Hi everyone. I have had panic disorder and severe health anxiety since I was about 13 when I had my first "pot induced panic attack”. I was almost able to overcome it by my teenage social life that was filled with lots of partying and lots of women "girls really". I would still have the occasional attack, sometimes the attacks will have stroke like symptoms such as forgetting how to swallow food (sometimes for a month or two) I am now 33 and I have constant worry about my health. About 3 years ago it began to get really bad again. I think it was because an older friend of mine about 50 or so who was a hunting buddy went to the hospital because of a pain in his leg a couple tests later he had terminal cancer and two weeks later he was dead. I didn’t go full blown panic at the time but I went to my dr. for a physical about a month later ( this was a new dr. because my last one was a joke... I had an inflamed prostate he said I had the clap, I have psoriasis he said I had scabies) any way the dry heard something in my neck and sent me for an ultrasound. All came back fine but needless to say it scared the s!@# out of me. I wasn’t taking care of myself properly at the time, I didn’t drink or do drugs but I lived on fast food, mnt dew and red bull (I work a lot and it kept me going). I had been a gym rat from 25-28 and decided to get back into shape. First day at the gym and I got heart palps that lasted for weeks before I was able to get back into my doctor. I was full blown panic 24/7 and the only one at the office who could see me was the RN. She tried to tell me about a safe place to go in my head, I explained that my palps were real and I have been dealing with this disorder for 20 years and I had tried her tactic already. My bp was low 70/40 and that fueled the fire of panic in me. She told me that I had ADD and gave me a perc of buspar. I took it for about two months and one morning I woke up feeling like a zombie I diddnt know where I was or what I was doing but I remember it all very well. I sat on the edge of my bed, took hold of my pistol and put it in my mouth. I sat like this for a minute or so. The alarm clock went off and snapped me out of whatever was happening. I flushed the buspar and went outside to do yard work. Please take note I DO NOT WANT TO DIE! I found a cardiologist who gave me a halter monitor, heart ultrasound and a stress test. He found the palps and explained that dehydration mixed with cigarettes and caffeine was the cause. I killed all caffeine and started drinking about 1.5 liter of water per day. The palps went away but the paranoia remained, I hurt my knee and since it took 5 months to heal I thought I had some cancer, and I still have trouble trusting doctors because my first one was a quack.
On Christmas this year my dog fell ill and we had to put him down. I had never cried so hard in my life. Ever. About two weeks later I developed a lump in my throat that I could not swallow so what did I do? The worst thing any of us can do I GOOGLED IT! Now I was freaking out thinking I had thyroid cancer. I went to see my doc who said I had reflux and put me on Prilosec and also gave me some Xanax ( I don’t like mind altering pills because the weird feeling puts me further into panic mode) I saw an ENT who scoped me and called it LPR= reflux. It took about 2 months of Prilosec to make the lump go away. During this time I was barely making it through work and it was hard for me to leave the house. Became very sedentary staying in bed the evenings and the weekends I would feel a tingle in my upper left shoulder blade as well as other "weird feelings". I was dizzy, confused, tired and I didn’t know why. I looked up the side effects of Prilosec and it listed these symptoms minus the back tingling. I went off it cold turkey and that my friends was a bad idea. The medicine had been blocking acid for so long my body decided to make up for lost time and produced more acid than ever. It felt like my appendix was going to burst and my stool was liquid for about three weeks SO MUCH PAIN. I decided to find a new doctor who explained to me what happened. RX disputes this explanation of hyper acid secretion, but the doctor explained that if they admitted it they would be sued and let’s face it, it’s all about the money with these companies. He put me on an h2 blocker ( Pepcid ) and I slowly came off it. my stomach became normal and I decided I was going to get out of my funk so I hit the gym very slowly. I progressed for about 3 weeks and felt much better I was able to go out I would sometimes have a drink or two to curb the panic but I was doing it. I was lying in bed may 8th and I sat up with my arms braced behind me I felt something weird on my right arm I looked over and saw a large vein or something about an inch long sticking out of my upper bicep/ lower shoulder. Scared to death I called for my wife to take a look. Before she got there I touched it and it went away. She called the on call doc and I took a Xanax and went to sleep. The doc responded the next day and said to go to the hospital in case it was a clot....I’m sure you all know how I was feeling at this point..Lol. We went to OSU med center and they took an x-ray of my chest and an EKG, all came out normal and since I couldn’t make it happen again they sent me home. about two days later while getting dressed for work I pushed up my sleeve on my left arm and a smaller version of the lump/vein appeared on my for arm. I showed my wife this time before I touched it and called the doc back. He ordered a Doppler on the left arm that came back fine. He said if there was a clot it was superficial and if it burst it would just leave a large bruise. This did not comfort me. I became obsessed with the veins in my arms constantly wondering why they were bluer than I perceived to be normal or larger. I think there may be more of them so guess what I did? You guessed it I goggled it and they said????????????????????????????? You guessed it the answer they give for everything cancer . I began to calm down about this after about a month and needless to say I was terrified to go back to the gym. Then just last week I was squatting down at work and I felt a strange sensation in my left leg. I looked down at it and there was a lump on my left leg on the right side of my shin at first I thought it was a bug bite but after inspecting it I realized that if I took pressure off of it the lump went away. Pressure on my foot and its back. I took a pic and sent it to the doc. I said to come in so he could check it out. He said it wasn’t a clot yet he had not seen anything like it before. We bounced ideas off each other for a minute and realized it was exactly where an old psoriasis patch used to be. So he determined that it must me a result of inflammation from the psoriasis and all of it could be the result of psoriatic arthritis. He set up a referral to a rumatoligist (if you haven’t figured it out by now I am not the best speller) and he said that I shouldn’t worry about the lump........YEAH OK BUDDY. These last few days I’m finding myself not leaving my house outside of work and falling back into my hole. I can’t tell you how tired I am of feeling this way all the time it just won’t stop god I wish it would stop. It feels like I’ve lost the last 3 years and I’m only getting older and weaker. I wear a good mask at work through and I’m one of the funniest people you'll meet. Sorry it was such a long hello every one.
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