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Thank you Holls. You are all so amazing. I’m slowing coming out of the pit- and doing it for my babies! Thank you for the encouragement. ❤️❤️❤️❤️

I am glad you got checked and now know that it’s not what you thought it might be. Sometimes I think getting a test or medical opinion on the matter we worry about is so important because we can move on from the worry quicker.

I am glad to hear you are OK!

Good luck and I hope you feel better soon.

Thank you so much for your reassurance! I have my appt tomorrow and hoping maybe it’s just a saliva stone or something like that. Keeping my fingers crossed 🤞

I've had similar all over the place a lot. No clue what it is...it goes away though.

Oh my word yes. I’m 35 and I just recently got over my mouth fears. I had white spots, hard spots, pain, inflammation, etc. All normal mouth sores. Doctors and dentists both didn’t find anything wrong. Big thing to remember is it isn’t going to be a subtle little thing. What your fearing is obvious. So obvious that you know you need to get checked. Our anxiety blows up tiny little nothings into huge deals. Not to mention mouth cancer is incredibly rare. VERY certain you’re fine. Rest easy and just wait for that good visit. 🤪🙂

Hope you have a restful vacation.

ok, so very long post but I think it could help you. also I didn’t mention that I struggled with ALS, Pancreatic, and Colon C word. Cheers. ——————————————————————————— I’ve long used message boards as a way to help me cope with HA. I was a frequent poster at an old forum called Anxiety Zone but I started to make some headway on my HA just before it shutdown. For some reason I’ve been thinking back a lot lately on my journey with HA during the past two weeks. Even to this day I’m as unsure as to how it started as I am as to how it ended. Yes, I did receive counseling but I still struggled afterward. Yes, I did pick up some new hobbies but that didn’t help in the moment. Yes, I started being more social with those around me but I still broke down at the slightest twitch of my eye or unusual bowel movement. and yes.. over the past 3 years I have had very brief moments of slight panic over a weird pain or eye twitch. It’s easier now but that should never discredit how hard it is to battle HA in the moment. It’s a battle every day with your mind and body. It consumes us and takes away a part of us that we think we’ll never get back. but you can get it back. All I can do is share what I know helped me (even if it was just a little) on my journey. - Note: these might not help you it really depends on the person (minus the first). 1. No Goog... YEAH YEAH YEAH WE GET IT. 😉 2. But seriously I (with every ounce of mental fortitude I had left) got to a point where I stopped googling symptoms and it did wonders for helping me. Notice I didn’t say, “just stop googling man it’s bad” no, I got to a very dark place where I just had no more emotional energy and in that dark place and in that place I stopped. It took a few times but you really can do it. 3. I made some friends. Ok so this one was very hard for me because I’m a weird guy that struggles socially but it was huge for me. Did making friends make me stop worrying about “symptoms”? No, but what it did do was put me in a situation that when I was with friends and had symptoms I sat with it for a while. Guess what... they go away. This was awesome because over time I began to see those “symptoms” for what they are.. nothing. And most went away with time. 4. Last one I’m almost done. I sought counseling. This was hard because at the time I didn’t have much money do I had to set it aside to go and my visits were spread apart because of that. It took me 3 tries to find a good one that I connected with and 3 sessions. I had 5 total sessions over 3.5 years. It was counseling that dug up moments in my life that I hadn’t fully dealt with but had forgotten. Some of these things, in a roundabout way, connected to my HA. Now this might not be the case for all but I’d say it is for most In the end, never discount what you’re going through right now because it’s hard as hell. But you can get though it. It’s going to be hard and it might take some time. You might even visit some very dark places, but you can get though it. Even when you think it’s such an impossible a task to stop googling, just keep trying. If you mess up don’t hate yourself for it just try again. And when you succeed celebrated it. Message me if you have any questions I’m here for you.

How did the colonoscopy go? Please let us know.

Thank you both...it's driving me cray cray... I contorted myself to see if my skin looked red or anything and it doesn't. It's so weird. I get weird burning skin sensations elsewhere from time to time esp when I'm stressed. So I wonder if this is similar in nature. I'd rather it choose a more convenient spot, however. LOL. Thank you @holls and @ckelley116 for chiming in. At least I'm not alone! ❤️

I think I know what you’re talking about, and I get it too. Very irritating (no pun intended!) but always goes away after a few days.

I've had this too and I remember when you posted it Bec I thought it was just normal lol. I have it maybe two - three times a year. It has never worried me.. it's just one of those things. Hugs. You are okay. It will go away soon.

Thanks, both of you ☺️ I just keep trying to tell myself that I've had these same very mild aches and pains for 3 years now, and nothing has gotten any worse or migrated to a different part of my body or anything, and it makes much more sense for it to be related to overuse of my hand than anything sinister. I'm on a computer or mobile device probably 10-12 hours a day, and "flare-ups", such as they are, so far seem to correspond with excessively busy times at my job. It's hard, though, when it's a doctor (or 2, in my case) who put the fear into me rather than my own irrational mind. PennyPanic, I'm glad you're doing so well!

