Hi,
Im a 17 year old girl. Recently I've been generally feeling very unwell, weak and tired. I've started getting so many physical symptoms and I've never experienced anything like this ever before, it's just so scary and so new to me. I went to the GP and two doctors have told me that my symptoms sound like anxiety/depression but I didn’t explain everything in detail. They just checked my heart rate and blood pressure and it was just a little high but it was fine. I also had a blood test done and everything was normal, just my iron and calcium levels were slightly low but that wouldn't really affect me or make me ill.
I don’t know exactly what’s going on or why. I’m just really worried and I want to know for sure what is happening and if it’s all psychological and if anyone has experienced anything similar. I’ve described everything that’s been happening in detail below and listed all my symptoms.
Here's a list of the symptoms I've noticed when it started happening:
-Feeling faint, at times
-Heart pounding and beating fast
-Can't breathe properly, feels like my nose is blocked and my breathing is deeper. I feel short of breath when just doing normal things.
-Throat feels tighter and like closed up. It's hard to swallow food sometimes.
-Heavy chest feeling, and sometimes hurts
-Feel out of balance, unreal and just very different, spaced out/?
-Constant headache/head pressure, feels tight on the temples. Weird head feelings, at times feels worse, louder talking or noises feels really uncomfortable.
-Feeling hot or cold, sometimes both
-Neck ache/pain and stiffness
-Sore tense muscles in whole body
-Random pains/aches in body that come and go
-Feel quite numb to pain
-Feel sick, at times
-Feel shaky inside at times
-Feel like I can't feel my temperature properly
-Feel like I can't smell properly, sense of smell not as strong
-I can't taste food as well as usual
-When I cough, my stomach feels sore and uncomfortable inside.
-Low appetite
-Sleeping problems/Sleep deprived?/Feel unrefreshed
-Digestive problems- constipation, bloating, indigestion
My life became worse in May. Since then, everyday, I've been constantly feeling so uncomfortable, weak, tired and different. I feel like I can't breathe proeprly because my nose feels blocked but not as strong as when you get a cold/flu, and I can't take a deep breath I feel like my lungs are not filling with enough air. I feel short of breath when walking quickly or doing normal things.
I just feel so different, I don’t know how to explain it. Like my perspective of reality has changed, it feels weird. It’s hard to describe but It just doesn’t feel real a lot of the time. I feel so different physically like I'm not engaged properly with things. I feel unstable and sometimes It’s worse like I feel really strange like I feel out of balance, disconnected and just not with it. It’s worse especially when I’m around people but still happens at times when I’m alone.
My whole body also hurts and feels achy all the time. I feel stiff and tense, especially my neck, sometimes it my neck hurts a lot, and I feel the pain it's spread to my shoulders and upper back and more recently my lower back. My whole body/skin is just numb and I feel like I can’t feel myself properly, all my senses properly and everything is sensitive.
Sometimes, I've had these moments where all of a sudden I feel much weaker and exhausted, I feel faint, I feel hot and cold at the same time alot or just hot or colder than it actually is. I start shaking, my heart is beating fast and like it's working much harder, and I have a really bad constant pressure and pain in my head. I just felt like my brain was going to shut down, it feels really scary when it happens, I feel like something bad is going to happen or I'm going to die. I feel like I'm losing my mind or something. It lasts for like a couple minutes to a bit longer and eventually It calms down and I feel better. It's happened like 4 or 5 times within just over 2 weeks.
I didn’t know what’s happening and it first started when I was just at home, for example I was just watching TV or making a smoothie. I wasn’t really worrying about anything but as soon it happened I started worrying. It’s not always the same, sometimes it’s worse than other times and I don't know how I got through it, It's so horrible and I just tried to take deep breaths and kept telling myself everything will be okay and I pray that nothing really bad is going to happen or I'm going to faint. I'm not sure if this was a panic attack? I feel like it could have been more severe for it to be, like maybe it was leading to one but it didn't go into a full blown panic attack. I’m really not sure.
Before all this started happening, the past week or so the first thing that happened is my body started to become stiff and my muscles started hurting and aching.
After those 2-3 weeks, within the next 3 weeks it all lessened a bit. Like I didn't get those 'moments', at least not as bad where I experienced all of those symptoms. I've still had a couple moments but it wasn't as severe as the other times or I didn’t get all the symptoms as I did at first, like just my heart pounding and feeling hot.
One of the days, I went out for a walk to the local grocery shop and I was fine most of the time but then suddenly I started feeling so faint and exhausted and everything felt so different.
I just kept worrying all the time about fainting or feeling worse again. I went to A&E & told them but they didn’t help at all. I felt fine until I sat down in the waiting room and all of a sudden I just felt anxious, felt so faint, restless, shaky and hot and my hands were a bit sweaty. I tried so hard to keep calm but I was unable to relax. I thought I was going to pass out but I tried to distract myself going on my phone and listening to music, It wasn’t helping much I was still feeling unwell. I was so close to leaving but they called me and throughout the whole process I felt worried and tense and I felt like my voice was shaky.
