Breathless

[dizzy68]

My breathlessness will not go from minute i wake up. It does come and go, so i am starting to think i can contolling the docs wont give me a ct scan coz they said it is def anxiety. I feel uncomfortable sleeping and have to wake up early because as soon as i open my eyes i notice it. I had a ecg which showed rapid heart rate at times and i had a d-dimer blood test which came out at 0.10 which i think is the same as 0.1 and the doc said anything below 0.5 is fine so i am worried 0.10 means point ten aaaaa.i am trying so hard that feeling of fear just will not go i hate it, i cant fight with docs anymore just cant accept the breathing is anxiety coz it wont go.it all started with my breathing then others symptoms accumalated. I need to get this sorted i have exams in six to eight weeks aaa

[Kande]

Thanks so much for your ideas! I had my significant other read this and he thinks hes cured!  He liked the bag and the garlic remark! Ha  You have done me a favor too, maybe he will sleep better at night, which means I will sleep better at night! Thanks again, Kande

[scaredjo]

listen to these comments and take them in hun you are only young and look fine just relax as i av told you the doc could not just ignore your symptoms if he thought there was anything wrong
be cool xx

[JSGeare]

I hate that breathless thing. HATE it!

Ryan's way over MY head with all the medical background, but I can certainly identify with his advice to "divert your attention away."

The big question is, "Yeah, but HOW? This whole thing HAS my attention."

So I'll tell you what worked for me -it might work for you. Some people say to breath into a paper bag that you are holding around your mouth. The idea is that the bag accumulates CO2 which sort of calms you down when you re-breath that air. But all this ever did for me was give me a somewhat damp bag that smelled like it had been eating garlic pizzas.

I ended up relying on my brain to divert ITSELF away from the breathing thing. This works on the principle that your brain can't possibly think of ANYthing for very long. I don't mean that obsessive thoughts don't intrude over and over -that happens. All I mean is that if I tell you to think about the number "6" for 5 minutes straight, I'll bet you a sawbuck that you can't do it. NO ONE can do it. At some point, your mind will wander from whatever you are doing to something else. Your mind will wander BACK, also, but that litttle break tells you, yes, I can and I do think about other stuff. It is not so much a question of TELLING yourself to think of something else as it a question of ALLOWING yourself to do so.

In the time you have taken to read this, I will wager that there have been at least a few moments when you were thinking about something else -maybe the implications of a damp bag that smells like garlic pizzas. In fact, some very successful people do this ON PURPOSE. The best baseball batters actually look AWAY from the path of an incoming pitch momentarily so that when they look back they have a better fix on the ball. And some pro golfers actually CLOSE their eyes when they putt.

In a nutshell, what I learned was that if I waited long enough -the breathing thing would go away.

Yes, yes, to all the tests to rule out some other problem (I did 'em), but meanwhile, see if you can let yourself forget.

Please let us know how it all comes out.