Ironman

Hello Orchidman, It sounds like derealization/deperssonalization - it just means the mind is racing faster than the body can handle. The cold sweats can be from trhe anxiety, too. It is also the panic attack that pulls us out of sleep. My heartbeat can actually race at that point, too. Welcome to the site!

Anxiety can play games with nerves. Everyone has different symptoms. I can shake and have nausea. I can't eat if i have a major panic or anxiety attack. I wouldn't bother with an MRI, though. That's a stretch. Have you seen a doc or therapist?

If there is a pattern of these not developing, then this would not be any diferent.

Each person is different, but it was about a week. It was only worse when I was first on the med to figure out how much I needed to be on. You normally start at a certain level and steadily go up.

Over the years... Celexa Paxil/Paroxetine - it worked, but I gained weight Cymbalta/Duloxetine - my current one

The longer term meds, yes. Xanax didn't work very well for me, no.

It's lack of sleep - I have been getting the headaches and fogginess, too. I get about that much sleep; it's not enough. Caffeine and ibuprofen only gets you so far - rest is best, though.

Xanax is like a short-term med, to me at least. It doesn't maintain like other meds,

It sounds like you are internalizing all of the above stress and it's causing more distress. You need to take a deep breath and step back to see what is really going on. WIth anxiety, we have the ability to scare ourselves pretty easily - it keeps the anxiety going in a vicious cycle.

To filter is to determine what you need to worry about versus who you can let go. Your stomach issues wouldn't change overnight. You could get another scan, but what good would it do if you turned around and had another fear about it. My bet is that you are worried about your stomach and that worry is actually causing the symptoms - thus you are reinforcing the nerves that cause the stress that cause the stomach issues. You have to find out what is triggering the stress. It could even be reaction to an outside event where you internalize and it causes distress. The key is the mind. I have to work on this myself, so I know the deal. Positive self-talk.....and maybe an antacid.

Anxiety all starts in the mind. The symptoms you are having are anxiety and are just physically moving around - the Nexium probably moved the acidity of heartburn to the stomach. Nausea is my #1 anxiety issue. When I am anxious, I am nauseous and it's all fueled by the mind. How you think determines how you feel - the first thing I learned about anxiety. You have to put a filter on what you can worry about and let the other stuff go. You have tests that show there is nothing wrong, yet you autmotatically keep saying pancreatic cancer. It wouldn't just pop up at once.

Stress causes anxiety....and the other way around too. You broke the cycle by getting rest!

That's the hypervigilance and being mentally overloaded. The brain always runs faster than the physical body can. You have to slow down that brain CPU so that your body can catch up. You may even derealize (get spacey feelings), but that is a big issue with SAers.

Stress and fatigue will add to it because you will feel like you missed something, and then you worry about that. Something is going to slide. That is why we have to learn to close up the zone on what to worry about and let the other stuff go. It's taken a lot of work for me to do this, but it's working so far. We're all human lol.

This is more common than you think. If you are anxious, you are hypervigilant and are subconsciously trying to remember too much at once. We take in more information, so naturally something out of the worry zone can get pushed aside. Even master multitaskers can only handle so much at once.

It would take CBT - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy to really overcome a lot the anxiety. I finally reduced my Cymbalta this spring by 1/3....and lost 26 pounds.

CT scans aren't that bad. I felt like being slid into a machine "line by line" like a 1980s dot matrix printer. My head really got scanned lol. They didn't find the stroke a doctor thought I had.

I can't find anything about food poisoning. It just says sour taste and that the sugar extends life. I don't think one swig would hospitalize you, though.

It's about what you focus on. 🙂

I would talk to your doctor. Did you have your tests done? A higher white blood cell count means what the doctor said. There is something the body is trying to fight off. Anxiety is also draining, so that has to be monitored too.

It's probably doing that because you are paying attention to it. We shouldn't need to focus on automatic stuff.

That would sound more like appendix. Is it muscular?

I am not sure if I have had exactly what you have had. I remember feeling like my ribs were stuck to either my lung or the muscles over top the ribs. A couple of times, I could not take a deep breath.

Are you able to take Ibuprofen, or perhaps the Doan's backpain products. I was actually looking into that last night. I have an area on my upper right back that has actually had muscle cramps. The first night was last week and it was so bad, I couldn't stand up, I was on all fours and could not take a deep breath. I went for a run, the next day, and the pain was gone. It came back the day after my next run, but not nearly as severe - I need to stretch to cool down. I don't know if I cramped or tore a muscle, but I was looking into Doan's medications - a different chemical than other pain relievers.

I am glad that you found a therapist. It's also really good that you are building up information about this - the knowledge decreases the anxiety. I don't know if Botox would be the thing to do for a lip twitch that may even go away, though. I wouldn't dwell on it...yet.