year-long balance issue

Wow, where do I begin?

THE GOOD:

I am a 27 year-old male with a very good general health, 6'1" 170 lbs, don't drink, smoke or do drugs, eat very healthy, drink plenty of water, take all my vitamins, have a good social and healthy sexual life, exercise when I can (at least 3x a week), have a somewhat random work schedule but still manage to get decent amount of rest/sleep.

In 2003 I lost my dad to cancer after a really tough 1 year battle. Following this, I continued working full time and going to university full time for seven semesters in a row, and then on November 6th 2006, my mom called me at work crying and saying that she had been diagnosed with cancer. LUCKLY, it turned out to be a benign tumor, which we didn't know for about 7 days. Tumor was removed and she's been fine since then. Also on November 5th I started a second job and for the next 4-5 months was working 6-7 days a week, often a few weeks in a row without a day off.

THE BAD:

On November 10th 2006, I was driving back from work when about a block away from my building I felt like I was gonna pass out. I instantly got lightheaded, my vision(depth perception) was messed up, I felt like I was going to fall even though I was sitting, as a result of all this my heart rate sky-rocketed, within seconds my shirt was literally soaked in cold sweat. I quickly pulled over, shut off the car, and walked outside. This helped a lot as the really cold air sort of sobered me up, at least enough to get back in the car and drive home. Btw, I didn't have any other symptoms at this time like: tingling in the fingers, tightness in the chest, any other pain or abnormal bodily functions. However, ever since that night I have been experiencing loss of balance and unsteadiness, which turned into more bad things. What I noticed was that any kind of mental or physical stress would make me extremely unstable, I would feel like my head is really heavy and it would always pull the rest of the body to one side or the other. My vision also got blurry, especially at night to the point that I would get a splitting headache from trying to focus on the extremely blurry tail lights of the cars in front of me as well as the traffic lights. I often experienced headaches in the back of the head.

These symptoms would always be present but would get worse at work (mental stress) and at the gym (physical stress). What have I done to remedy this? Between now and then I had the blood work done a total of 6 times, saw two different ENT's, a cardiologist who had me wear a holter for 24hrs, had an ECG twice and an ultrasound of my heart. I had a CT scan as well as an MRI of my brain, saw an alergist, an optometrist twice, a neurologist twice (once in March 2007, the other in October 2007), saw a neuro-opthalmologist ( these are apparently rare - had to wait 7 months for appointment). AND NO ONE FOUND ANYTHING WRONG. My GP also had me on Celexa, which did nothing for the loss of balance but made me constapated. I also took the balance test ( with water being squirted in ears) and it was negative. I saw a chiropractor, who after taking an x-ray of my neck told me that my head was off by 2 degrees in relation to my spine, but after more that 10 trips for "fixing" and him telling me that it's now "in line" I still feel the same. Then I started seeing a psychiatrist in August 2007, which is also when I went on medical leave. She put me on Prozac, which again did nothing but cause nausea and loss of weight. I was on Prozac for 2 month, got to only 30mlg, and now I am off everything, including work, and still feeling lightheaded and exremely hopeless.

THE UGLY:

Basically, I don't know what to do anymore. Every day I wake up and start walking around, it's that feeling like when you have a flu and feel unsteady and get that pressure in your head and if you try to do something you develop a headache and become discouraged to do anything else. Everyone is trying to convince me that it is psychological and keep telling me "calm down" and "relax" and also to "not think about it and it will go away". The truth is that these advices do more harm to me that good, since I have had more than enough time over the last 13 months to try everything and detect any patterns, and nothing has worked.

The only thing I am aware of is that mental stress makes things worse, physical stress does also but not always, and there has not been a single day since November 10th 2006 that I have been symptom free.

Thanks for reading,  and I am hoping for some professional or other advice.

[Jessi63]

Bless your heart.  Sorry to hear you have these problems but I would suggest to stick it out with the psychiatrist.  There are so many options out there as far as medications go.  Ever thought about couseling?

[nickname_already_taken]

Ok, I don't know how to edit my post but "THE BAD" subtitle should have obviously started right after the first paragraph.