Update

[reginalddawkins]

I wanted to give a short update for those who have perhaps read my myriad ramblings on my health worries.

I've been back on an SSRI - celexa - for three weeks. I have noticed a slight boost in spirit, although still rather off, especially my mental focus and distance/night vision. Today I am going to see my therapist and then later tonight I plan to see an MD friend of mine to talk through some of my concerns.

Over the phone I described what I'd been feeling - nerve pain, muscle fatigue, brain fog and vision issues - and he almost immediately wrote off my fears about MS. He said that if there is a neurological cause of vision impairment/loss, it almost always presents itself as a complete blackout in one eye, spots in the field of vision, or your whole field of vision will be "fuzzy" like a TV with bad reception. His initial thought was that a sudden change in my distance vision after this panic started (aided by trying a friend's glasses) was more indicative of acute stress than it was something more alarming to him.

Anyway, tonight he said he would be able to test my reflexes and a couple other simple things to see if there's anything worth exploring further. My hope is that he will see me as a completely healthy guy with a boatload of accumulated stress that has been manifesting in dozens of alarming ways.

Stay tuned...

[reginalddawkins]

oh - by the way - i meant that my vision loss is aided when i try a friend's glasses... not that the panic was caused by trying glasses.

in case that read funny to anyone else.

[reginalddawkins]

met with my doctor friend tonight. he listened to my whole story and then listened to my heart and lungs. he also had me follow his finger with my eyes and did a bunch of tapping on my arms and legs, felt my neck, had me swallow, etc...

as any good doctor would, he said he wouldn't stop me from seeking another opinion if i felt i needed it, but his opinion was:

i am healthy.

nothing he saw/heard/felt made him think that i had anything neurological going on.

herein lies the challenge for an anxious person...

can i believe him?

i still feel certain symptoms - and he certainly didn't deny those symptoms as "real" to me... but he didn't see one thing that made him even want to consider referring me to the neurologist he knows.

even my vision issues, he theorized, could be caused by the heightened (tweaked out) senses that can accompany a period of high anxiety and acute stress.

interestingly enough, this morning i felt much less anxious and my vision felt better. as the day unfolded and anxiety crept in, my vision got worse.

so, there you go, an update after the doc visit. he told me to stay on the celexa for at least 6 weeks and let it ramp up, although he seemed to think paxil was a better pick for anxiety. (i was on paxil from 2001-2003 and it made me gain like 30 lbs)

anyway. here's hoping that i am able to buy in to what he was saying.