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[raggamuffin]

I've been getting pains in a new spot the past 3 days and today it just overwhelmed me with fear and I couldn't concentrate on anything at work. If I think about it logically I know how it started and again it was my own stupid fault (can't take my own advice). I've been getting stomach pains for 2 months now. Tried 3 different IBS meds which didn't work. Went to 3 GP's and even the hospital. They listened to my symptoms (weren't concerned as I was vomitting or having diarrhea or constipation) and they felt around my stomach etc. So i've been saying to myself "it's just IBS" but it doesn't stop the pains affecting me for many hours scattered throughout the day.

Then surprise surprise I read on google about abdominal pain and what did I find a reference to? Cancer...of course. Pancreatic cancer no less, scary stuff and I don't recommend reading about it. Now guess where the new pains are centred in my body? Yep, right where my pancreas is. I feel like such a bloody tool. For continuing to use google as some sort of self diagnosis tool. But moreso for taking a day off work. Fair enough it's been the first day off from work in several months, but I still feel rather pathetic for caving in.

As usual my way out was booking a doctor's appointment. Manager's are very understanding about my anxiety though and i've got a psychologist appointment this Saturday and hopefully start CBT very very soon. But what on earth is my dr going to tell me that's new? Muscle tension? Nothing wrong with you. It's all in your head? I suppose I should be somewhat thankful, only one of the GP's prescribed meds and I don't visit him anymore. The other doctor's approaches steer more towards CBT. So they'll no doubt ask me to wait till Saturday and take it from there. So i've got the appointment in 40 mins. I'm not entirely sure why I booked it. On the drive home, as ever I was convincing myself it was a heart attack. Then worrying that if I carry on like this living with stress and anxiety it probably will give me a heart attack one of these days and so the panic continued.

The past few months I feel so much worse at work. Even though I have work to do, anxiety and pains seem worse at work. Never truly going away and it's difficult to cope with. These pains feel a lot more like muscle tension to me, I suppose that's possible. But most doctors have said pain killers wouldn't work for anxiety pains unless it has a placebo effect. Even stuff like beta blockers, SSRI's and tranquilizers didn't really calm me down or fend off pains and symptoms when I took them daily (except the tranquilizers which I took sparingly). Then when I realized it didn't work the anxiety escalated.

Damn I miss feeling normal. The times when i'm not in pain are bliss, but then I start thinking when will the next pain come or "oh yeah you've got anxiety this won't last long". Ach let's just hope CBT can start soon so I can try and find a way of turning this around. I don't wanna run the risk of losing my job. Not that they've ever mentioned such an outcome. But I don't want to be a let down and right now I don't feel like i'm capable of living a normal life, nevermind being a productive member in the office I work at.

Ed

[raggamuffin]

She prescribed me 2 IBS pills. One to take which will help the stomach immediately and to be used only when i'm in pain. The other is a once a day pill and should become effective within 7-10 days. As expected she said wait until I speak to the psychiatrist this weekend and take it from there. But she is of the belief the IBS might be a genuine underlying condition simply agitated by the anxiety. Time to get back to work.#

Ed

[dazza]

Hi Ed

Whenever I read your posts it's like you've written my experiences!
We seem to suffer identically, in terms of physical pains and general thinking.

Quite a coincidence that we both live in the same city... maybe we have "Cambridge anxiety"? lol

What do you do for work if you don't mind me asking?

My latest pains are mainly at the back of the neck. The odd arm pains and oddly, in my long finger on my left hand!

The finger pain is weird. It sometimes feels bruised, yet, when I squeeze it... nothing. It's almost like a "phantom" pain.

