Hello,
I'm relatively new to the Ulcerative Colitis forum on Healing Well and have wandered over here over the past few weeks and this is my first post. I hope I don't put anyone to sleep!
I've been reading and reading and reading and have gotten to the point where I have to throw my story out there. By my question at the subject line, I have not been diagnosed other than by myself. I've been to see the doc but he is not at the point where he wishes to dispense medication....yet.
I have been a worrier for a large part of my life. I've often had this thing that gets in my head that I'm sick, I've got something, I'm dying, etc., etc, but for the most part I've been able to steer clear of anything that I thought resembled an anxiety attack. I'm always considered by everyone to be a "happy-go-lucky guy". I've got a wonderful wife and 4 beautiful boys, and when I say I've got 4 beautiful boys, this is perhaps where my story has a bit of a twist.
We have 3 boys on this earth with us and one little guy smiling down on us from above. We lost a full term baby on his due date. It was a life changing experience for us and I had to be "the rock" so to speak because as hard as it was for me, my poor wife carried a healthy active baby for 9 mos and all of a sudden something went wrong. We're not sure what went wrong but we were both of the mind that it happened for a reason and we could not control it. My wife spent a fair bit of time with a therapist discussing things and felt it was something I should do, but I never did. about 8 months later my stomach started messing up and I had some bleeding from my behind and I thought I was dying... literally. Don't know if it was the fact that I tried to be in control the whole time we were grieving but all of a sudden I basically lost it. Long story short for that episode, I got checked out via a colonoscopy and gastroscopy and NOTHING. Our lives went on.
7 years later, much goes on, new house, job stress, busy busy lives with 3 boys to run around, etc. Spring I have the same symptoms again as above and once again, I'm dying. Get checked out via colonoscopy, this time I've got Ulcerative Proctitis. Not a great thing, but at the end of the day not a bad diagnosis. I get prescribed some meds and carry on through the summer, not taking my meds as regularly as I should but nonetheless taking them. Symptoms not disappearing, so once again I'm dying. In the meantime I'm driving my wife up the wall. I visit the GI doc in early fall, he assures me nothing else is going on, prescribes some other meds, I take them, but once again I tend to miss more than I should. In the meantime, I start monitoring every little feeling in my body that is unusual. Every noise, every twitch, every ache, every pain...I'm dying again. Googling every thing! 2 weeks or so prior to Christmas I started having upper back pain/tightness..not sure how to describe it...not much sleep becasue of it regardless of what I take. Christmas sucked.. I spent the whole time feeling sorry for myself. My mind does not stop, I am obsessing about the fact that I have "something"!
Was away to a hockey tournament last weekend and ended up in the hospital. My extremities felt numb/tingly, heart started racing, BP Spiking, chest tightness...never felt like this through all my worries about "dying". Had an EKG, chest x-ray, bunch of blood work, and nothing unusual. What they did do was hook me up to an IV, and gave me some ativan.(sp) Life was good that night, not a care in the world body wise...a calm came over me, the ativan I'm thinking. No prescrip though.
Next day, I'm back to my old worrisome self and have been for the last week since I've been back! Still sleeping like crap, went to my doc for a physical after I came back, asked for something and he would not give me anything for what I am feeling is anxiety. I went back (again) to see him and he gave me some sleeping pills to help me along but still would not prescribe anything for me, as this is not his philosophy and I do appreciate that but feel like I need something.
So... based on my long drawn out tale...am I a darn good candidate for GAD?? My apologies for the lenght!