I'll have real problems explaining this one, but I'll try my best, and I'll try and keep it real short too, although its hard as its complicated.
I know this: At age 20, right at the end of the army, I was admitted to a field hospital (the simple kind where there were beds and not much else) during a 14 day field exercise. I had been struggling a lot with the cold for a prolonged period (it was winter) where my body felt...like achy and almost influensa-like. Then they found me in my tracked vehicle, behind the steering wheel, parked front first into a tree. It can't have been a real crash, more like it just stopped there in slow speed. The engine was on, and the tree and the vehicle were practically unharmed. I was apparently unconscious, but awoke when they touched me, screaming with an insane headache. I remember it felt like the slightest movement of the head hurt like I was going to die. The evacuation to the field hospital out of the mountain was murderous to say the least.
Once there I was admitted with a fever of 40'9 celsius (105.6 Farenheit). They did a CRP test wich apparently was unconclusive to virus or bacteria (don't ask me how they came up with that result). So they alerted a medivac helicopter, but due to my large pain when being moved hesitated to fly me to a large hospital. That helicopter was on standby alert for a 5-min liftoff the next 48 hours or so, as my fever never went up one point and never came down much. They gave me a lot of anti-fever tablets, and I was awoken every half hour as they feared coma or something.
Fever suddenly dropped right down to normal after 2 days, I was denied to smoke in the field hospital when I was on my feet, I got mad (and feeling perfectly good again, although lacking energy) and discharged myself and went back into the field. It took one day before I was right back with fever just slightly lower. This time I stayed longer, and got allowed to smoke
They concluded that I must have gotten fuelpoisoning from refilling 18 tracked vehicles the night before it started manually from jerry cans. I am not sloppy, I did not spill anything. Fumes? -possibly.
14 days later I was on a flight home. I remember having more truble than normal equalising pressure in the ears during take-off and gaining altitude, butr quickly fell asleep as was my custom on flights. I find them relaxing. Next thing I know I wake up and I for some reason cant really feel myself breath, even when I try to. Sure, I see my chest moving, if I put my hand in front of my face I feel the air, but I cannot for the life of me feel the motion in my chest. I get startled and look around me to see if anyone is struggling to breath, noone does, so it's not the plane oxygen. I manage to keep reasonably calm and we land just fine.
From that day I have had clicking noises in my ears. They started in the right, they have with time moved to the left as well. It's just what it sounds like...clicking. With time its developed into soreness in the ears, fullness, in periods tinnitus...you name it. My ears are a mess.
I saw one specialist about a year later, he heard me say clicking and didnt do any examination, he just told me he knew excactly what it was, he called it ear/nose syndrome or something, and said it was due to the muscles that open and close the canal from our ears to the nose being too tense, leaving the canal open when it shouldnt be and the clicking was due to the canal opening and closing. No treatment was available or effective, and "some people grow out of it in time".
During the same time I was so bothered by the breathing thing it developed into anxiety. With me it was never the fear really, it was more my body firing off a multitude of strange symptoms. If I was in a good period I was at perfect health nothing could stop me. When it was bad it was bad all day, every day, and handicapped me greatly.
I was started on anti-depression meds, and reacted terribly poorly. I got my first real panic attack from them, and the anxiety switched from what I'd then think of as moderate, but prolonged, to terribly strong attacks lasting shorter periods of time.
And my body....well it did the strangest things. One day I felt a burning feeling on my arm, and took off my shirt to see a flaming red rash appear out of nowhere all up my arm. I would feel like I lost connection with legs, or with arms. I got heat stroke twice during exercise...in moderate warmth....you name it, I got it.
I admitted myself finally to a treatment facility for anxiety and depression and they had me quit Sobril wich I had been using, and the newer kinds of anti-depression meds too. They had me try an older better tested tricyclic antidepressant, and tought me the value of a good sleep pattern, regular meals, exercise, and natural remedies for relaxation. However...it didnt really start to get a whole lot better before.....
One day I had been visiting friends back home and was driving back in my car, when I had a real killer neck pain. I was trying to massage myself, but suddenly it felt like somone had punctured my spine at the top of my neck and was puring ice cold water right into the nerves. It really felt like I was dying. my body felt numb, and it fel like my eyes were going black even though wide open. I severely panicked, but the sensation gave away over the next minutes. It was terrible. I wrote it off to having hyperventilated without noticing and almost fainting although I had never had that before.
The next few weeks were terrible. my stomach felt like it had stopped working, and I lost night vision completely. I could go out in just early evening and be practically blind. They had told me the sideffects when starting the tricyclic was severe so I thought it was that.
Then I got pneumonia. They got me on antibiotics, and the ear cliking stopped, and the anxiety and all my other problems just seemed to die out of themselves.
I was in more or less perfect health for 8 years. After a period of pushing myself far too far at work I got the same symptoms again. I ended up with Sinusitis and and antibiotics and what do you know....again I was back. Each time it actually felt like my nerves (and I'm talking about the actual nerves and sences) needed to be retrained and repaired over time before they got better, but they did.
Fast forward another 8 years or so and I landed in the same mess again. Again I got on antibiotics for sinusitis, but this time they helped my jaw joint pains greatly(!) and again the ears are much better while on them. Except after the clicking noises change from clicking to feeling like large bubbles of air hitting my ear drums from inside, and it is so sore you could not believe it. And something snaps in my head, it feels like something finally opening up, and I get a wet feeling inside the ear, like water was pouring there, and afterwards...the nerves in my body feel like somone taped them on the outsid of the skin and they are exposed to air and wind and terribly inflamed.
Wich leaves me with this:
EVERY time I have had this anxiety thing bad, my ears are REALLY at their worst too. Every time I get an antibiotic, my ears feel better and the clicking noises dissapear for a while.
It feels like it affects balance. Not as in meniere's where your world will seem to spin before the eyes, but as in standing on a ship in waves all the time, or actually dropping right down to the floor, body just collapsing. Sensation of cold/warmth/touch is affected. Sensation of the body changes. It's often like getting used to a new body each day.
But this time it hasnt gotten perfect after the antibiotic. The infection in my nose is back, although I use a neti pot every day, and my ears got bad again really fast. I have a lot of watery eyes and it feels itchy behind my eyes, the sinuses feel itchy and sore still and well... post-nasal drip etc.
I have tried to figure this out so many times. theres something that doesnt add up to let anxiety explain it all. I have known and talked to so many anxiety patients, and theirs is nothing like mine. Well except the parts where I am excacly like them but that I recognise and accept is anxiety and those symptoms I havent really mentioned here even.
Some relevant information: I had multiple sinusitis' in my late teens. They never really went away in the end. At one point something felt like it exploded in the back of my throat wich gave me the worst taste I have ever felt for 2 days after. Like a mix of metal and ....putrid something.
Later I have wondered if that was my sphenoid sinus. I know that the sphenoids are really close to the brain, could it be that my eyes got affected from the shenoid sinus infection getting through when I had night vision loss and the point where it felt like going blind/dying? I know now that loss of night vision can in no way be a sideeffect from the medicine I was taking they don't do that. And why when something feels like it opens/lets go pressure wise in my ears (and the inside of them feel wet) do my entire nerve network feel fragile/exposed/inflamed?
Any takers for a unified theory? I have always had the feeling this is something treatable, that somone messed up not checking out the real reason behind my hospitalisation back in the army. Maybe I'm wrong....but I'm not mad, and I have the papers to prove it: No personality disorder apart from anxiety (not even depression) and no paranoia either.
