Scared 21 year old, advice welcome!

[ShelbyAnn214]

Warning: Long post ahead!

I'm a 21 y/o female who has been having some pretty awful symptoms that have been getting worse rapidly.

First symptom was general tiredness and fatigue and im not sure when that began. But the other stuff started (or at least became noticeable) mid October 2014 when my " attacks" began.

My symptoms, of which there are many, are as follows:

HEAD
**Headaches - tend to be over the temples and side of head, painful pressure at base of Skull, side of head and top / front
**Worsening vision - eyes randomly lose focus, blurry spots, vision worse in right eye.
**Jaw and tongue feel tired after chewing or talking for a while, causes me to slur or need to repeat words
**Difficulty swallowing, have to concentrate hard and force swallowing
**Difficulty relaxing muscles in throat/neck (like after yawning)
**Dizziness - Even looking to the side too quickly causes it
**Lightheadedness/feeling faint - almost constantly feel like ill faint
**Tinnitus - typically not too loud, but sometimes so loud it drowns most everything else out


TRUNK (Chest / abdomen / etc)
**Difficulty breathing - i often feel smothered or like im trying to take breaths through a straw, cant take deep breaths, tired out lungs
**My sternum occasionally "catches" and is only relieved by turning, causing it to "pop" and can be extremely painful
**Heart races (pulse around 125-145)
**Heart palpitations - sometimes one or two, sometimes it feels
never ending, very scary
** Blood pressure tends to spike a bit
**Tense stomach to the point of pain sometimes
**Possible IBS?
**Difficulty urinating (or i guess, difficulty starting to?)

LIMBS
**Muscle twitches in calves (and ocasionally thighs)
**Muscle numbness / weakness in arms/hands and legs
**RLS? (due to twitches)
**Deep muscle pains in upper arms and thighs
**Muscle numbness often causes loss of fine motor function in hands (hard to hold stylus, etc)

OTHER
**Difficulty falling asleep and staying (insomnia?)
**Random stabbing pains, Can be Anywhere -in arms, hands, side,"lungs" , back, Anywhere.
**Panic
**Restless, physically cannot sit still when symptoms "peak" ("attack")
**Worse when laying down and/or at night
**Ridiculous fatigue,its to the point in in bed almost 90% of the time.
**chronic Weakness


I think that about covers the symptoms, they arent all at once
They used to happen as "attacks" that happened 1-3 times a week. And i would have an assortment of the symptoms. The "attacks" were never the same. Then it progressed to NIGHTLY , and now its to the point that I always have symptoms.

My dad retired right before this all began So I lost my insurance coverage so at the moment the only things i've done so far are:
-Basic blood panels and Urinalysis
-CT of brain with contrast
-CT of brain without contrast
-CT of chest with contrast
-EKGs

So far everything is "Perfectly normal," SO frustrating!

As so many posts ive read from others, ive been diagnosed with panic disorder/anxiety. But also as so many others here, I dont buy it. At first I believed it WAS panic disorder because it fit, it was out of the blue, attacks were untriggered, and the anxiety meds helped,but now they dont seem to have any effect.


EDIT:
Diet & lifestyle -
Before these issues- 0verweight but was successfully losing weight, slightly sedentry, moderately healthy diet (healthy snacks, decent meals with days allotted to "pizza nights" and the like.)

Now - severely sedentary (stay on bed most of the day due to fatigue and weakness), gaining weight back, diet is pretty bad due to just not having the energy to worry about meals (alot of fast food/meal skipping because I sleep a lot now),

Illnesses-
Asthma- use inhaler as needed
Vitamin D deficient - was on a vitamin d3 supplement regimen of two 5000iu pills 4 days a week (have a doctors appt soon to see where in at with that now)
Used to be on Levothyroxine for hypothyroidism but my last few appts deemed the Rx no longer needed

Family history- l'm honestly not sure, im not close to either side



Does anyone think it could be Ms? Or any ideas on what it could be. I Know only a doctor can diagnose me, but i dont have a doctors appointment for a while and since its getting worse i just need some input.



EDIT 2: Ok, so i've got an appointment Monday (Feb 2nd) with a new doc to hopefully get some tests scheduled, and to have a lot of blood work done!

[lyndacarol]

Does anyone here think it could be Ms? Or any ideas on what it could be. I Know only a doctor can diagnose me, but i dont have a doctors appointment for a while and since its getting worse i just need some input,

To answer your question… I, for one, think it could be MS – but your symptoms are consistent with many other conditions as well. MS is a diagnosis of exclusion, made when the other possibilities have been ruled out.



"Everything You Want Your Doctor to Know about Vitamin B12"

I highly recommend this 50-minute documentary featuring Sally Pacholok, RN, BSN, & her husband Jeffrey Stuart, D.O. (authors of the book, Could It Be B12? An Epidemic of Misdiagnoses); Lawrence Solomon, M.D., hematologist with Yale Medical School; Ralph Green, M.D., hematologist at UC Davis; and Donald Jacobsen, PhD, at the Cleveland Clinic (Homocysteine Research Lab).

[ElliotB]

"I Know only a doctor can diagnose me"

Yes, you are correct. There are things you can do for yourself now, until you see your doctor, that may help you feel better sooner with regard to diet, exercise, supplements and lifestyle. There is a lot of info on this site regarding these matter.

[jimmylegs]

hi shelbyann, welcome to the forum

can you tell us anything about your diet and lifestyle in general? history of illness or infection? family history? any long term over the counter or pharma meds? any dietary supplements, or dietary preferences? typical activity levels?

all this info could lend insight.

[ShelbyAnn214]

Editted my first post with more info.

[jimmylegs]

hi again sa, and thanks for the updated info.

one thing to be very clear on, is that if your diet and lifestyle has resulted in the nutritional issues that are consistent with an average ms patient, then at least that part of your total health picture is similar to ms.

there is no single item that defines ms. it's a complex, chronic illness, and the diagnostic process is a sort of checklist. the more checkmarks you have, the higher the percent chance you have ms. that's as good as it gets.

sadly, the checklist is very top level and the possible reasons for the various findings aren't often unpacked. very few of the essential nutrients are tested in mainstream ms assessment, even though a lot of the information about how ms patients differ from healthy people is available in the scientific literature.

so, when it comes to nutrition, patients have to advocate for themselves. there is a certain amount of literature on nutrient deficiency in overweight individuals - it's a case of 'misnutrition' that can end up in a pretty standard ms profile from the nutritional perspective.

fyi asthma patients are typically low in magnesium. that is an essential nutrient that is needed in daily amounts that aren't often met by average joe. if you feel bad and have issues that are linked to magnesium, you probably need about 500-600mg per day to recoup. you need at *least* 300-400mg per day just for maintenance purposes.

supplemental vitamin d3 should always be balanced with appropriate mineral cofactors. 10K of vitd3 per day will create an additional magnesium demand that you probably can't afford. you should be taking 100mg of a high quality magnesium glycinate supplement whenever you take d3, and then you need the other minimum 300-400mg above and beyond that.

it is best to get as much as possible each day from food. here's a list of healthy magnesium foods with mgs per serving that you could review. can you estimate how many mgs of magnesium you are currently getting per day from this list of sources?:
http://www.whfoods.com/genpage.php?tnam ... #foodchart

i'll be back on later ttfn

[lyndacarol]

ShelbyAnn,

Please examine the following website thoroughly – browse through all the tabs, videos, list of symptoms (yours are there): http://b12awareness.org/