Good luck on Saturday. Say "Hi" to Dr. Hunt from me! lol

[trinidiva]

Oh man, I've had some of the same thoughts.
First, GO for the CBT. It really will help you, but you have to be willing to do the work and exercises they ask you to try. Then the key is learning to use those same exercises when you are on your own, so when you start to panic, you know what to do. They will probably work on some breathing exercises as well, those really helped me a lot, and I use them just about every day...I also started taking a tai chi class, which definitely helps with meditation and relaxation. You might look into a meditation or yoga class, or even order a dvd, I ordered a few Tai chi tapes off of Amazon and they were quite cheap.
It sounds like work is a big source of your stress. For me, it was the commute to and from my job, it was almost 2 hours each way in stop and go traffic. I started having dizzy spells while driving, went to a series of inner ear doctors, got all types of tests, just to be told by one really nice doctor that he thought it might all be anxiety. My anxiety got to a point where I had trouble even driving locally. I ended up working completely from home, and I still am. It HAS helped to lower my anxiety tremendously and my manager is very understanding. I now have been working hard to overcome my driving issues....I now can drive locally again and have even gone a few exits on the highway a few times.
I guess my point is, you have to be really honest with yourself and think about what your biggest source of stress is. What can you do to get rid of that stress? Write it down. Start to work on reaching that goal.
The physical feelings of anxiety are terrible. I used to just feel terrible when trying to get out of bed every morning. It would be a new ache and pain every day. I kept trying to convince myself that it had to be something else other than just anxiety, but it WAS all just anxiety.

Everyone has a different treatment path that works for them, for me, I take a small amt of medication and I do CBT.

[raggamuffin]

Hi all, thanks for the replies. You never know, it could be a Cambridge based anxiety :P I work for Play.com. The workitself is pretty mundane, spreadsheets and daily routines. Talking to a few customer's throughout the day. But the people I work with are really nice. But I have had a couple of full blown panic attacks at work when I first started getting physical pains and panics associated with anxiety and worry. From then on work didn't feel like a safe place to be. But I can feel the same at home. When everyone's gone to bed I worry about "what if's" and it scares me. I'm quite a creative person and that doesn't help at all in this hyper sensitive state where every pain is played ove rin my mind constantly trying to root out the cause, when, as you said it's no doubt anxiety.

I know sometimes people complain that GP's or doctors can sometimes seem a bit indifferent to people's problems, or miss something. But over the past 15 months or more I have visited every GP in my village surgery and about 5 doctors at the local hospital. Xrays, multiple blood tests, 2 ECG's, urine tests, physical examinations. I don't know how much more they can do to convince my brain that it's not any sort of impending doom.

I agree with you about driving, before me and my girlfriend split up recently I used to drive to pick her up and she lived 110 miles away. Every single time I drove to her's i'd get stuck on the M25 (the main motorway that encircles London). I'd be stuck there for at least an hour. I'd be convincing myself that the car would breakdown or i'd have a heart attack and nobody could come to aid me because the amublance would be stuck in traffic etc. Then the breathing got heavy and I tried to focus on it. But I think I was breathign too hard or fast and then pains would come in. By the time I got to my girlfriend's I was usually in a full blown panic attack and i'd be irritable and she'd be upset at the lack of being able to help and me being snappy. Then I had to do the whole thing again. It was usually around 6 hours of driving. By the time I got home I literally felt like I was seconds away from death. It was just far too much to be able to handle.

Strange thing is, I love driving. But I guess that's one issue with anxiety and no doubt the depression we get from it too. It saps the enjoyment out of most things in life. You go from being a person who finds enjoyment in your hobbies or being with friends and planning what to do with your free time outside of work. Then you seem to become an anti social shell of your former self who spends a lot of their time planning what possible health issues could be causing all these pains. Often I fear having time to myself because it just makes my mind work over time

CBT is sincerely needed and i'm looking forward to it. I still get a bit nervous and worked up when I undergo new experiences or visit new places and such. But in all honesty, and as mentioned by so many people on here; keeping busy is invaluable when it comes to combating your over active imagination and fears when it comes to anxiety.

