parkbenchpoet
03-22-2013, 08:10 PM
Hi all,
Just looking for a bit of help or advice. I believe I may be suffering from health related anxiety and really wanted to talk to some people to see if what I am experiencing is anxiety. Apologies in advance for the lengthy post!
It started about 3 months ago. I was previously perfectly fine health wise. I only really visited the doctor when I absolutely had to, and felt perfectly fine within myself.
Then all of a sudden when I was lying in bed trying to sleep I started experiencing a pounding, racing heartbeat. I had tingles in my jaw, tightness and pain in my chest, numbness in my fingers and it felt like my heart was beating on my tongue. In that moment I was filled with intense dread and was certain I was having a heart attack. The pain went away, and I phoned NHS direct as I had never experienced anything like that before. They told me to go to hospital, which I did. They asked me if I had been taking drugs as I was very tachycardic and my blood pressure was 160/107.
They didn't find anything wrong with me, but over the next few weeks I was filled with the worst feelings of dread I've ever felt. The tightness in my chest continued, I was experiencing shortness of breath all the time, I spent hours a day on google looking up heart diseases and stories of people who had had heart attacks at a young age (I am 23.) I lay awake every night not able to get to sleep because I was convinced I wasn't going to wake up, and I was going to have a heart attack or a stroke in my sleep. I used to have a normal sleeping pattern and never woke up in the night, but I was finding that when I eventually got to sleep I was waking up numerous times in the night. It got so bad I had to start taking sleeping tablets. I went to the doctors and had blood tests, chest X-rays and ECGs but all came back fine.
In the end I was so convinced I had something wrong with my heart that I went to a private hospital and paid £500 to have some tests done which found I had pericarditis which is an inflammation of the lining of the heart.
That diagnosis was approximately 1 month ago, but my symptoms have continued, although I am now experiencing other symptoms such as tingling, creeping pins and needles feelings in my scalp, the sense that my head is really heavy, numb and heavy hands, and weird feelings in my feet that feel as though a heater have momentarily been placed on them. I feel generally 'not right' although everything I google leads me to believe I have anxiety. So I am worrying that I have anxiety, but because I keep googling all my symptoms and worrying about it, it's making the anxiety worse, which is turn causing me to believe I have something desperately wrong with me.
Lately things have been getting a lot worse, as I have had a few ongoing illnesses for a while that I pushed to the back of my mind thinking I had IBS or something, but now I'm really worried that I have uterine/ovarian cancer as I have been experiencing, abnormal bleeding for 3 weeks straight as well as all the symptoms (which I realised when looking up abnormal bleeding.) I also suffer from Polycystic ovaries so I am worried one of these cycsts has turned cancerous. I found that a percentage of people with these cancers also experience pounding heart/palpitations so I am worrying that a) what I thought was anxiety was actually caused by cancer and b) It's not actually cancer but in fact my anxiety is getting worse.
I am so stressed by all of this because until this all happened a few months ago I was completely fine, and now it seems my whole life has turned upside down.
This has been so detrimental to my health, that I've started to feel quite depressed. (I previously suffered from depression 7 years ago, and overdosed, but I have been fine for 7 years with no more signs of depression.) My doctors and hospital are not very good and have not been taking me seriously as I do not fit the bracket of those typically at risk of having something wrong with them. I feel like they think I'm making everything up and are palming me off with excuses.
Now because I'm worrying so much about everything, I'm even incredibly anxious about being home alone. I used to be very independent, but tonight I have been home alone as my partner has gone away, and I have been jumping at little noises all night. My cats were fighting and I even convinced myself that there was a fox in the house?? Now I'm wide awake at 2am writing this because I can't sleep because I'm worrying about things.
I do have a situation with money/debt that I am stressed about but I didn't think it was worrying me this much to cause all this as generally I am quite a worry-free person.
I'm so sorry about how long this is, but I just want to know if anyone thinks I do actually have anything to worry about with my health, or if you think what Im suffering with is anxiety. It's just a never ending cycle going round and round in my head and I am actually starting to think I'm going crazy and need therapy or something!!
