MM81

I’m also experiencing this on my right side. Happening since June. I’m going to see a sports medicine guy about it next week. It wanders between feeling like it is in my organs and then on my skin. Wanders around and drives me insane and also makes me miserable. Regular doc is not concerned, says muscular/pinched nerve. The worst pain tends to settle around a recent surgical scar. I am so ready to be done after the year of bizarro sensations I’ve had. SO DONE.

I’ve been experiencing the same thing off and on for months. The anxiety sufferer’s heightened nervous system can do some really bizarre things.

I kicked off my epic case of health anxiety with an ER trip for a suspected stroke. No stroke, but I’ve had many of the symptoms you mention. As mentioned above your symptoms are there. You’re not making them up. Your brain and wonky nerves are just super sensitive. That was 3 mos ago and I’m only now noticing the odd skin sensations have nearly vanished after tons of work on the way I handle my thought / letting my body finally dump the constant fight or flight stuff.

Similar feelings for me at my worst.

After all of my neuro fun, I was referred to physical therapy. After a rough go last week, the PT does seem to finally be working to calm down my sciatic nerve mess. Still ups and downs with it, but overall I’m much better. My first HA thing was ALS, then I settled on MS. In the waiting room at the PT place, there are tons of advertisements for MS Yoga, general other MS pamphlets, etc. My clear mind knows that it is very logical to have those posters and pamphlets because people with MS can definitely benefit from PT. My HA side, if I let it run, tells me that even though I have no evidence of MS through plenty of testing, my neuro has referred me to PT because he secretly knows I do have MS and doesn’t want to deal with me anymore. Fortunately I’m able to beat back the HA monster and even laugh at it most of the time.

Mine started with parts of my body going somewhat numb too about three months ago in the midst of a very major anxiety attack like I mentioned. Never had anything remotely like this until then. I have seen other posts from people online who have the skin and clothing contact burning like fire thing too. They seem to lack the anxiety component. I’ve been putting baby oil on my skin to try to reduce friction, but nothing works all that great. Im just hoping it goes away someday because it really sucks.

I’m in the burning skin club myself. It is horrendous. Feels like a sunburn. The kicker is, it mostly only bothers me when there is fabric rubbing against my skin. I can’t just go around in my underwear so I have to tough it out. Other bizzare thing: There are places on my body (lower back/left hip region) where, If I touch them, the skin feels nearly numb, but if another person touches the same areas, I have normal sensation. Can you imagine explaining that to a doctor? I’ve posted before that I am on the mend from an incredible anxiety period, but the stupid burning skin thing will not leave me. As a result, the burning fans my anxiety and keeps feeding itself. My main anxious thought is not that it’s caused by some horrific disease; but that this crazy feeling will never leave me. Left shin/top of left foot/left thigh are bad enough, but it also likes to live on my left forearm/bicep/shoulder/neck. Been through the whole neuro workup. The neuro concluded that I have some sort of sciatic nerve impingement thing going on, for which I am now receiving PT. It kind of helps, but I’m not really sure if I am progressing any more. The neuro basically addressed my left arm issue with “not sure what’s going on there, but it’s likely anxiety.” Believe me, I want to believe it’s all anxiety and that it will resolve, by my goodness that’s hard. The mysterious nature of the nervous system is both scary and incredibly amazing. Anyway, after having a string of very dark days again, and after trying very hard in taking other steps (CBT, mindfulness, no caffeine, better diet, regular exercise, stretching) I may be ready to try some anxiety medication to try to get my brain chemistry to a better place. I know the anxiety chemicals can hang on for a very long time and I’m not helping myself by continuing to have flare ups. Hoping medication may give my body and mind a rest to allow proper healing. I really wanted to avoid drugs, but I feel I’ve finally reached rock bottom.

That is awful. Your mom is definitely not helping. Yikes. In the mix of my horrendous variable degrees of burning leg/arm thing that will not freaking leave (leg attributed to possible sciatica after consulting a neuro, arm is a mystery), I have a thing where when I am just about to fall asleep my chest locks up and I feel like I can’t breathe. Then I jolt to wake up, almost gasping with the thought that I’m going to die in my sleep. I know it’s anxiety and I can control it many times with my mindfulness techniques but every once in a while like last night I let it take more control of me than I should. It was a bad weekend with my burning feelings so I was primed for a breathing thing while trying to go to sleep because my brain figured, “why not”? I don’t have the imagined mucus angle though. That would put me over the edge. I walk a tight line where I know most of this stuff is anxiety or at worst a mild thing that is not going to kill me, but it’s so hard to not let myself get sucked in sometimes.