Since then I’m just so much more worried and scared to go out. I tried to avoid going out but there were times where I couldn’t avoid going and had to go such as going out to eat with family: 10 minutes before I left, my heart started beating fast, I felt hot and unwell and panicky. I felt so faint and unsteady, I tried to just calm myself and tell myself nothing will happen, and I had to just get ready and go. On the way in the car, I just felt so fearful for no reason and then eventually I felt calmer.
Then one day after eating dinner I was just resting and all of a sudden I felt pulsations in my arm that are painful and it was really strange and worrying. I had sharp pains randomly from elbow going down. My fingers were weak and stiff, and I had this sort of tingling pain. My right arm felt much weaker and painful. When I woke up, left arm was hurting and my left leg starts hurting below the knee and it feels like it's swollen, weak, achy, tingling sharp pain, numb, it feels like it's cold inside like a cooling effect. The throbbing feeling in my arm never happened again since.
Since then, sometimes my arms or legs really hurt, my arms feel heavy and aching, random sharp pains come and go that lasts for a few seconds or more. I get random pains in unusual places like my underarms, groin area, hand and fingers. My neck pain sometimes gets worse and hurts alot.
I feel slow, hot, tired and weak. The random pains that come and go happen at any time and are not unbearable but it’s noticeable. I get chest pains that aren’t so intense but it bothers me, also pain towards the left side of my chest. I get random weakness like on arms or legs when resting or hurts when sleeping on my side or when there’s pressure like if I’m holding something or just put weight on it.
After like a few weeks, I had to go to a family gathering and I was fine at first but soon started feeling more unwell and different, when it came to eating lunch there were so many people at the table and I started feeling hot and a bit faint and I just felt so strange.
Then a few weeks later, I felt like I didn’t get random pains as often as before. But then I had to go to a wedding and I was fine for an hour or two except a headache until I had to eat and started feeling really faint, unreal and disconnected and restless but I just went throught it till it went away.
Couple weeks later went to the dentist, throughout it nothing so bad happened physically and I was fine and on the way home, I was feeling unwell and faint, but my dad stopped to go to the shop and I had to go with him, so I went and i was okay for a couple mins but then it came back again and I just felt so tired, don’t feel like myself, feel like I can faint anytime, feel so unreal, I just tried to ignore it and stay calm and carry on. I had to pay and I felt so slow like I can’t focus or think properly.
I only described some examples of when I felt worse. But since then I haven’t been out and I don’t want to go out. I’m always worrying at the back of my mind when I feel fine, some symptoms I’m constantly feeling but it’s bearable and some symptoms come and go or become worse, and when I get those moments, it eventually passes.
Also for the past 2 weeks now, I feel I've been having digestive problems. Sometimes I feel nauseous but it’s a different type of sick feeling but i've never thrown up or anything. I keep getting constipation, abdominal pain, lower back pain/ache, constant stomach pain and discomfort, stomach feels sore and irritated especially when coughing, I feel like food doesn't digest properly or sometimes there’s like a lot of stomach acid. I get chest pains or heaviness, I’m bloated all the time, It’s hard to go toilet and stomach still hurts after I've gone to the toilet. I just feel like food is stuck down my throat sometimes, it’s hard to swallow food, I just can't eat as much I would like and I just have a low appetite.
It’s been 3 months and I’m just sick and tired of feeling like this. All these physical things are making me feel so paralysed at times and I feel it’s taking over my life. I've taken painkillers like paracetomal and ibuprofen but it doesn't seem to help much. It’s affecting me everyday and I just don’t feel normal anymore.
I don’t know how I’ve managed to get through every single day and all those situations so far. I can’t stop worrying especially about my health and I can’t stop thinking so much about even the most random thoughts that come up.
I’m just carrying on getting through everyday as normal like it’s all fine but everything is just so different. I’m just at home all the time now and I try to distract myself by watching TV, movies, talking to people online, playing games or on the computer. I know it could be more severe and people have it worse, but I feel like it’s going to become worse if it keeps happening.
I don’t know what I’m doing sometimes, I just feel so different and everything around me does. I feel so hopeless and helpless right now and I feel like I’m getting used to it and it’s like I don’t want to get out of it but I really do. I don’t know if its stress that’s causing this, I can’t tell If I am because I don’t really have an obvious reason to feel stressed and nothing really bad happened. I’m just so tired mentally and physically, my body is tired and weak and I don’t have the strength or energy to do anything, I have no motivation and I feel like I’m stuck like this forever. My sleep is messed up and it has been for over a year, I've tried to fix it, I give myself enough hours of sleep yet I’m always so tired when I wake up and throughout the day, like I’m always getting poor quality sleep.
I feel like something is really wrong with me. All these physical symptoms feel so real. I feel I might have a neurological disorder or something even though the blood test was fine. I feel like I need more tests just to make sure it’s not a medical problem or something, how do they know for sure its anxiety or a mental health problem? If it’s anxiety, can it really make you feel this ill? I just suffer in pain and discomfort all the time and I don’t wanna continue to live like this anymore. I don’t know what to do. Please help. How do I get rid of all of this completely and feel normal and well ASAP?
Sorry for such a long post, I appreciate any help. Thank you in advance.