are strained; sometimes feel like I have mucous in my throat that I need to swallow but there's really nothing there; clear my throat sometimes frequently
With the weird chest feeling - tightness; wheezy feeling without actually wheezing; sometimes cough because of that tight/wheezy feeling; sometimes get "pains" (not sharp pains, but pains) that start at the base of my throat and up my throat and under my chin
In addition, I'm also having moderate panic attacks, usually 2 or 3 weekly. I feel very stressed because of all of this. My heartbeat is usually beating pretty fast, exactly when I had the first panic attacks. I frequently feel jittery and antsy. I've also been getting headaches.
If anyone has any input, I'd greatly appreciate it. My husband and I don't have insurance so we can't exactly go running off and spending $500 at the doctor's office every month we think there's something wrong! I'd be so relieved if I knew it was just anxiety and stress. I have, of course, convinced myself that I have something horrible like lung cancer. (I've probably only smoked like a total of 20 cigarettes and very rarely drink, so I know that this is practically impossible.)
So very sorry this is so long!!!