Is anxiety making me crazy or is this gallbladder?

Are you feeling better, I have gallstones and started to have these panic attacks out of nowhere, dr. thinks is acid reflux, but medication is not helping much.

About 10 months ago I was in a meeting at work and it felt like a sledgehammer hit me in the chest. It felt like I was having a heart attack, but after many tests (ekg, stress test, mri, blood tests, some crazy endocrinologist test) everything came back fine. My dr thought it was strictly anxiety but I'm still having pain on my right side just below my ribs off and on and generally after I eat, am lightheaded every now and then, and am now suffering from anxiety (mostly at work), which is a new thing in my life and I'm almost 40. I also lost 15 lbs in the first couple months, and have since gained about 40, and no matter what I do can't lose any. I have met with a therapist several times and have been doing CBT which seems to help. It seems like a lot of people on this thread have had similar symptoms and I'm desperate to find an answer, especially after how it's changed my life.

Been dealing with these exact same issues for over a year now. Started as brain fog, restless sleeping, to feeling exhausted and then upper right quadrant pain near the bottom of the ribs. Have done tons of bloodwork and ultrasounds/scopes and all have come back normal with exception of elevated billirubin (Gilbert Syndrome that is not supposed to have any symptoms).

On top of these vauge symptoms been getting sick more lately with sinus infections (3 in the last year), headaches and colds. When all the symptoms come together at once it feels like having a flu without a fever. I have some digestive issues from 15 years ago when they said its IBS on top of everything now. I have lost over 15 pounds in the last year and am not even trying to loose weight. Have tired all sorts of diets and even seeing a natrupath to no avail.

Plan on asking Doc to have a another look at the gallblader (HIDA scan as suggest by some on this thread) to test for function.

Has anyone got some resolution to their symptoms or found mechanics to control them a bit? This thing (whatever this is) is just awful and completely destroys your quality of life. After a year of testing my doctor's say its IBS..... I guess diagnosis by exclusion.

thx.

anyone still on this post? have you found any answers?

You probably have had your thyroid checked, but if not this can wreak havoc on the body. Also anxiety and stress can absolutely convince you that you are suffering of a host of illnesses. I knew anxiety and stress were bad but recently I convinced myself I was having a heart attack,and absolutely felt i was. It is horrible. I hope you found your problem. God bless

I starter having the same symptoms a few months back. I ended up having a nervous breakdown that lasted for weeks. I had never had a panic attack in my life, not like these anyway, and I thought I was having a heart attack. I went from being in the best shape of my life weighing 200 pounds to probably 160 pounds. It was hell on earth. Months earlier I got a stong pain in my right chest that felt like I had been stabbed. Then a couple months later it happened again. Then I started getting pain that felt like electric shocks in my right side that started moving up to my chest onto the left side. The hardest part to deal with was the fact that nobody believed me. My whole family thought I was losing my mind and kept suggesting "facilities". Drs (I went to the emergency room 5 times within 2 weeks and they either chalked it up to anxiety or acted like I was drug seeking. Inside I had the worst anxiety. I felt like every second I had to will myself to keep living. Its really hard to explain but if I had to compare it to something it was like a car when it was rumning out of gas and you keep flooring it to get as far as you can. One dr told me I had a sludgy gallbladder. I became obsessed with finding out what was wrong with me and finding a cure. I feel like irreparable damage has been done to my physically.

Another symptom that happened early on was central sleep apnea. I went up to 2 weeks without sleep because I felt like I was going to die right as I was fallimg asleep anf I got sharp pains in what I guess was my heart. I seriously have ptsd over this. And the threat of it coming back is always on my mind. I had so many more symptoms that it would honestly be easier to list what wasnt wrong with me. It seems like there has to be a common denominator between the gallbladder and panic attacks. Maybe a histamine overload? Anyway, I hope you're doing better. I know how miserable this can be.

I am a programmer and for 2 years am also struggling with anxiety and lately (quite a few months) also with epigastric-abdominal discomfort.

