Health Anxiety

[OCD]

Hi there,
I am a 29 year old female and have had health anxiety for as long as I can remember. 

About 2 months ago, I started to pay attention to a spot in my mid back. It hurt when I touched my spine in this area. I was worried that this spot may be a spinal tumour. I went to a physio who assured me it was nothing, probably just tender from the way I do certain exercises. Two weeks passed and I was convinced I could feel my mid back pain in the gym. I went to a GP who also assured me it was not a tumour but ordered an X-ray to check for mild scoliosis as well as bloods to check for arthritis etc. When I left from getting my X-ray, I was flooded with anxiety when the thought that I had only just had an X-ray last year popped into my mind. I started to panic that I had too many X-rays too close together and this would affect my body in some way. The next day I woke up with shooting pains all over my body and random aches and pains in my joints. My scan and bloods came back clear but with the onset of all this pain I demanded an MRI of my spine. By this stage I started to get muscle twitches all over my body (particularly in my calves and feet). My MRI showed that I had a minor disc bulge at the L5/S1 level and this made me feel both relieved and despair, as I'm in the gym 6 days a week and felt I needed to pause my membership and take it easy. Then came the tingly and burning sensations in my legs. This is a constant pins and needles feeling. My GP had enough of me and said "just go to the ER", so I did. I had a neurologist give me an examination checking sensation, reflexes, strength etc. I was honest about my health anxiety and shared my concerns about my disc bulge and possible neurological disorder. He ordered another blood test. The doctor came back and said that neurology team said that my symptoms did not align with any neurological disorder and that they had looked at my MRI and even if my disc bulge was pinching a nerve it wouldn't be causing the symptoms I was explaining. They were simply stumped as to what my symptoms could be caused by but said they were confident it was MS or anything like that and did not need to refer me to a neurologist or for an MRI. They said that if I had MS or anything similar my inflammatory marker would be up, which would suggest possible lesions. Despite this, my anxiety is horrendous and my symptoms are relentless. Could the constant burning, pins and needles and twitching be anxiety?

[JEF15]

Hello 

I wanted to reply because I always feel so much better when I hear from someone that suffers the same as I do. I am a young female with a history of health anxiety, panic attacks and OCD.

I also have MS. 

The one piece of info I can offer that I hope brings you some relief is if you've had spine MRI, and no lesions where found, the sensations in your lower limbs would be likely linked to the bulging disc, not MS. Whether that brings comfort I don't know, but I hope it helps. 

There is a lot of info out there about tingling and numbness being linked to anxiety. Our bodies go through a massive adrenaline rush during the flight/fight response, which can result in altered sensations in our limbs. I've read its all our blood rushing to the important parts of our body. 

I'm suffering chronic acid reflux at the moment, have been so for most of the year, and it has not been good for my health anxiety. I'm still trying to work through it, so I just wanted to let you know I understand what your feeling and I hope hearing brings your comfort. 

Take care

[tmas]

Hi, just wanted to say that for me at least physical symptoms that have seemed very real were in fact health anxiety. 

Often a small sensation that caught my attention would become an obsession and grow into a full list of symptoms that fit some specific illness or disorder. Tingling and pins and needles are also something I used to have all the time, when you breathe erratically or hyperventilate (even slightly, not in an obvious way) for a long time, the blood moves away from your extremities. It’s all adrenaline. 

Also, my mother has MS and her symptoms didn’t seem to manifest that way. A bulging disc was likely the culprit for the initial pain and maybe the tingling, and it seems to have taken root as an obsession. Best of luck - somatic obsessions and the like are horrible, but the day that you start to be able to move through them and just let the thought fade away is a beautiful day to finally see. 

[OCD]

I had an MRI on my brain for reassurance and my doctor said my results were unremarkable. I got him to print the results for further reassurance but a section on the report said 

“isolated single focus of increased t2 signal left posterior frontal matter of questionable significance”.

my doctor said this wasn’t dangerous and we talked about how a healthy brain would usually show up something. Alas I am now worried that it means something. 
Any advice of how to get past this?

[tmas]

If I were you, I'd just trust your doctor. It's a lame answer, I know, but it's sometimes the best course of action. Has your doctor requested a long term follow up?

