Have never felt so shite. Unable to sleep properly since December.

[Cloud]

I have eczema, and a tiny  red rash on my back I thought was a melanoma.

Occam's Razor is a good principle to go by.  I had a longstanding mole on my leg near my foot. My feet were dry and itchy and I scratched them a lot.  One hot shower and the mole bled.  "Oh shit, I have melanoma"

Went to GP.  "You had dry feet and were scratching the area and aggravated it in a hot shower?  And you've had it for as long as you remember and don't spend all day in the sun or under a sunbed? Almost certainly just trauma, it doesn't have any of the other red flags and looks absolutely fine to me.  Of course since you being it up we can take it further."

I now have a scar on my leg from where it was removed and a letter confirming benign compound mole just like the doctor said.

Later went in with difficulty getting food to go down and reflux, but a bad habit of nightcaps that I know can cause it. Of course convinced myself of some kind of cancer.  GP: "stop having nightcaps for a bit you'll probably be fine, the reflux causes inflammation, there are no cancer red flags concerning me.  But as you ask would you like to get a camera down to settle your mind?"

One horrible experience swallowing a camera tube.  One letter confirming inflammation and schatzki ring (most likely a sort of tidal mark caused by reflux but biologists aren't really certain).  Went away when I laid off the nightcaps. 

Started learning to trust my GP.  It's better to be safe than sorry I guess so if something worries you get it checked out and they will at least offer to go the far end of the fart as they don't want to be liable in the tiny likelihood of something nasty - and sure, ask them if it's long cove or whatever - but generally they earned that title for a reason :)

[Barry Admin]

I was going to apologise but since you decide to DM me calling me a cunt and continue being a nasty piece of work here too, actually, nah. No U.

.


You can report PM's and it sends a copy to me.

[Barry Admin]

I've spent four years with the most unimaginably tortuous and worsening symptoms after nearly dying from Covid in early 2020, so yes I am quite interested in it you complete fucking turd. Also there is a concerted political and media effort to obscure the long term effects of Covid in order to 'get the plebs back to work' so many people might not be aware of how new mystery health issues could be related to it, so it's worth spreading awareness. And you're an absolute cunt.

Oh, I don't need to see the PM's, this is enough for a temp ban right here. Please be more civil when you return.

[Cloud]

Sorry for my part in aggravating it. Give me a kick too if you need to. 

[George White]

Same for me.

[Cloud]

Also somewhat concerned about downplaying potential health issues so yeah, do go to the GP, do seek second opinions if something worries you (stuff like mole removal is no huge deal to go through, even gastroscopy is, while horrible, a short time that ends), we only get one life that we know of. Hope those diagnosed with long cove manage to get effective treatment asap too.  My point is there does have to be a point at which you trust them to avoid getting into a cycle of convincing yourself of nasty things and questioning all the professionals, which then comes with its own problems.  I think I have some level of hypochondria and know that it probably causes more problems than it's trying to protect me from. 

[Marner and Me]

Get on the nattokinase pills

[madhair60]

saying "get over your covid derangement" to someone with debilitating long covid might be the biggest cunt move I've ever seen on here

[Barry Admin]

I don't think their response was nice at all, but the provocation was certainly quite intense. Hard not to lash out when someone is nasty to you.

[jamiefairlie]

Is not knowing the answers to the DVSA car theory test a "physical issue"? Is it "some form of chemical imbalance"?

Not knowing a fact that you've never been exposed to is normal is it not?

Anxiety has proven physiological causes. The process is known, it's not magic, it doesn't just happen. It's like cancer, heart disease, strokes - none of them just happen. Everything that occurs in a human being had clear biological and chemical causal chains, otherwise how else does it occur?

[Dr Rock]

Cos you've gone a bit mental? I'm not a doctor. Oh wait, yes I am.

[Glebe]

I used to get large patches of this fungal thing called tinea versicolor. I haven't had it in awhile, but I was prescribed Nizoral, which is actually a medicated shampoo but can be used on the condition. You apply it and the rash fades really quickly.

[Deskbound Cunt]

I suffer from chronic insomnia. I can go without sleep for two or three days running.

Not ideal but I find a k drug once a fortnight sort of resets me. Just the "idea" of them helps me.

[Cloud]

saying "get over your covid derangement" to someone with debilitating long covid might be the biggest cunt move I've ever seen on here

It was a bit (intentionally) nasty, I was annoyed at having so much abuse hurled at me.  Biggest cunt move seems a bit extreme though, must be either a personal raw nerve or you've not paid attention to some of the other threads especially political ones...

Admittedly my original comment was a bit sneery and unnecessary and the plan this morning was to apologise for that. [...] That said, I don't think it quite deserved all the name-calling hence the planned apology became more of a doubling down. 

If they have a long COVID diagnosis then I don't mean to downplay that, I know it's a real thing and do hope better treatments are found. 

[...] Largely I was referencing the title of a thread with "COVID derangement", but yeah, out of irritation.

