Bizarre and mysterious symptoms

[sausii]

I would like to ask about the symptoms I've had for 3 years. I'm a 32 yr old white male.  Here is the progression of my symptoms:

- 3 years ago I started having abdominal pains and altered bowels, I had endoscopies and was diagnosed with mild left colitis and mild duodentitis

- only a few days after the endoscopies, I was standing in line somewhere and my heart began fluttering and beating chaotically, it made me almost black out.  My exam at the ER was negative (echo, EKG, labs). Later, a portable monitor started picking up hundreds of extra heartbeats every day, and I had never had any history of such whatsoever.. at this time I also had a very uncomfortable atypical chronic chest discomfort/pressure, and my heart constantly sped up and slowed down and blood pressure fluctuated for no real reason

- not long after all these heartbeat irregularities started, I began feeling chronically lightheaded and in a state of chronic psychiatric dissociation feeling like I'm on some drug such as nitrous gas all the time

-  after about 1 and 1/2 years the chest pressure and heartbeat irregularities mysteriously went away nearly all together, but I am still left with severe and chronic feeling of dissociation

- Sometimes, I will in a trance all day, then the next day my mood becomes gloomy and depressive like a drug side effect.. and the next day I will begin to urinate over and over again every 10 minutes, the a few days later it's back to the usual dissociated/lightheaded all the time feeling.

- I see a psychiatrists who thought I might have TLE and gave me Tegretol,  I'm taking that now but benzo's increase my symptoms

[Peter Forster]

You certainly have an extremely complicated problem.
It sounds like the kind of problem that is likely to take a while to figure out.
The best approach that I can suggest is finding a well-regarded psychiatrist and committing to work with him or her to try to find solutions.
You may already have such a person, I am not sure.
Whereas what you have does not sound like what a neurologist would call partial complex seizures (temporal lobe epilepsy), sometimes good psychiatrists will use a medication because the symptoms are most similar to a certain neuropsychiatric disorder, even though the diagnostic criteria are not met.

[sausii]

"Other symptoms such as tremor, sweating, flushing?"  


I forgot to answer this question of yours,   the answer is that I don't notice tremor or sweating,  but my face does feel hot and flushed and it's somewhat related to my mood changes.

So, basically, the bottom line is from everything I described,  the cardiac symptoms, swinging blood pressure,  erratic pulse (50's seated, 140 just after standing up),   hundreds of PVC's every day,   constant chest discomfort........all the cardiac stuff pretty much settle down and went away after about 1 year or slightly longer,   but none of my other symptoms are better.    

[sausii]

You know, I avoided showing you this at first, because I thought it would make the post excessively complicated, but I also have constant pressure in my forehead and have had it for nearly 6 years..............so, 5 years ago I was diagnosed with (totally benign) fibrous dysplasia in the frontal bone of my head.........Here is my MRI where I posted some images of it online.  YOu may see, it is about 3.3x2.3 centimeters.  Just something else to consider, I guess.......:

http://sites.google.com/site/robsaysrelax/

[sausii]

There is something unusual I've noticed related to my sleep..........If I sleep very well, 8 or especially 9 hours or more, my symptoms of derealization tend to be quite a bit worse on that day,   where as if I sleep very little, say less than 4 or 5 hours, I may be sleepy all day but this causes me to feel better......my symptoms are generally better or much easier to deal with when I'm sleepy.   That is why, for example, last night I slept 9 1/2 hours...and I feel quite bad this morning.  And that is typical.

[sausii]

So basically right now I'm being given Tegretol by a psychiatrist I've met with a few times ..on the assumption that I may have TLE....but my EEG was normal..I really kind of have my doubts though and haven't even started the Tegretol just yet (would TLE cause continuous symptoms?)

[sausii]

THanks for the reply,  To follow up your questions

1)  Do I have memory gaps?   Not anything too severe as far as recalling things, my problem is more on extended concentration when my symptoms are bad (such as reading a book, becomes very hard,  I am distractable and irritable)

2)  What are the symptoms of my dissociation?   Basically from everything I've read I personally feel like I experience derealization on a permanent basis.  To tell you the truth it feels like some sort of strange chronic drug reaction such as if one took too much DXM cough syrup or almost literally as if I'm breathing nitrous dental gas all day long.  Of course It's pretty hard for me to tell you exactly how I feel, but breathing nitrous gas from my past experience is pretty close... Plus, let me tell you that one time I had dental work done since this all started for me, and I took 2 breaths of nitrous gas and immediately black out on the dentist chair.....the gas was set on low flow... and after that reaction, I felt extremely disconnected and anxious for at least 30 minutes and had to cancel the procedure.   I mean not to focus too much on one thing though, but I basically feel like I'm in this light headed dream like stoned-without-euphoria state 24/7

3)  gloomy mood and frequent urination:  This is something that I've noticed anti-biotics seems to really aggravate.  The gloomy mood part, anyway.  But, I will get this without taking any drugs, also.  It seems that for 2-4 days at a time, i get in these "modes" where I feel just extremely depressed, but not in an ordinary way.  It really feels like a shift in my conscious mind, as if I am having some drug side effect (I really experienced this feeling when I took Prilosec).   I wish I could think of the correct words to really explain this, but it is almost as if I am at a funeral when I feel this way, although nothing negative or stressful or even different is happening in my life externally...it truly is a mysterious shift in my conscious.  For example, the last time it happened?  The first day, I felt very sedated...the next day I felt fully alert, but very gloomy and for the next two nights my sleep was extremely disturbed by horrific feelings in my sleep that something bad was happening around me and to people I love.  Then on day 3 I start urinating over and over and over again....possibly 30 times in the day, although I've not drank too much water or anything.   Now on day 4, the gloomy feelings subside and I feel like I will sleep much better tonight.

4)  fluttering heart:   my symptoms started 3 years or so ago, and for the first year my heart was acting up like CRAZY...i was getting hundreds of fluttering and chaotic thumping episodes per day, with fluctuating BP and pulse that would swing wildly and often would be in the 40's or 50's when I was at rest...none of these heart issues had ever happened to me before and after a year these heart problems (just the heart problems) all went 99.9999% away...the other symptoms remain just as badly.

5)  Do I have anxiety symptoms?   Not really in the classic sense from everything I've read.  But, one could easily jump to that conclusion I suppose... I am actually not a socially anxious or shy person,  but I have become rather agoraphobic because of the things talked about above,  plus the fact that the summer time really bothers my because lighting changes bother me a lot (going from bright sunlight into a darkened building or house really trips my symptoms into high gear).  

Sometimes I will have 5 second episodes where all the derealization symptoms I talked about and tripped into extremely high gear and the 5 second episode ends with a shock feeling in my upper stomach  (perhaps "abdominal aura" that I've read about like an elevator feeling in your stomach and chest...I get that feeling often).

[Peter Forster]

Let us assume that what is going on is not the result of a body effect on your brain (from your post it sounds as though that has been assessed pretty thoroughly), so then we are left with the idea that your brain is the source of what is happening.
You use the word dissociation - do you have memory gaps? What are the symptoms of dissociation?
You mention some symptoms such as frequent urination and fluttery heart that might be sympathetic nervous system symptoms. Do you have any anxiety symptoms? Other symptoms such as tremor, sweating, flushing?
Finally you talk about a gloomy mood - how long does that last, how and when does it begin, are there other mood symptoms?

[sausii]

PS - one other symptom, I get dizziness symptoms that last for a few weeks at a time and then go away for a while....basically I feel like I'm rocking around and falling over all day, even when sitting still