1. Sensation of something in the chest, feeling that breathing-in is ~ "incomplete" and "lack of air"; I find these to be mostly linked to anxiety. But hey, do you know what verifiably puts me in a state of anxiety ? The digestive system.. for example, I have had mornings when I have no appetite, but I still have to eat to have some nutrients. So I might wake at 8:00 - 8:30 on weekends and by 9:00 I'd try to have a small first meal. Except I can't, after eating, say half a piece of stuffed cabbage (local cuisine), I might feel (not always, but usually) that I get ~ "bloated" (this happens in about a minute). What follows is a sensation of nausea, I can feel a little bit of palpitation (but there's been less of that across the years, I think I can better control that aspect) but then I also feel the anxiety. Interestingly enough, it seems to have a "localization", and it's the epigastrium. It's highly correlated that when I feel discomfort in the epigastrium I would also be anxious (it sort of feels like a moderate level of uncontrollable panic; uncontrollable means that solely cognitive action will not be able to diminish the panic); It's possible that deep breathing can help, but I don't do that very often.
2. I lately went to a doctor (gastroenterology) to get a check-up. Blood analyses indicate higher levels of bilirubin in the bloodstream (total is a 2.52 and direct is an 0.6) and a lowered alkaline phosphatase (34 UL/dL). I am usually "slightly pale skinned" (yet the haemoglobin is in normal values, and substantially higher than the minimum) I didn't even go outside much during this period since the pandemic.
3. Someone mentioned the eyes. Yes, that symptom is one of the latest ones I've been having in the past about two months. Basically, I feel my eyes tired right in the morning when I wake up. Even if I appreciate my sleep as being "somewhat restful", this will still happen. They are not reddish much in the morning, but it's visible that some arteries are slightly dilated, and there's a feeling of dryness. The feeling of dryness generally lasts through the day, but working out (fitness bike, running in place) can help with that, for some time. Another detail that really bothers me is that as it tires, the left eye keeps producing a sensation of "something above it" that actually produces a slight pressure and discomfort. I am not confident that it is the lacrimal gland , although the sensation is positioned slightly lateral (as the gland would be located), but the sensation can "move" medially as well at times (thus the specific thing that produces the sensation is uncertain to me).

Background information:

• I was born with jaundice, which subsided in two weeks
• When I was maybe 5-7, my mother keeps telling me that whoever did an abdominal echography also noticed that "the gallbladder is slightly twisted". Well, whatever it was did not impact me with any clinical symptomatology until the age of 21, when I had my first panic attack and since then, nothing was the same.

Hypotheses:

• Since the gallbladder produces salts that improve the absorption of fats, and 1 year ago when my sinusitis was really bothering me (as I'd wake up in the morning, all would be fine; 5 minutes later, my right side of the frontal sinus would start producing a slight sensation of diffuse pain, totally bearable. In about 10-15 minutes, it would turn into a well-localized, sharp stabbing pain, moderate intensity; it prevented me from focusing on my work, it was bad; it would last throughout the morning, I can't remember details of what it was like throughout the day; it was exactly like this, every morning, for a week; then I went to a doctor; the first doctor gave me a cephalosporin 2nd generation antibiotic, which I'd self administer through an IV; the diagnostic was put on the basis of a radiography of the frontal sinus which had shown inflammation, but buccal bacteria cultures came up negative for Streptococcus / Staphillococcus / Candida, so I think that doctor just "took it easy" and just gave a ~ "good for all" antibiotic {this highly displeased me}; I had been taking such a strong antibiotic for a week and a half, then I stopped, I was starting to think that although the symptoms receded in the very first days {there is a note to be made here: from what I remember, the symptoms receded the day I went to see the doctor, before buying the medication; although there is surely a metabolic pathway malfunctioning, it is still relevant that the nervous system can regulate pathways to such an extent}, I was putting too much strain on the liver; besides that, I had doubts that the antibiotic was the "direct cause" for the pain receding; the pain appeared again after a while, less strong,