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I've been having anxiety over the possibility of having a stroke/brain tumor/blood clot?

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lalalaura
lalalaura

Hi, I'm Laura and I'm sixteen years old. I'll be turning seventeen in December. I've always been an anxious person, though my anxiety has been at it's worst to the point where I now have a diagnosed anxiety disorder for over three years now. My major issues are hypochondria and agoraphobia. In June I went to the hospital thinking I had a heart attack, it was proven that I didn't. Now I've been having weird symptoms that scare me. I have tight pressure in my forehead. When I blink my right eye I feel tightness on the right side of my face. There's also some pressure at the very top of my head. I sneezed and my nose started running, then shortly after I started smelling a sickeningly sweet smell that hasn't gone away yet. My eyes are really dry. I don't know whether to bother my parents into taking me back to the hospital or not, they already think I'm being delusional or over dramatic when it comes to these things. I did googling to find that these symptoms are similar to brain tumor symptoms and stroke symptoms, and I'm really scared. One thing I forgot to add was that about a week or two ago I was feeling tingling sensations on the side of my foot, which google told me could be a blood clot. I'm just really nervous and sorry if this is lengthy but I'd really like some help.

2 likes, 21 replies

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  • lalalaura
    lalalaura

    Posted

    UPDATE: I haven't been on this forum much because I've been experiencing other anxiety symptoms that I've been worried about. However, I wanted to know if anyone in this forum had ever felt this symptom I'm about to talk about? It's only been going on for two days and now I'm worried. When I sneeze, I get a weird feeling in my head afterwards. It's like a tingly or tight feeling, and I never experienced it until now. I haven't told anyone yet because I know that yet again they'll brush it off. I'm really tired of having neurological symptoms and I wish that I didn't focus on them so much. I have therapy again on Tuesday and we have not been doing that much so far, and plus, the therapy is more so focused on my agoraphobia so there isn't really a place for me to talk about my health anxiety. If anyone knows about this symptom, please respond.

  • lalalaura
    lalalaura

    Posted

    UPDATE: Going to the eye doctor this Saturday. I'm really nervous because I'm scared they'll find a tumor and my vision has been worse since way before I've been having weird symptoms. It's hard to sleep and I'm scared because I've also been getting head pressure again. I'm hoping for the best.

  • lalalaura
    lalalaura

    Posted

    UPDATE: Again, sorry that I waited so long to update. I've been going to therapy and it's mostly helping me with my agoraphobia rather than health anxiety. We are eventually going to work on it, though the agoraphobia is more of a concern at the moment. The eye doctor trip happened two months ago, though it was a successful trip and I didn't feel that anxious there. They looked at my eye and I told them a few of the former symptoms that I had such as dryness and cloudiness. I ended up getting glasses and everything else went well. I walked out of the appointment thankful that they did not find anything serious, and I really thought that it would be the end of my anxiety over a neurological condition. I thought wrong. 

    It's December and I'm still anxious about it. As I'm typing this I feel slight tightness in my head. My head was pulsating after I finished exercising, and that is not the first time it happened (it usually happens after I do a lot of physical activity, which really worries me). Whenever I tell my parents or therapist about these symptoms, they don't see it as something serious, and I wish that I could see it that way too. I'm just really tired of feeling like this all of the time and I'm tired of not having 100% clear answers. I've never gotten an MRI and I'm really scared to get one. I have tons of other sicknesses that I'm worried about having. Since the beginning of the year (and this is only this year, not even the first time this has happened) I've thought I had the following illnesses: Appendicitis, heart failure, pneumonia, MS, colon cancer, esophageal cancer, mouth cancer, a tumor in my ear, a stroke, and finally, a brain tumor --- which is the only one on the list that I still worry about having. I don't know what I can do to get rid of this fear and I most certainly don't want to find out that I actually have one. I don't know what causes these symptoms that are so similar to one and at this point I'm just through. 

    There's no realistic way I'm going to get an MRI. I can't stop googling symptoms. Breathing techniques aren't working and I can't control the fact that sometimes I smell phantom smells after I sneeze and I make more typos than usual and I get pressure in my head and have tingling sensations in my feet and have numbness in my face sometimes. I'm at a complete loss and this issue has been bothering me for nearly a year. I don't know what I can do.

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