[Cloud]

Just one of those things that escalates I suppose. 

I stand by my above comments, but apologise for being cunty about it.

[Barry Admin]

I'm gonna edit that post now, as you're just ensuring that things will flare up again when they get back.

[George White]

Having neck pains, around my adam's apple. Anyone else get these?

[Cloud]

I have different thoughts to what's now written but alright. Eggshells it is.

[Barry Admin]

Mutual civility isn't walking on eggshells.  Nor is dropping an issue and moving on.

[TrenterPercenter]

If you have anxiety it's because there's some form of chemical imbalance in your body.

If you are interested anxiety is due to the HPA-Axis, it's not a chemical imbalance per say but a dysfunction between the parts of the system.



You are right adrenaline & cortisol are created in your kidneys, but anxiety in terms of mental disorder is really about your brain and how it responds to its environment. It's the inappropriate excitation (dysfunction) of this system that qualifies it as anxiety disorder (though you can and people do have problems directly with their adrenal glands which gives them the symptoms of anxiety).  One of the main causes of anxiety is trauma, especially in childhood.  Your brain has evolved to respond to it's environment and it encodes responses as kinds of templates, we can unlearn them (what psychologists do) but they can be hard to shift, especially when they become embedded over time or are the result of significant trauma.  I think it is important to think of MH existing biologically and "from the body" but it's equally important to not see its causation as purely biological, that is why medical models do not work for MH and need to change to psychosocial and biological models.

One of the biggest barriers people have with mental health is understanding the difference between causation and effect.

[Barry Admin]

I get my adrenal gland tests soon, had to get my bum out for that!  Interested to see if there's anything there that might explain anxiety, like too much adrenaline in my system.  Then MRI tomorrow hopefully, if my shoulders actually fit.

[thr0b]

Having neck pains, around my adam's apple. Anyone else get these?

You may find this site useful:- https://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/

[TrenterPercenter]

I get my adrenal gland tests soon, had to get my bum out for that!  Interested to see if there's anything there that might explain anxiety, like too much adrenaline in my system.  Then MRI tomorrow hopefully, if my shoulders actually fit.

Could be, the anterior pituitary is also involved in the HPA so if you did have something going on there (sorry I may have missed some updates) could be that also.  Anxiety can absolutely become chronic from trauma though (the good news here is it is quite easily treatable) great that you are getting everything checked out though (including your arse by the sound of it).

[canadagoose]

Can I just echo the thing about gluten sensitivity, except please do have a test for coeliac at the doctor's before you stop. I had a test at the doctor's before I stopped wheat, or at least I thought I did, because the doctor forgot to send off the test and ruined it. Good luck with it all. It did me a world of good in terms of GI dysfunction, which I appreciate you don't have, but there are other symptoms to it too. Headaches are one thing. But don't worry if it isn't, just please get it checked out.

[McDead]

Can I just echo the thing about gluten sensitivity, except please do have a test for coeliac at the doctor's before you stop. I had a test at the doctor's before I stopped wheat, or at least I thought I did, because the doctor forgot to send off the test and ruined it. Good luck with it all. It did me a world of good in terms of GI dysfunction, which I appreciate you don't have, but there are other symptoms to it too. Headaches are one thing. But don't worry if it isn't, just please get it checked out.

Absolutely. I've had two coeliac tests in the past and I botched them both because I had effectively already quit gluten. This time around I just quit it outright, and it cleared up SO MANY of my problems (gastro stuff, various twitches and pains, nights sweats, itchy hands, restless legs, brain fog, anxiety, insomnia, low mood), but I really wish I had a concrete diagnosis to lean back on when temptation kicks in.

[George White]

Then I think we have a winner, George. A "wheat intolerance" is either coeliac or Non Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity, neither of which you grow out of. Do you also have a weird rash? Psoriasis? Premature balding, zero libido?

Give it a shot for a week, see if it makes a difference. If you're that desperate, and the meds are doing nothing, it can't hurt. And if you *do* see some relief, go back to your GP and ask - nay demand - a blood test.

I did have an overall blood test, and they didn't find anything. They checked my blood sugars, thyroid, etc, I'm sure they checked my vitamins and stuff, but I'm not sure.

[McDead]

A "general" blood test isn't the same as a coeliac blood panel - they don't look for those antibodies as a matter of course, you have to ask for that.

It's oddly quite hard to convince people to try gluten free living. I was the same - even though I knew it made me ill, tired and weak, I still kept eating it, and tried to make up for the physical shortfall by taking tons of vitamins, probiotics, practicing mindfulness and meditation etc. It worked reasonably well for a while, till it didn't. I swear to god that garbage is addictive.

Anyway, you've nothing to lose from giving it a shot, George.

[ZoyzaSorris]

Sorry for bringing the tone of the board down, and derailing your thread George - a temp ban was probably a healthy wake up call from Barry Admin to keep my anger in check...