Hey everyone. I've been doing pretty well with HA lately (which is amazing, considering, you know, COVID) and have been working hard to keep it that way. But the one thing I'm struggling with is letting go of my fear that I have rheumatoid arthritis. It's not like cancer, where you can go for a scan, be told "you don't have a tumor" and know you're in the clear. Instead I've been in a constant state of "wait and see", and even though my last blood tests (in December) came back unchanged (except for my CRP levels, which were actually lower) and my rheumatologist said I could likely put it all behind me, that little voice in the back of my head keeps telling me "yeah, but you can't really go by that; a lot of people with RA come up normal in the beginning and it changes years later". I'll be fine for months, until I feel pain in a joint and think "finally, here it comes." The ball of my left foot has been hurting for about a week, and I'm getting twinges in my wrists and knuckles as well. I'm almost 40; I know aches and pains are something I will have and I need to learn to deal with that, but I'm finding it difficult with RA always in the back of my mind. And I know part of overcoming HA is dealing with the fact that there are never guarantees and learning to live with the uncertainty, but unless you present a certain way RA is by its very nature "uncertain" and that makes it difficult to reach a concrete diagnosis in a lot of cases. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I didn't diagnose myself with RA by googling - instead, when I was told I had tenosynovitis I saw that RA was often a cause and I thought "No, there's no way I have that." Until both the hand surgeon and rheumatologist he told me to see said it was likely. So that's probably what, in my mind, is making it so hard to let it go. It was easy for me to go to my GP and tell her "I think I have lung cancer" and to believe her when she listened to my lungs for 15 seconds and said "No, you don't." But RA wasn't my idea. I’m debating setting up an appointment with the rheumatologist because I don’t want to take an appointment from someone who really needs one, but I’m also worried that it’s finally presenting as joint pain and should be looked at rather than ignored. I don't know; I guess I just need to vent because my usual techniques are not working at the moment. Hope everyone's doing well out there :)

Dealing with this again...I see I originally posted it almost 2 years ago. I've dealt with it numerous times before the first post, so I'm trying to tell myself that this would have killed me by now. This started up again after a horribly stressful time. I'm ready for this symptom to go away. Any insight is appreciated.

Welcome to the forum. When I was 25 or so, which was quite some time ago, I was not feeling well so I took some extra strength Excedrin and fell asleep. I did not realized the Excedrin was loaded with caffeine. I woke up and my heart was really racing and I had a meltdown and went to the ER and my heart rate got up to 160. I had cardiac tests after that and all was OK.

I just had a follow up appointment for a root canal from a year ago. I had to go back to an endo’s office. He did a full mouth check, which I was not expecting. He said it all looked good. I hadn’t thought about my mouth for a week. All the symptoms have gone. Another crazy thing my mind created. Good news though. Anxiety free for now guys. Hope you’re all doing well.

I just left the dentist. He did the tongue and mouth check and didn’t say a word about it. He was more concerned with a crown I need to get. I figure I’m solid at this point. Had a doctor look at my tongue and mouth/throat with no red flags. A few months later now a dentist. Let the anxiety be gone!!! 😁

This is crazy. Ever since I was a kid I've done things similar to all of this. I remember doing this thing with my tongue when I was young where I had to touch my tongue to all 4 corners of the inside of my mouth in every possible combination of patterns. I've always sounded out words and counted syllables too. With me tho, it has to be in sets of 3, not 5. I also take it even further by sounding out each letter. Certain letters, such as vowels, I will put a ton of stress on them when sounding them out so that they actually make more than one sound. That way, I can make them fit into groups of 3. Think of how some people with certain accents will pronounce certain words or sounds with a lot of stress on them. For example, take the letter "A." When I put the stress on it, it actually has 3 different sounds that it makes when pronouncing it. Those 3 sounds are... A= sounds like, "aye" E= sounds like "ee" & Y= sounds like "yuh" All together, when you pronounce the letter A with stress on it, it sounds like, "aye-ee-yuh." I will literally take sentences and break them down not just in syllables, not just in letters, but in letters with all vowels stressed majorly like the example above including the letters "L, Y & W" and make them fit into groups of 3. Also since I go in 3's, I'll take a word that has 4 syllables and pronounce it in my head while forcing it to be 3 syllables by simply grouping 2 of the syllables together to make it 3 syllables. On top of that, I have to do that with every possible combination of patterns, while leaving the "best" combination (or option) for last. For example the word "pepperoni" has 4 syllables, "pe-ppe-ro-ni." However, in my head I will say, "pe-ppero-ni." Then I'll say, "pe-pper-oni." Then the last (best) option that I say is, "pepper-o-ni." The reason it's the best option is because "pepper" is already an actual word on its own so it just makes sense to me to group those syllables together to make one. Even tho it's technically not one syllable, when I say it fast enough in my head, it turns into one. For those of you that are still with me and read all of that and can understand it then I applaud you. Welcome to my brain.