Also wanted to add that I have lost about 18 lbs since September due to not feeling hunger.  I do not feel depressed and am on anti anxiety med (alprazalom) to help with sleep at night 1.5 mg.  I still have the Insomnia as well..  I think you remember who I am..  Hope you are doing well..

Stephanie

Thanks for responding RLR.  I am continuing to get worse.  My skin burns all over even in the cold.  My heart rate resting is in the 120's and standing is in the 150's.  I am feeling jerking all over my muscles and faint.  I don't know what this is...

I was told I had MS, but I don't know...

I am scared.   I saw my Psychiatrist yesterday and she gave me 10mg of Valium to take 3 times a day.  I started it yesterday and it doesn't seem to help with the racing heart at all.  nor the hyperreflexes.

I have had this before.  I don't feel like I have received many answers.  Maybe its something rare?  Its definitely complicated.

Feels like my body is doing stuff in reverse.  Like when I take a hot shower it feels like stinging cold beads on me.

I sweat in the cold.

My heart races and again I am worried, but do not FEEL anxious.

I am finding I am becoming weaker and my legs are wobbly.

I know there has to be something the Neuro or ANYONE can help me with.  I really need it.

I see my Neuro this morning.

Do you have any idea what this could be?  Please?  I know you can't Dx me, but I am desperate...

And I need your help...

I hope the Neuro can help me today...

Okay, first of all I'm not certain how you are attempting to do so, but you cannot properly assess deep tendon reflexes in yourself. Secondly, factors which induce hyper-reflexia are incapable of disappearing upon evaluation by the physician.

You ask me what this sounds like only hours after having been directly evaluated by a neurologist. If you seek discussion on the matter, I very frankly must tell you that the symptoms you describe are most likely to be a byproduct of a functional disorder. In other words, you are experiencing somatic or physical symptoms as a consequence of emotionally based difficulties of a very significant degree.

This is a very common feature of disorders such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or even clinical depression. You certainly demonstrate significant and persistent health anxiety, despite the fact that none of your symptoms actually rise to the occasion of any particular organic disease or disorder. The chronic nature of your difficulties would also strongly suggest that the underlying origin has been present for some time now.

You do not, in my opinion, have Multiple Sclerosis in any form and we've already been sufficiently worn by the erroneous notion that you have fatal insomnia. I would more suggest your problem to have manifested from a rather significant and traumatic emotional crisis which you are unable to contend with in a rational manner. Your symptoms and persistence of thought with regard to catastrophic disease are highly consistent with other persons who have experienced such a crisis event and subsequently contend with health anxiety and physiological manifestations which are being cast or interpreted to be signs of underlying pathology.

You have previously gone to great lengths in trying to convince me that something else is wrong and not once have I observed any pattern described to be anything other than what I've mentioned above. You certainly demonstrate fixation without relent and the passage of time has evidenced no change in your symptom expressions, no migration of the focal areas mentioned on MRI imaging and no progression of symptoms which is always present in such cases. Again, I suspect this syndrome to be functional in nature for reasons mentioned. You're in no actual danger whatsoever, nor is your life at risk.

You're going to be fine, but you must work with your psychiatrist or similar professional to bring the actual underlying cause to a level which can be examined in order to provide you with the necessary insight and relief you so desperately seek.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)

And I have worked with my Psychiatrist and she is at lost.  She has tried so many medications (antidepressions, antipyschotics, benzo's etc)...  So this makes me feel at lost.

Okay Stephanie, we're starting to proceed in that direction once again if you get my meaning. Now I've followed all of your postings and I've even taken time to bring them all out of archive and review them.

I've already given you my opinions and impressions and will state here that I am retired from practice and thus even if it were possible to do so under such an arrangement, it is improper. I see nothing of your symptoms which suggests similarity with characteristic patterns of neurodegenerative or other disease. You have exhibited the same symptoms for the past two years, with no evidence of progression.

This is not about me being prodded to think of "anything" that could be the cause, for I have already discussed my impressions in that regard.

The difficulty has to do with you making personal assessment of what you believe to be symptoms and tasking the medical community to discover the underlying organic cause. Knowing your own body doesn't confer the medical training to characterize clinical patterns of disease or illness. It's not the medical community which is at a loss here. It is your compelling persistence in maintaining that there is an underlying organic disease responsible for the symptoms you describe. Suffering from anxiety and depression is not simply about an emotional state, but rather can exist at such levels that it produces physical sequelae.

Now I've worked to some length with you over the past couple of years to try and provide you with insight into your difficulties, but I am clearly unable to define the underlying disease which you remain persistent in believing is present as the cause. If what I'm suggesting is disagreeable, then the only other suggestion I can make is to seek out someone who can share your own perspective. This forum exists to discuss the features associated with heart palpitations and although I've extended the courtesy with you to step beyond that focus, it really is becoming time for you to direct your inquiry to your present doctors or alternatively others who are capable of looking into the matter further.

I am unable to offer you anything more at this point.

Best regards,

Rutheford Rane, MD (ret.)

Hi Stephanie,
I was reading your posts and think that the feedback provided by RLR sounds very logic, now the question is more: can you believe that you are fine?
I am by no means an expert but I would suggest you go with a psychologist instead of a psychiatrist. The psychologist will help you talk and deal with your thoughts, the psychiatrist will only give you medication so the approach is very very different.
Good luck,
SK

RLR,  I do understand what you are saying.  I am very scared and my anxiety is getting the best of me and making me feel very depressed.  I know I am dealing with something but don't know what.

Currently, the medications I am taking are:

Keppra 750 mg 3 x day for Temporal Lobe Epilespy (confirmed on EEG)
Alprazolam (.5 am .5 12pm .5 4pm and 2 mg at bedtime.

I saw my Psychiatrist and she thinks there is something physical going on as well since I have been through this before and she has prescribed numerous meds, which do not anything.

I asked her if there is something we can try to help with the depression I am experiencing due to an unknown medical disease and my worry and fear.

She prescribed Anafranil 25 mg and told me to increase it by 25 mg every 5 days to reach a max of 125 mg.

I hope the Anafranil will help with the worry.  I thought the Alprazalom which I have been taking for almost 2 years would help but I still continue to have the rapid heart rate, burning, reflexes are hyper at times, muscle twitching, diahrrea, weight loss, etc...

At this point I really feel helpless.  I feel like I am lost and don't know what to do.  I have been talking to myself positively and saying, "You will be OK, you have been through this before and saying to myself what you tell me, "That my life is NOT as risk"...  

I do have a hard time believing that I will be OK because of what I am going through...  When not going through this, I am fine...  But when these attacks hit, it effects my entire body...  Moreso, it seems the Autonomic Nervous System (sense of hunger diminshed, hot and cold mixed up, burning sensations, muscle twitches and jerking, flush feeling, when I do feel pain its in the back of my head)....

So, I know that I am anxious.  I take the Alprazolam and fall asleep for maybe a couple hrs and wake up at 1:45 or 2:45 am.  

Does this sound like depression?  Do you think the Anafranil 25 mg is safe and worth trying??

I really do appreciate your advice.  I am trying really hard to get on with it and think positive.  I have 3 children whom I love very much (age 10, 7 yrs and 6 yrs) and I want to get better for them and myself and husband.

I feel confused a lot and have a hard time remembering stuff too, which is frightening to me...  I feel at lost to be honest....  I just want to feel normal......  

still waiting on the results of my Brain MRI...

Thank you for your patience as I go through this.

Stephanie