Panicked, heart rate elevated, high blood pressure following an illness

Early summer I experienced flu like symptoms for roughly a week and a half accompanied with stiffness in my neck. Near the end of this ordeal I visited a clinic that referred me to urgent care in the hopes of ruling out meningitis. The urgent care physician and I opted to forego a spinal tap because he felt that, if I was suffering from the more lethal bacterial form of meningitis, I would have already developed the telltale signs indicating that this was so. A couple of days later I was feeling better and, other than a couple of short fever spells, those symptoms have not resurfaced. However, I have noticed a couple of new issues.

Firstly, my blood pressure is running high. More often than not, it is within, or close to, the stage 1 hypertension range. Secondly, my heart rate now seems to spike for no apparent reason, though usually only at night. Finally, I seem to have developed a peculiar sensitivity to caffeine.  Even a half cup of coffee and my heart races, and I begin to feel really weird. It becomes difficult to concentrate, and I feel panicked and very uncomfortable. Although I have now completely eliminated coffee from by diet, the feeling that I described still seems to randomly surface, but to a lesser degree. This seems to happen particularly when I am in a high stimuli area.        

Otherwise, I am generally a healthy 30 year old. I had kidney stones when I was a teenager. I do smoke but less lately as it seems to exacerbate the sensation I described.

It is difficult for me to pin down the precise genesis of these issues so the assumption that they causally flow from that earlier ordeal may or may not be valid. I do think though that if these issues did not follow that week and half of being sick, they closely preceded it.  

Any thoughts would be most appreciated.

[margypops]

it could have been a virus I know that many sickness around at the present time , I had a week or so of something similar except I also had a dry couch with the aching neck and arms .Its probably running its course .good luck

[margypops]

lol I have a dry cough not a dry couch but I do have a wayward keyboard ..

[gymdandee]

I suggest seeing an endocrinologist.

[SassyLassie]

I would cut out coffee and anything that has caffeine in it.

Also, I would see either a good internist, endocrinologists and maybe even a cardiologist to rule all major possibilities out.