I started having numbness and weakness on my left side (arm and leg) about 2 weeks ago. I put it down to lifting my kids on shoulders. Googled my symptoms and everything mentioned MS and I started looking at the symptoms list and convincing myself I had those symptoms at one point in my life.
Booked an appointment with the doctor and they performed basis muscle and nerve checks and said there was nothing serious, more than likely a trapped nerve caused by lifting.
Wasn't convinced so kept googling and kept getting myself in a bind, mentally! Went through this for a week and decided to get another opinion. Different doctor performed pretty much the same tests and said the same, nothing serious. He started asking about anxiety, stress, depression and I mentioned that I was having issues sleeping, panic attacks etc. He has subsequently referred me to a psychologist to talk over my issues.
Weird thing is that my leg numbness and weakness went away that afternoon, GREAT, I thought I would have a decent night sleep, wasn't I wrong. Got twitches every now and again which I woke from and the anxiety started again!
Woke up in the morning and still no numbness or weakness which made me feel good. However was reading an anxiety forum, hoping that would help and someone was talking about MS symptoms which of course set me off again, as I thought I had those symptoms!
I'm writing this as I want to know if this is a common thing for health anxiety, or something more sinister....
Hi Robert, in answer to your question this is totally symptomatic of health anxiety with typical behaviour of googling symptoms and searching the Internet with symptoms and seaking different and second opinions, if you didn't have health anxiety you would have accepted the DR's opinion, or probably accepted your initial diagnosis of causing it by lifting your kids onto your shoulders, you may have googled the symptoms and saw MS but would have probably dismissed it.
With health anxiety Dr Google should be avoided as it cannot properly diagnose anything health related, it will by design bring up all sorts of conditions, you could have just one symptom of something amongst many symptoms and it will flag up anything that has that symptom associated with it.
We all get twitches, muscle spasms etc they are perfectly normal but when you have health anxiety you become uber concious of them.
I can assure you there is nothing sinister going on with you, your DR's have ruled that out, if they thought that there could even be a slight possibility of anything more serious they would have referred you to a specialist esoecially so as two DR's have diagnosed you, the second one sussed out what was going on and has referred you to a psychiatrist which will really help you.
Trust your Dr and don't Google symptoms and as a tip try and think what you would normally think if you hadn't got health anxiety.
Keep posting Robert and as a last comment anxiety comes with a whole host of symptoms some imagined but mainly physical including numbness, your ok.
Neil
Thanks Neil, trying to keep a positive mindset, but bloody hell its hard!