Hi George,
I have had a lot of your symptoms and it turned out to be sinusitis - it took a long time to come to that conclusion (the original diagnosis was a stroke!).
"1. 90-120 resting pulse"
My pulse was occasionally elevated but not to that level.
"2. Palpitations always (no skipped ones, just pounding)"
I had pounding and skipped
"3. Trembling sometimes"
Yep
"4. Sweating"
Yep
"5. Dizziness"
Yep
"6. Feeling weak without actually losing strength"
Yep
"7. "off kilter" sort of feeling, like I could fall over at any time, but never actually would have"
Yep - I've had it so bad that I struggled to stand up but mostly it's at a low level.
"8. Feeling very cold, but my actual temperature was increased"
Not noticed
"These symptoms all seemed to get worse afer I'd eaten something sugary or carbohydrate rich. Sweets and chocolates made them appear right away (within 10 mins) and quite severly, while things like potatoes or rice took around 30-60 mins to produce symptoms and they were not as severe. By severe I mean I would be sweaty, shaking, fast pounding pulse, highly anxious etc. and not severe would be a slower pulse (but still fast), not as anxious, not quite as sweaty,etc. you get the idea."
Ok, now for the odd one - I used to get this - particularly after breakfast - it turned out to be a mechanical effect on the sinuses from the chewing!
"I went back to him a few months after (when I'd figured out what the problem was) and told him I thought it was "Idiopathic Postprandial Syndrome" and I wasn't actually getting low blood sugar because of the sugars and carbs I was eating, but I was getting rapid drops in blood sugar that were producing these symptoms. He agreed that it quite possibly was the problem. He said he thinks I will adjust to it and I still don't know what's causing it though I suspect corticosteroids that I've taken this year for Crohn's. Not sure though, 'cause if I chill out about it and eat sweets, it won't happen. If I think about it happenng, it almost certainly will happen."
The extra tension caused by worrying would set my symptoms off.
"Anyway, there's more to the story. Going back even before I started getting these symptoms I had a strange night once where I had a problem with my vision.
It lasted around two hours and seemed to come in waves of 20 mins on, 20 mins off. Basically I had a blurry zig-zag shape covering a large portion of my vision. Its origin was on the left eye and it zig-zagged up and to the right kind of like this:
\/\/\/\/\/\
/
\
I could cover my left eye and see the tail end on the right eye, and cover my right and to see the main body of it on the left eye. There was also a lot of blurring and dull vision to the very left side. It would come on for 20 minutes, then fade out for 20 minutes, then fade back in, etc. which lasted a total of almost exactly two hours.
For the life of me I don't know why I didn't see my doctor about it, but it went away and I forgot about it and I've had no problem since. That was probably around April. "
I sometimes get blurred vision in my left eye but nothing like as bad as you describe there.
"So, that bring me up to now. The recent symptoms I've been experiencing are:"
"1. Tingling in hands/sometimes feet"
Yep - caused by trapped nerves due to muscle tension.
"2. "Crawling" or moving sensations under the skin. Like a snake is slithering around in there!"
Yep
"3. Headaches (sometimes local to one side or place, sometimes all over)"
Yep
"4. Twitches (random places)"
Yep
"4. A strange pressure above and behind my eyes which comes and goes. I can replicate the feeling by looking up as hard as I can for a few seconds to feel that "ache". It feels like someting is pushing down between my eyes. My vision is clear, but I feel like if it gets any worse I am going to be having mild double vision. I suspect this may be something to do with my anemia, as it has improved with my HB count going up."
Yep - a classic sinusitis symptom.
"5. Slighy "off kilter" feeling occasionally."
Yep - more than occasionally without treatment.
"7. Tingling on the end of my tongue! (new)"
Nope
"8. Tingling head (not constant and localised each time)"
Yep
"So my reasoning for thinking I have some kind of neurological thing is basically because of the eye problem I mentioned, tingling in hands/feet and the fact that I seem to have a blood sugar "thing" going on. I know my blood sugar is never out of its normal range, but I read that blood sugar problems can contribute to things like peripheral neuropathy and nerve problems."
After they ruled a stroke out I saw a neurologist (who said that there was nothing they could do) and a neuro surgeon who said he couldn't find any problems on the MRI scan.
"I realise that my symptoms are individual and I am taking the entire lot of them in one go and trying to find a common cause of all of them, but I just don't know what's going on inside my body. Everything is "normal" according to tests, my ECGs never catch the skips, my glucose meter says my glucose is normal every time, yet my blood sugars drop rapidly, my heart skips and pounds away now, my eyes went funny that time, my hands tingle! Ahhh! I'm developing some horrible disease!"
I'd get the possibility of sinusitis checked out - it should be fairly obvious if you've got an MRI or CT scan you can get an ENT consultant to look at, otherwise it's a telescope up your nose job
. If it is diagnosed, you may have a problem convincing them that your symptomatology is caused by the sinusitis but there is no reason not to get it treated anyway.
Good luck
Mark