I had an MRI for treatment-resistant OCD/depression a good five years ago and they found a small pituitary legion, and I absolutely freaked out. I read the sheet, did a lot of googling (bad), and had to be told it's pretty common to have SOMETHING show up in imaging, no brain is exactly the same. They suggested another scan in a year to monitor it, there was no change, and now I guess I'll just have periodic scans, especially if I have other symptoms. In conclusion, my brain was fine, I haven't had any other symptoms.

I dealt with it by just remembering that my state of being wasn't any different five minutes before hearing the result, and immediately after - why was my body feeling different, or having stronger symptoms? Did these symptoms somehow reduce when my mind wasn't on them? It didn't do a lot for me for the first few weeks, but time brought the message home. I had to have faith in my doctor that they were being honest, they knew more than me, and did this dozens of times a day - If you have a doctor you trust, maybe they can reassure you. I know trust in others is hard when viewing the world through OCD, but the goal is ultimately to feel progressively safer within your body, until it can eventually be your resting state. 

It was a big deal to realise I am my body. I am not at war with it, it is not its own sentient thing which could betray me at any moment. Health anxiety fuels itself unfortunately, and addressing the factors that caused a flare (personal stressors to which health anxiety was an all-consuming distraction supplied automatically by my brain) allowed me to contain the fuel. 

[OCD]

Hi there,

I’ve always been anxious about my health but two months ago I noticed a spot in the middle of my spine that hurt a lot when touched. I immediately freaked out I had a back tumour. I had an X-ray which was clear and then developed shooting pains all over my body. I wanted an mri of my thoracic and lower spine to ensure it wasn’t a tumour causing these symptoms. Then I began to get muscle twitching in my calves and legs and my big toes felts number than the others. The Mri showed I had a minor disc bulge. Soon I was getting non stop tingling in both my legs. I started to see a physiotherapist and Chiro but ended up in ER petrified it was a neurological disease. I had an ER do an exam and then a neurologist also do an exam. Both were perplexed by my symptoms and I explained how anxious I was about it. The neurologist and his team said they were confident it was not a neurological problem and sent me on my way. I also have full blood work to rule out anything else- all normal. Soon the tingling was in my legs and hands and the twitching also spread all over my body. I went back to the ER. A new doctor did another neurological exam and said it would not be my bulging disc nor would it be anything neurological. He said it was psychosomatic and agree to let me get an mri of my brain for peace of mind. The mri came back normal except for a glitch that was explained to be from me moving in the machine (which I do remember doing). I then went back to my gap several times begging for an explanation of my symptoms and for reassurance it isn’t MS. Doctor is convinced it is not MS or anything else and believes I have made my symptoms worse by fixating on them. I’m so anxious I can’t eat and have restless sleep and cannot concentrate on anything. I just want the twitching and tingling to go away so I can move on with my life. Just now my tongue started twitching too which is terrifying and my left leg feels like the muscle are all cramping up. I can’t help but feel like this simply has to be MS as anxiety symptoms should dissipate when distracted or relaxed. My doctor doesn’t want to refer me to an neurologist but I’m considering getting another mri of brain and upper spine. Feel very unsure if I’m manifesting symptoms or actually dying. Please give me some advice. I am seeing a psychologist about this but the physical symptoms are too strong at the moment. 

[MDee]

I have been through a very similar scenario with other things. GP’s and other doctors don’t understand when we ask for explanations for our symptoms. 
I feel your pain

[tmas]

I really may be missing the mark here, but it doesn’t sound like MS - I’ve seen many forms of the illness play out with different people, both the aggressive and the relapsing/remitting, and there’s very little chance an episode wouldn’t show legions on an MRI (particularly the aggressive form - they’d know), and relapsing episodes also last a couple weeks generally and then you go into remission. Even so, MS doesn’t strictly mean “you’re dying”, often just that you will live with progressing symptoms that you must take into account from here on. My mother is fully functioning and appears healthy when in remission (just fatigue and spasticity, that sort of thing that she handles gracefully). 

I say this only because reading symptoms online is a dangerous sport, it’s very easy to decide they mirror or describe your own bodily sensations, and suddenly you’ve filled the entire checklist. In my own mind, I’ve had cysts, appendicitis, parasites, a million viruses and autoimmune disorders… none of it was true and yet I felt the entire thing play out in my body, sometimes for months at a time. Please, trust your doctors, speak to professionals (not just neurologists, but mental health professionals). ERP wasn’t right for me when anxiety was so high and set me back quite a bit, but psychotherapy helped a ton.