Apologies Cloud for going overboard with the aggressive response but hopefully in mitigation you can understand why that exchange was upsetting for me - this disease has literally wrecked my life - four years of extreme physical and mental torture to an extent I previously never imagined possible, with no end in sight, (in fact it keeps getting worse) certainly takes it toll, and yeah, as a result it is a serious area of preoccupation and endless research for me and also a somewhat sensitive issue.

I probably wasn't communicating very effectively and I didn't mean to belittle anyone's battles with anxiety which can have serious effects in its own right and is well worth looking into treating where it's a possible factor, though I do still stand by my take that these things are more physiological in origin than usually recognised and that further research into the body at cellular and microscopic structural level will continue to elucidate that. (I've had times in my life where the exact same level of adverse environmental conditions have been totally manageable and others where they have given me sever anxiety and it can def be correlated with my physiological state).

I have had periods of anxiety problems myself in the past and I can assure you chronic effects of Covid are very different, though they certainly cause severe anxiety and stress on top of everything else - being in constant pain all over your body, where every breath you take is uncomfortable and laboured, all the while feeling like you are gradually developing dementia, tends to affect your mental state too, especially accompanied by zero useful medical help!

I'm not trying to diagnose anyone at any point and I suggest to George that trying to mitigate anxiety is a good starting point, and agree that when we fear we have a serious health problem it is often our body reacting to something else.

However the point I was trying to get across is that health professionals far to easily default to stress and anxiety as a go to diagnosis when they can't work out what's wrong. This despite the fact that there are huge gaps in understanding especially when it comes to mechanisms of various chronic illnesses - there is an instinct to psychologise those gaps, partially driven from above by vested interests (if a disease can be psychologised it makes it a lot easier to justify not supporting people) and  partly just through the convenience of being able to pass the buck onto the patient to 'think themselves better' and if that doesn't work it's not because the treatment or diagnosis was wrong, it's because the patient wasn't trying hard enough or didn't want to get better.

This paradigm has caused an enormous amount of damage to chronically ill people for decades and is especially dangerous a mindset when it comes to a novel pandemic which had massively increased the chronically ill population. 

So just wanted to make clear that people shouldn't just take the doctors word for it without critical thought and questioning things if they have mysterious lingering health issues is all.

I'm not some Zero Covid extremist, I don't even mask or anything though perhaps I should (seems a bit pointless when I have a kid in school who is bringing back every virus under the sun on a constant basis), but I do think there needs to be an effort to provide clean air in schools and other public places, and most of all a large investment in research into what it's doing to us and how to stop the damage caused by it.

Ok, yes I am passionate about it perhaps unsurprisingly given the above and I know it's likely to be annoying, but it's also clear there is a huge concerted political and media effort to try and memory hole the whole thing and pretend that it's not happening or it is no worse than a cold, when there is an enormous and building body of scientific evidence showing the harm repeat infections and viral persistence are doing to all sorts of systems in the body, from accelerating brain ageing and weakening blood vessels and the gut to depletion / dysfunction of various types of immune cells.

So given there is this attempt to brush it under the carpet I just want people to be aware that new health issues could possibly be related to Covid (obviously other health problems are also still available).

Sorry for the long diatribe but just wanted to apologise for my tone and try and explain my point a bit better.

[Glebe]

I did have an overall blood test, and they didn't find anything. They checked my blood sugars, thyroid, etc, I'm sure they checked my vitamins and stuff, but I'm not sure.

I usually get a warning about my cholesterol levels whenever I get a blood test, but last time it was low vitamin D levels so the doc gave me a prescription for vit D absorption tabs.

[Cloud]

All good Zoyza. Apologies for the cuntiness from my side (I gave myself a bit of time out as well). It was unnecessary for me to pick on you over your contributions to the thread, it's quite understandable to be frustrated enough over your situation to keep being vocal about it, and to be angry at my snide sneering remarks. 

From a position of "I was lucky enough to only get cold like symptoms" privilege my "problems" are very minimal in comparison, I'm just tbh one of those whinging twats who found that although I'm an introvert, lockdown and social distancing felt *really* unsettling and miserable.  Nowhere near as miserable as LC of course and I did agree with the necessity for social distancing at the time (to the point of staying in a sort of voluntary lockdown state more than most of the general public, at least) but I guess I still have had that lingering 'dread' and assumption which I'm allergic to that people *just wanting to talk about it* are advocating for a return to 2020 :)

I totally agree with your stance, I think clean air in shared spaces would be wonderful (I mean it'd also reduce all those colds too which are still unpleasant and drains of productivity) and yeah there needs to be research, not "la la la that never happened". I'm not sure what people can do to help that happen, but awareness is fair.  (There's still some tinfoil hat on me around its origins too, truthfully, but I suppose there's little comfort to be had from being able to point the finger at the Chinese government or whatever.  What's done is done.)
Honestly your position is very agreeable in that you're recognising that life does go on and we can't go back to 2020 style measures but that there's plenty that can be done that doesn't even affect the average Joe (sadly it does affect the pockets of those who have way too much money already, as is always the problem)

Virtual handshake offered.