You didn’t literally give yourself cancer :-). And the risk generated by a few x-rays, necessary or not, is very minor. You mention you avoid dental X-rays. So if you think about it, your lifetime risk should be lower than most people, which should add even less weight to the three you received. As part of my recent HA, I had a brief window of time where I became extremely concerned about radiation I’ve encountered for a few procedures myself. You’re not an idiot. Just trapped in the claws of the anxiety beast. Not sure if this is a no-no to share links here (so slap me if needed) and I am also wanting to be careful not to induce others to obsess over this. But, when I went through similar fears, I found a scientific study-based website that allows you to enter some figures which will show you how small your risk has been increased. It helped me chill out. http://www.xrayrisk.com/calculator/calculator-normal-studies.php

You’re weird! But don’t worry. We all are. I’ve been having the same sort of thing on my left side AFTER having hand and foot (and face) issues on my right side. I know it’s super creepy and terrible, but the odds are greater that it’s anxiety than the odds of it being a neuro nasty. In my case, after lots of time with a neurologist ruling out all sorts of things the likely cause is my intense anxiety that was already up and running before I somehow gave myself sciatica on the left side. I double-whammied myself after my nerves were already turned up to 11. My anxiety baseline has come WAY down over the past several weeks through CBT, mindfulness and reminding myself that much smarter people than me have given me a thorough review. There is no shame in consulting a doctor to reasonably rule the scary stuff out. That’s what worked for me. I needed to establish a baseline and accept it as FACT that there is not anything completely awful going on. Since then, I’ve been much more successful (definitely not 100% yet) in gaining control over the beast of HA. Good luck to you, friend.

I have had something similar going on since the beginning of March. I had both legs get a little oddly numb. Right leg went back to normal fast, but left leg up to the top of my butt developed a mix of severe pain in upper buttock while sitting, weird occasional numbness around my left groin area (horrifying), along with my leg feeling slightly numb and also burning all the way down the front of my leg to the top of my foot. No obvious weakness, just incredible discomfort. Bad enough that clothing rubbing against the front of my leg felt like I had a sunburn. Unfortunately, it decided to show up right as I was in the middle of the worst anxiety of my life which started about a month earlier after watching a friend nearly die mid sentence as he was talking to me. Between that and a weird (and ultimately benign) health mystery in 2018 I was primed for my first ever bout of severe health anxiety. This made me sure I had MS, so it really fanned the flames so to speak. I’ve had various tests through a neurologist and he doesn’t think I have anything scary, MS or otherwise. I’ve had my brain looked at (when my anxiety meltdown started in early February, right side of my face went numb so I went to the ER and they looked for strokes, tumors or MS lesions and found nothing) and finally my neuro recently referred me for a lumbar MRI. Very minor disc bulge in L4-L5 and S1. I think I have a combo of minor lumbar stuff along with something like piriformis syndrome (screwed up butt muscle pushing on the sciatic nerve). Ended up referring me to physical therapy last week and that has helped a TON after only two visits (and religiously doing the stretches he gave me along with adjusting my atrocious desk posture) I am probably 65% better which has led me to become probably 90% better mentally. I think in my case my nerves were so hypersensitive due to anxiety (I was having all of the other typical random tingles and buzzes and odd sensations and was a general physically tense mess) that they made my very real sciatica feel even worse because I simply couldn’t stop obsessing over the sensations. Hang in there. I know from experience that sciatica can be horrifying - especially if you’ve never experienced it and if you’re more anxiety prone. Also, this place is wonderful. What a major help as I’ve worked through beating back the monster that is my health anxiety.

This is a wonderful post. Thanks for keeping us updated. I needed to see something like this today as I fight constantly to keep from melting down from some sensations I just can’t get rid of. Ill start a thread soon to share. Health anxiety is a complete monster and I’m working on taming it. I’m so glad I found this place. Good luck on your continued progress.