Hi, i'm new to this board and have been reading through a few posts but there are so many to go through i don't have the stamina to go through them all .
I need some help and adivce, and i guess i want to hear if someone has shared the same problems as me to, as i'm at the end of my tether now and honestly don't know how much longer i can live life like this.
Anxiety is ruining (has ruined) my life. I first became ill when i was 15. I woke up one morning and my vision had become distorted, it was bizarre, and it is a symptom i have had every day since. Several other physical symptoms started kicking in shortly afterwards, and the doctors don't really know what was happening, they just diagnosed me with M.E/CFS. So that's what we thought i had.
My panic attacks first started when i first became unwell. I was forever anxious and frightened of the way i was feeling physically, i had not idea of what was happening to me, i just completely lost control and the panic attacks, over the passing months got worse and worse, until one day i shut myself away from the world and i didn't leave my house for almost 4yrs!!! Bad move i know, but it's what i did.
Gradually over the past two years i began to get my life back on track. I started riding (horses) again, socializing and i even took my driving test and started driving!! I finally started thinking this was the end of everything, in fact i didn't even have a panic attack for almost a year! (I would just like to point out that even though i didn't have a panic attack my physical symptoms, including my poor vision, were still very much there.) Then things went horribly wrong. My gran booked a trip to Rome for myself and my cousin as a gift for my progress. A few months before my panic attacks came back out of the blue, then the morning i woke to go away i woke with the most horrendous glandular fever which my body had contracted all by itself over night. I was very unwell, but i got up and went to the airport anyway. I got there and felt very very strange, then i lost the entire use of the left hand side of my body, like i was having a stroke and i blacked out. Needless to say it was a HORRIFIC panic attack, and i've never been right since. After a few weeks i started getting things back on track, but the same thing happened again recently. I have exams coming up (which i have now had to cancel because i am now far too unwell to sit them) and once again, the other morning i woke up with that mysterious glandular fever and i now don't want to leave the house again!!!
I can't cope any longer, agoraphobia is destroying me, i don't feel comfortable anywhere unless its my home!! I'm trying to get my life back on track but subconciously my mind is fighting against me.
Firstly i'm intersted in knowing if anyone else has had these constant 24hr physical symptoms, espeically the visual disturbances. And i'd also like to know if anyone else has experienced this unusual dramtic set back where your body literally makes you VERY ill??
I'd just like to know i'm not alone?!