I am a twenty year old female who before now has always been in good health.
For the past two and a half months, or a little more, I have been experiencing a range of different symptoms.
I'm not sure where I should even post my question because they affect a lot of different parts of my body.
In early/mid June, I noticed that I was beginning to have heart palpitations, where my heart would seem to stop beating for two/three seconds, and then beat fast again for the next few beats, almost like it was trying to catch up. When this was happening, I still had an average heart rate of about 72 beats per minute. There was no pain, but it was uncomfortable, and began to happen a lot, in the end happening constantly until I decided to go to the doctor's.
It was not my usual doctor as I was away from home at the time, and my blood pressure and heart rate were checked, although as always seems to happen, the palpitations seemed to subside when I was with the doctor.
I was sent home and told to rest.
I was not imagining these palpitations, my family and friends could even see my pulse in my neck, and were able to tell me just by looking closely when the palpitations were happening.
I visited my own doctor a few days later as the palpitations were still ongoing and I had developed a tingling sensation along with slight pain down my left arm and in my fingers. My middle finger on my left hand had also begun to twitch.
It was around this time that I noticed that I had had a twitch in my left eye for a number of weeks also.
This doctor sent away some blood to check my thyroid and other such things but the results came back normal. He also had me attached to an ECG monitor, but no abnormalities showed up.
He sent me home, informing my mother that he felt as though it could be stress or anxiety related.
I would like to note that I do not feel stressed or anxious in any way at all, and there is literally nothing in my life right now that I might even consider as being stressful or difficult to deal with.
I am not a natural worrier either, I might add.
My third trip to the doctor's wasn't long after, when I noticed that the numb/tingling sensation had seemed to have moved up my arm and neck into my face. The palpitations seemed to have completely subsided at this stage, but my arm still felt severely uncomfortable, and now I had slight pains in my face, on the left side.
I still had the twitch in my eye also. I don't know how to explain the sensation, but the closest I can get is a numb sensation. I hadn't lost any sensation in my face and could still feel everything perfectly.
That pain/sensation had moved into my head also, around my temple and toward the back of my head, all on the left side. The pain in my head seemed to move quite a bit. I had a lot of pressure in my head at the time, and couldn't bring myself to do much other than lie down and feel sorry for myself. It didn't take long for that pain to move into both sides of my head.
The doctor tested my reflexes, blood pressure, heart rate, balance and a lot of things like that, and eventually concluded that I simply had a tension headache, prescribed me anti-inflammatories and told me to go home and rest.
I went back a few days later because the symptoms had all worsened, and I was sent to the hospital where they hooked me up for yet another ECG, did a CT scan, tested my blood for all sorts and asked me a lot of questions also. I was also attached to a holter monitor for 24 hours, even though I was insistent that the palpitations had subsided and had simply been replaced by a slight, dull ache.
Nothing showed up, yet again.
The prescribed me some more anti inflammatories and told me to rest.
The headache did seem to subside after a few weeks, the pressure at least, so I was just left with that odd sensation in my head on both sides. I went back for a follow up, and informed them that the headache was subsiding, and the doctor told me that she was confident that it would clear itself up.
She said she would arrange for me to have an appointment with a neurologist in a few weeks to come, and that I could cancel it beforehand if all of my symptoms disappeared.
A few weeks on, I have the headache back, although it is not as bad as it was. The sensation in my head is still there, along with an on and off pain in my neck and shoulder, often severe pain in my wrist and hand and a pain in the left side of my chest that seems to be increasingly getting worse.
I went to the doctor's yet again this morning because I have been losing a lot of sleep from the pain, and after a lot of questions and poking and prodding, the doctor concluded that it must be anxiety. My own doctor is away at the moment, but he said he will talk to her in a few days when she returns and that I should return to one of them toward the end of next week so that I can discuss getting treatment for an anxiety disorder.
The twitch in my eye has gone away for the most part after about eight or nine weeks, but I still have that sensation in my eye, it just doesn't seem to twitch anymore. The doctor seemed to think it was related to a lack of sleep, which is ridiculous.
I am beyond frustrated, but I am willing to try it for some relief. I have to stress that I really DO NOT feel like I am in any way stressed or nervous or anxious about ANYTHING, except for maybe the fact that I have been so unwell for so long now and nobody seems to be taking me seriously.
Also, most of these symptoms are present in the left side of my body, and not in the right, apart from my 'headache', which is present in both sides.
Please, if you have any idea what might be causing my symptoms, let me know.
Could it really be anxiety?
I have been to the doctor's five times now, and spent time in hospital having numerous tests done. I generally don't visit the doctor's unless completely necessary. I am at my wit's end.