Thank you for reading!!
Just looking for a bit of help or advice. I believe I may be suffering from health related anxiety and really wanted to talk to some people to see if what I am experiencing is anxiety. Apologies in advance for the lengthy post!
It started about 3 months ago. I was previously perfectly fine health wise. I only really visited the doctor when I absolutely had to, and felt perfectly fine within myself.
Then all of a sudden when I was lying in bed trying to sleep I started experiencing a pounding, racing heartbeat. I had tingles in my jaw, tightness and pain in my chest, numbness in my fingers and it felt like my heart was beating on my tongue. In that moment I was filled with intense dread and was certain I was having a heart attack. The pain went away, and I phoned NHS direct as I had never experienced anything like that before. They told me to go to hospital, which I did. They asked me if I had been taking drugs as I was very tachycardic and my blood pressure was 160/107.
They didn't find anything wrong with me, but over the next few weeks I was filled with the worst feelings of dread I've ever felt. The tightness in my chest continued, I was experiencing shortness of breath all the time, I spent hours a day on google looking up heart diseases and stories of people who had had heart attacks at a young age (I am 23.) I lay awake every night not able to get to sleep because I was convinced I wasn't going to wake up, and I was going to have a heart attack or a stroke in my sleep. I used to have a normal sleeping pattern and never woke up in the night, but I was finding that when I eventually got to sleep I was waking up numerous times in the night. It got so bad I had to start taking sleeping tablets. I went to the doctors and had blood tests, chest X-rays and ECGs but all came back fine.
In the end I was so convinced I had something wrong with my heart that I went to a private hospital and paid £500 to have some tests done which found I had pericarditis which is an inflammation of the lining of the heart.
That diagnosis was approximately 1 month ago, but my symptoms have continued, although I am now experiencing other symptoms such as tingling, creeping pins and needles feelings in my scalp, the sense that my head is really heavy, numb and heavy hands, and weird feelings in my feet that feel as though a heater have momentarily been placed on them. I feel generally 'not right' although everything I google leads me to believe I have anxiety. So I am worrying that I have anxiety, but because I keep googling all my symptoms and worrying about it, it's making the anxiety worse, which is turn causing me to believe I have something desperately wrong with me.
Lately things have been getting a lot worse, as I have had a few ongoing illnesses for a while that I pushed to the back of my mind thinking I had IBS or something, but now I'm really worried that I have uterine/ovarian cancer as I have been experiencing, abnormal bleeding for 3 weeks straight as well as all the symptoms (which I realised when looking up abnormal bleeding.) I also suffer from Polycystic ovaries so I am worried one of these cycsts has turned cancerous. I found that a percentage of people with these cancers also experience pounding heart/palpitations so I am worrying that a) what I thought was anxiety was actually caused by cancer and b) It's not actually cancer but in fact my anxiety is getting worse.
I am so stressed by all of this because until this all happened a few months ago I was completely fine, and now it seems my whole life has turned upside down.
This has been so detrimental to my health, that I've started to feel quite depressed. (I previously suffered from depression 7 years ago, and overdosed, but I have been fine for 7 years with no more signs of depression.) My doctors and hospital are not very good and have not been taking me seriously as I do not fit the bracket of those typically at risk of having something wrong with them. I feel like they think I'm making everything up and are palming me off with excuses.
Now because I'm worrying so much about everything, I'm even incredibly anxious about being home alone. I used to be very independent, but tonight I have been home alone as my partner has gone away, and I have been jumping at little noises all night. My cats were fighting and I even convinced myself that there was a fox in the house?? Now I'm wide awake at 2am writing this because I can't sleep because I'm worrying about things.
I do have a situation with money/debt that I am stressed about but I didn't think it was worrying me this much to cause all this as generally I am quite a worry-free person.
I'm so sorry about how long this is, but I just want to know if anyone thinks I do actually have anything to worry about with my health, or if you think what Im suffering with is anxiety. It's just a never ending cycle going round and round in my head and I am actually starting to think I'm going crazy and need therapy or something!!
Thank you for reading!!