Hi, Coach. Your post struck me because I went through something very similar after having a surgery. It was debilitating and extremely frightening as I had never had any anxiety issues before (I'm 59 years old). I, too, was convinced that it was a medical issue rather than a psychological one. It lasted a full 7 weeks for me and I absolutely battled through every day. How are you doing now?
Did the endo refer you to Mayo because he saw something with your hormones, or just because you're having these symptoms and nobody has been able to help you and he wants you to see better docs? My take is, trust your instincts. You know yourself. Those of us with anxiety problems suffer from anxious thinking. It seems to come suddenly and then if it becomes chronic it becomes a big problem, but actually, when we look back, we usually can see it was coming. In your case, the most recent thing that happened was a surgery, and at least to me that makes it the most likely source of your problems. When we have surgery, we are given a lot of drugs, and some of those drugs can have some pretty devastating side effects. Doesn't usually happen, but if you look at the fine print in just the agreement with your anesthesiologist, you will see you are basically signing away your well-being, your teeth, all sorts of things because things do go wrong. That's why most surgeons aren't eager to do surgery, although some are because it pays really well. Some questions therefore you might want to find answers to are, what was used to put you to sleep? Why were you put on a ventilator -- I've had surgery twice and was never put on one, so why were you? Are there side effects of those drugs or the ventilator that don't usually happen but might happen. Also, were you put on anti-inflammatory medication, especially steroids? These can cause severe anxiety is some people. Basically, if it were me, I'd want to exhaust this avenue of search because it's the big thing that happened before the symptoms arose. Another odd angle is, a lot of what you're describing sounds like a thyroid problem. I don't know why that would suddenly go wrong, but did your endo run a thorough thyroid screen, including looking at your T3 and T4 and not just Tsh?
Hello~I am so sorry that you are going through this anxiety. Anxiety can take so many forms, and it could be due to the surgery, sometimes our bodies react in ways we were not expecting them to, and any type of invasive treatment is a shock to the body, even if the patient isn't aware of any symptoms.
It seems all your tests were good, but you said the endocrinologist was alarmed, so, that could possibly mean something due to hormones causing the issues. I really don't have any firm answers, but, I would contact the endo again and really try to push for a visit to the Mayo clinic.
I hope you get better soon, anxiety attacks and panic are no fun.