so fed up with feeling like something is wrong..please someone help ive got anxiety,depression and my parents got told when i was small i had asthma im now 22 and im so scared that something bad is going to happen been having tightness in chest for about two months ive had blood tests,spirometry test,chest xray been to so many doctors they have used stephstope on me had ambulance car out..i cant stop thinking it something bad..i went and seen a doctor the other day and instead of taking the brown inhaler twice in morning and twice at night to do it once in morning and night for two weeks then stop for two..im obsessed with asthma i keep looking here there and everywhere..the lady said i could of outgrown it but im scared could i been outgrown it i see so much about your oxygen dont have to be bad or you dont have to be wheezing and the stephstopes dont always pick up stuff😔😔
i cant stop and i cant carry on😭😭xxxx
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Shannon97
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Hi Shannon , THERE IS NOTHING PHYSICALLY WRONG WITH YOU ! The problem you have is psychological . Google ' worried well ' , this is a recognised mental health issue .
This is an incredibly heavy thing to say to someone unless you are 10000000% certain it's correct and from this short statement it's impossible.... But you could make matters worse in any case so being more sensitive and addressing another more carefully with love everyone is likely to get a better result. When I say this i hope you receive it gently and in humility, I mean no harm. I only worry for another soul who may need that x
Thats fine . One in four doctors appointments are taken up by people with nothing wrong with them . By doing this time and resources are being taken away from those who really are ill .
It seems Drs are paid extremely well whether they heal, do nothing or even make matters worth. There is no shortage of them, so clearly all get the work they need without over burdening any system. Yet have you seen the statistics of those who are questioned for being psychosomatic even though their illness is real and physical? The entire system and those who support it should do no harm. Err on the side of caution, you can always circle back around gently, but a misplaced accusation could break a spirit xx
The issue is she has had all the tests and only has 1 symptom of asthma which is chest tightness, which is also very common in anxiety. Her GP initially gave her the brown pump 2 years ago because she was constantly at the GP complaining about the chest pain. Now the doctors are trying to downgrade her meds cause they can find nothing wrong and she is literally only suffering from chest pain/tightness, and no other symptoms of asthma. She has been diagnosed with costochondritis which she is ignoring. She has posted the same thing almost every 2 days about how scared/worried she is about possibly, maybe having asthma. She does admit to having health anxiety. The issue is this is an asthma forum and not an anxiety one. If you read her past posts you will see what we mean.
She also rarely reply’s to posts that aren’t commiserating with her, as many many people (over the 4/5 forums she posts this in) have suggested she tried to find support for her anxiety. Many many people have tried to support her and give advice but she doesn’t listen.
And there is currently a GP shortage... at one practice near me patients are having to wait 3 weeks before they can get a GP phone call, and another 2-3 weeks before they can get a face-to-face appt. yes some areas cope better than others, but she has had multiple appts and investigations into 1 symptom that is easily explained by anxiety and what the docs are now suggesting it as as ALL tests have come back clear of a physical issue. She has been fully supported by the system but from the sounds of it won’t look for/accept help for her mental health as she insists that there is a physical reason despite all the tests.
Sometimes with health anxiety they do need to be told straight up they are fine (we have tried every other approach between multiple forums). So we may sound callous but we have tried every other approach
The knock on of this ' health anxiety ' is that genuine people with genuine illness can not get a diagnoses or treatment , because doctors have become sceptical after having their time wasted hundreds of times over .
Ok Shannon so I’m just gonna say this straight up cause you literally haven’t stopped posting the exact same thing on here, three other forum pages and facebook too for months now.
You have been told by multiple people whether it be doctors/nurses/asthmatics on this page (and had good results from many many tests-as you keep telling us over and over again-with the addition of ‘🙁’ which makes absolutely no sense at all!!) that you do not have anything to be worried about in regards to asthma and I really think it is time for you to actually listen to everyone who has been trying to help you.
PF and sats being good, alongside having no wheeze, no worsening of symptoms at night, no cough, no shortness of breath and being able to live a normal, active life without having issues talking/walking/eating/sleeping due to your breathing demonstrates that the issue is NOT asthma. Those who say they don’t wheeze etc have all the other issues to show a problem with asthma.
You have also said in this post along with one on FB a little while back that you had an ambulance car come out and tell you you were fine. If there was an issue or any concern at all about asthma or anything they would’ve taken you straight to the hospital, no messing about.
You really do need to stop posting the same things over and over and over again. All of your posts say the exact same thing-please read them back if you don’t believe me...
Being told that you can cut down on your preventer inhaler means that IF you do have a little bit of asthma it is incredibly well controlled and your doctors/nurses think you do not need the inhaler to stay well. This is a GOOD thing. It also further points out the fact that you are literally not having an asthma flare or any problems that are related to your possible mild asthma right now.
Anyway...as you are clearly not going to take any notice whatsoever of this alongside the rest of the people who are taking the time to reply to you and try to put your mind at ease I am only going to say this once.
Go to your GP and address your ANXIETY.
It is very obvious(even if you don’t realise it yourself) that you have severe health anxiety to say the least. Here is the definition of health anxiety if you don’t believe me:
‘Health anxiety is an obsessive and irrational worry about having a serious medical condition. It's also called illness anxiety, and was formerly called hypochondria. This condition is marked by a person's imagination of physical symptoms of illness.’
