Symptoms

Fear of Deep Vein Thrombosis

February 9, 2012
By Elisa

Every time my leg hurts, I always think the worse: deep vein thrombosis. That is a blood clot that will clog a vein, and that has the risk of dislodging itself from the vein in the leg, travelling up the vein and into your lungs, causing shortness of breath, and in the worst case scenario pulmonary embolism (PE) and possibly death.

It can happen. Just ask Serena Williams.

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A Brief History of my Panic

July 23, 2011
By Elisa

Did you know Munch suffered from anxiety?

I thought this would be an easy post to write, but looking back, a lot of the memories are fuzzy and I’ve never had the best memory to begin with, so I’ll do the best I can, and I’ll try to keep it short.

The one thing I’ll always remember is my first panic attack. It happened on December 10th, 1996. What’s sad is that now I’m trying to remember the date of the first time I had sex, and I can’t. I think it was April… but I digress… Read more »

Medical Tests for Panic Attacks

April 17, 2011
By Elisa

Anybody suffering from panic attacks knows the agony of not knowing what happened to the body, or better yet to the mind, that led to the birth of these horrible attacks.

When you first experience a panic attack you think: “Oh my God! I am dying”

Then when you realize you are still alive, your second thought is: “Ok, I didn’t die that time, what can I do so that I won’t die on the next episode?” Read more »

Fear of Anaphylactic Shock

April 10, 2011
By Elisa

This is my worst problem right now (panic related of course).

I can’t, for the life of me, eat anything new without suffering the agony of a “possible anaphylactic shock”.

You would think that being 37 years old I have already been exposed to most foods out there, and so the chance of hitting on a new food to which I would be allergic to, would be pretty slim, right? Wrong!

I fear an allergic reaction to most foods that I have not eaten in a while, with the reasoning behind it being that “you can always develop an allergy to any food later on in life“.  Read more »

Visual Disturbances

April 9, 2011
By Elisa

My eyes have been playing tricks on me for a long time now. I’ll do my best trying to describe what I have been seeing… or not seeing.

One of the first symptom I can remember was my vision quickly shifting on the side, like I would be talking to someone and suddenly with the corner of my right eye I would notice all the vision field quickly shift an inch to the right. As if my eye had stopped working for a second and when it started again, it would pick up from a slightly changed angle.

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How to Describe a Panic Attack to Your Loved Ones

March 29, 2011
By Elisa

One of my biggest fears these days is getting to work. I used to take the subway train, but that is not an option right now, since I would panic so badly that I wouldn’t want to leave the house for days afterwards. So now I take the bus to work. It’s a 45 minutes or so ride, sometimes faster than that. But it’s not always a smooth ride.

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