Ongoing symptoms for 4+ months

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Worriedandsad

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Hi all,

This is probably going to be a verrrrrrry long and rambling post as theres a lot of information to write down! hopefully I'll be able to put it across in a somewhat clear and coherent way!

I was hoping someone would be able to point me in the right direction of getting a diagnosis. I'm a 31 year old English woman who has been suffering from some very weird symptoms since mid-2019. As a bit of background - I've suffered from OCD, Depression and Anxiety for 20 years now and have been on SSRI medication for a vast majority of my life. My sertraline started making me wretch whenever I tried to take it so I stopped taking it around March 2019 with no real issues to report until the summer of 2019 when I had the runs for a full month and suffered bad heart palpitations and non-stop crying / panic type symptoms - so I went back to the doctor who ordered some blood tests and an ECG (for the heart palpitations) and put me on Fluoxetine (which I had previously taken throughout my teenage years). The blood tests came back fine as did the ECG test and the Fluoxetine seemed to stop the heart palpitations and general mood issues.

I felt less panicky and more relaxed until I woke up one morning feeling very dizzy and had weird Eustachian tube issues - lots of crackling whenever I swallowed / blew my nose, etc and I had bad pressure behind my left eye and my hands kept going numb. I convinced myself I had a brain tumour so went off to the opticians to have the pressure feeling behind my eye checked and they said it was just eye strain due to an astigmatism so I got a new prescription for glasses to wear when I'm reading / using screens / watching TV, etc - the pressure calmed down significantly when I started wearing the glasses. The doctor said the issues I was having were probably down to tight neck muscles and my anxiety - so basically just blaming it on tension... so I saw an Osteopath which seemed to help until I had cranial osteopathy which appeared to cause my facial muscles to tense up completely and made the whole of the back of my head go numb and tingly and feel like someone was pulling me backwards by my hair, I was also unable to hold my head up and my neck felt very floppy and weird (quite distressing to say the least!) this went away after another osteopath visit so I think this was just a trapped nerve issue. I also saw an acupuncturist to try and deal with the muscle tightness in my neck and shoulders but that didn't help much.

I've recently been experiencing some newer symptoms -

1) a weird red rash that appears and disappears in random places - it started on my face and felt stinging - like I'd been outside in icy cold wind (when I hadn't!) but has now decided to appear in other places like my arms, my chest, my stomach, etc - it only lasts a few hours maximum and then disappears again and makes me feel itchy and weird.

2) terrible tightness and pain in the muscles in my shoulder / neck / top of my back and lower back. Also a pain on the top of my right foot and in my knees.

3) all my joints click whenever I move them - if I stretch my arm out it will click at the shoulder, elbow and wrist.

4) general muscle fatigue - I was walking around with my husband and step-daughter the other day and I was carrying a piece of paper - after a few minutes my hand and arm really hurt from the effort of holding this piece of paper, obviously it didn't weigh much so I have no idea why it hurt so much :(

5) general brain fog - I sometimes feel like I'm not really in my body, like I'm playing a computer game or something and I can't concentrate properly on anything.

6) I've also started getting terrible acid reflux. I was on omeprazole for 3 years because I had a gall bladder attack a few years back but even the omeprazole hasn't been stopping this new wave of reflux issues - it normally happens at night and I get terrible heartburn where I can feel the acid rising up my throat and filling my mouth with saliva. Nothing seems to get rid of it - Rennies, Gaviscon, Pepto-Bismol... nothing :(

7) Dreadful night sweats - this has been ongoing for 6 years now - I normally wake up every morning drenched in cold sweat - literally dripping off of me and soaking my night clothes / bed sheets, I originally thought this was a side effect of my SSRIs but it was still happening even when I came off of the sertraline early last year and wasn't taking any SSRIs (up until I went back on fluoxetine)

8) I normally feel very cold - my fingers and toes are freezing and I can't seem to retain warmth very well.

The symptoms I've been having all seem to point to some of of auto-immune disorder like Lupus or MS but I'm also aware that Fibromyalgia can also cause these kinds of problems. I just don't know how to get the doctor to stop writing my problems off as just anxiety because I KNOW there is something else at play here. I'm not a hypochondriac but I think the fact that I've suffered from anxiety and depression for 20 years has made my doctor less likely to take my physical symptoms that I'm having seriously. I'm just so fed up and want to feel well again :( I've never had such awful physical symptoms for such a long time and I just feel completely disheartened and miserable. Some nights I genuinely feel like I'm about to die because of how weird I feel inside of myself.
 
I’ve had a battery of tests over the year to rule out diseases that are similar to fibromyalgia and each time it was stressful and frustrating waiting for the results. Each time I went back to my GP and asked what test is next?

We’re always busy advocating for everyone else. My body was telling me something was wrong, and I needed to advocate for myself.

Keep making appointments with the GP.
 
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