Going and talking to your GP is what is going to help you with your MH and you really do need to get help for it so you can feel better. Anxiety can cause symptoms that mimic those of asthma, as I’m sure you are aware. The chest tightness and pain you say you have-classic examples of anxiety mimicking asthma.
But seriously...you do need to seek help for your mental health if you haven’t already (and if you already have you need to be reaching out to them again for further support as the current set up clearly isn’t working). I saw on one of your previous posts that you are (or are intermittently) taking sertraline? If this is still the case, you need to take it consistently for a period of time before you will see any results at all and it is usually the case of you take the meds and do some sort of psychotherapy alongside it to tackle the issue head on. So of this is not happening, you should maybe ask to try it. And if you feel that after taking the medication for however long you have been, it isn’t helping at all, speak to your GP/Psychiatrist etc about changing the dose/medication.
You need to stop and think about what you can do to help yourself, be proactive and start taking control of your own life, not letting this anxiety control it for you (I now this is easier said than done but if you don’t try then you will never know how much better life is with your anxiety etc under control).
So please stop pushing this ‘I’m sorry I don’t know what to do’ and the whole ‘🙁🙁🙁’ because it isn’t getting you anywhere, just fuelling your anxiety and making you feel worse for it. It is also incredibly frustrating to read it and those depressed emojis make it so much worse.
This page (and the BLF/Asthma FB page) is for people who are suffering with their asthma/looking for advice etc etc etc from other asthmatics and yeah, I know that you think this is what you’re doing but it really isn’t. There is nothing more we can say to you and everything we have said to you has been completely ignored so there isn’t much point in us taking the time to try and help you anymore.
There are people really really suffering with their asthma and having to take a lot of medication/time off work/time out of school to try and keep them out of hospital...A&E/GP/admissions to hospital is basically a big part of life for so many people here and having you banging on about how you are convinced it is something terrible/bad/super bad asthma etc and that you are not ever going to be happy due to this is really quite insensitive of you tbh and you need to think about how others are doing/coping before posting anything more along those lines to this site.
I’m really sorry if this is coming across as mean or whatever but you need to hear it and if this helps you to get out of denial about your anxiety then great...if not...I really hope that you go and take this advice on board and seek/accept help for your mental health so you can go and live without feeling like this anymore.
I’ve answered her posts a couple of times and never had a response.. just wondering if it’s not someone with issues at all, just someone having some fun with genuinely ill people?
Rarely... only when someone is sympathetic and agrees with her fears etc. They way she posts comes across as very attention seeking, and for those of us really struggling/genuinely looking for help it’s very annoying! I think this is the 18th post on AUK in the last 3 months and must be looking at about 60ish over 5 forums in the same amount of time (British lung foundation, british heart foundation, us and 2 anxiety pages). She also posts on an asthma FB page....
To put her health anxiety in perspective she has in the past posted about thinking that a headache was meningitis and that that she’d had a stroke/heart attack. She also initially started on the lung cancer page, posting similar things to what she does here...
I think the best thing we can do is only respond by saying ‘please get your health anxiety looked at’ so people who haven’t seen her before stop ‘inappropriately’ responding to her because whilst their advice is correct for asthma, it isn’t for someone with health anxiety and only symptom being chest tightness which is a common anxiety symptom. They’ve semi done this on other forums as those users started to think she had FII/Munchhausen‘s/hypochondria as she initially started by asking/seeing what symptoms others had then saying she had them!
It’s obvious that a lot of the regular users are getting frustrated with her because it is every couple of days that she posts, but never response etc! But other than the above idea I can’t think of any other way to help (cause she isn’t listening/getting the actually help she needs).
(Just as a side note for anyone reading this: Factitious Disorder, Munchausen’s, and Health Anxiety — formerly known as hypochondria — are different things. FD is where someone makes up symptoms for no obvious external gain; Munchausen’s is the severe form of FD in which someone actually physically makes themselves ill. Health Anxiety is completely different as the person actually believes that they are seriously ill and lives in fear and often physical pain due to their anxiety disorder, which can be completely debilitating. To add to this because it’s a common mix-up: malingering is Also different from factitious disorder and Munchausen’s as it is the faking or production of symptoms for tangible intentional gain e.g. money, gifts, trips, or to get out of things such as jail time or work)
And to add to the confusion Munchausens new name is fabricated/induced illness syndrome! The reason I tend to link FII/munchausens is people are unaware of the new name. And as lay people,
over the phone, and with no feedback it is almost impossible to differentiate health anxiety from FII (in any form), and even knowing the person irl malingering v FII v factitious would need psych evaluation. So obviously we can’t say what’s going on until 1 people respond (which Shannon finally did start doing) and 2 they seek appropriate help!
Unless the asthma was misdiagnosed as a child which is actually pretty common for those born in the 90’s (like myself). Lots of kids with viral wheezes ended up as ‘asthmatics’ even tho they never had an issue again... to put in perspective I was given inhalers (preventer, reliever and LABA) aged 13 without any tests... I didn’t have any tests until I was 23. At the time I had about 20 friends with a SABA/preventer who never ever took either, and for about 10-15 of them after the initial cold/virus blip they never had a symptom again. Yes this with true asthma don’t outgrow it, and it can come with waves (usually hormone related) however there was a lot of misdiagnosing in kids in the 90s/00s
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fed up
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