I will be happy to try whatever pro-active tasks they want me to practice. I'll admit the past year or so I was simply hoping pills would cure the issues or just hope that one more visit to the doctor would somehow convince me and i'd stop worrying about it. But it seems the more often I visit the doctors, the less effect their reassurances have on me. But why I ask myself? I don't have a medical degree. I think I know my body better than people who have studied medicine for 5 or more years. I've heard some people say that anxiety is selfish. In a way I think it is, you do become so self absorbed it must be hard for friends and family to cope at times I imagine. Especially if anyone sees you have a panic attack. I've seen it so many times, just a helpless look in people's eyes. Somewhere between sympathy and sheer panic at not knowing what to do.

I will be interested to see what the psychiatrist says. If it does come down to needing a short course of meds I will be happy to comply. I don't really fret about medication (apart from thinking about the future and what if I ended up needing them for a long time etc). The only time I do get worked up is if I don't feel better having taken the meds.

Still, time will tell. I need to stop fixating on the future or worrying about what I could've done in the past to not be the way I am now. I am what I am and with some help I'll hopefully become who I want to be. In the mean time i'm really grateful to everyone who's spoken to me on here.

[lsapphirel]

raggamuffin ~ Are your 3 pains on the left side of the tummy and back and just under your rib cage?

dazza ~ does your neck feels like youve put say 40kg of rice or whatever on your neck walking around for a whole day?

Do both of you have sharp shooting pains on your thigh, ones where, it put you to stop when youre walking?

[dazza]

raggamuffin ~ Are your 3 pains on the left side of the tummy and back and just under your rib cage?

dazza ~ does your neck feels like youve put say 40kg of rice or whatever on your neck walking around for a whole day?

Do both of you have sharp shooting pains on your thigh, ones where, it put you to stop when youre walking?

Neck mainly stabbing pains which CAN last for many hours, but yes... sometimes feels heavy too.
The heavy sensation will be stiff or tense muscles... making it FEEL like the head is hard to move which gives the impression of heaviness.

No pains in thighs from me. My legs & feet seem to be exceptions to anxiety effects.

[raggamuffin]

The pains vary from day to day. Today's was on the top left, closer to the chest than stomach. No back pains. Back pains occur sometimes but they're extremely rare. The recent pain felt more like muscle strain to be honest. but in all honesty my pains are so varied and occur all over my body so I needn't read too much into it. Unfortunately some of them can be quite intense so it's hard to shake off and convince myself it's just anxiety. The new pains disappeared for 4 or 5 hours. They returned for maybe 15 minutes. Disappeared again. They returned this evening for 5 minutes or so. In between times, random chest pains, arm pains. Headache, bit of ear ache. My bodies just worn out to tell the truth. Every doctor has said that the fact the pains are never focused in one area for extended periods of time thnen it's very unliekly to be anything sinister.

Ed

[lsapphirel]

I went to the Doctor and asked about the pain, they just assume its anxiety or just give me antibiotics and tells me its not serious :( Its scary how these pain are there yet you have no answers to it even though you go seek doctors help. i wonder what they learn in school sometimes.

[raggamuffin]

It is scary, but then again we don't have 5-7 years of medical training. We firmly believe we know our body and signs of perceived danger or illness better than a doctor does. If you have a look at the main generla discussion page. There is a sticky post at the top with a list of anxiety symptoms. Best to read it over once and not fixate on it. The more you read up about symptoms or illnesses the moe symptoms your body will churn out in fear of these possible illnesses. Trust me it happened to me. I started with simple chest pains. A year and a half later i'm getting every sort of pain going.

It's often hard to accept that it's "just anxiety". But we're anxious and over sensitive to the slightest ahce or pain. Then we fear the pain, and it gets worse. Adrenlaine surges through our bodies and the pains and muscle spasms etc become worse. Before we know it we could be in pain for hours or even have a full blown panic attack.

It's very tough, there's no denying. Still, I start CBT soon. I'm not expecting an instant cure. But i've had this anxiety for nearly 18 months now and i'm fed up with it. From day one with CBT i'm going to give it my all to feel better because this is no way to live and i'm not going to simply accept a way to "cope". I'm going to kick it's arse to put it bluntly :P

Ed