Hello I want to share what happened to me the last few days and leave my story behind somehwere. Spoiler: My Story First of all, I'm a healthy young man, I don't smoke, I never took any drugs, but I occasionally drink alcohol on birthdays or to celebrate something. I'm not in my teens anymore, but I'm not old enough to get married. I'm not fat, but I'm also not skinny. I do have some muscles from all the training, but it isn't excessive. I really like to do sports as a hobby. I usually like to ride a bike for 60-120 km (on weekends), jog every (other) day for one hour and do weight lifting sometimes and body weight exercices, if I have enough time. I don't have always time to cook healthy food, therefore most of my diet is fast food (I mean it literally). Every food, that can be prepared fast. Sometimes it is healthy, but most of the time it isn't. There is a reason why I wrote all this. I'll come to this in a second. On last monday I celebrated with a few friends another peak in my career. The problem is, we were really in the mood and drank too much. I can't even remember what exactly happend. Yeah, I drank that much. I know, it was very irresponsible, but I also swore the next day I would never touch any alcohol again in my entire life. The whole day I felt like sh*t. I couldn't do anything on tuesday. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't get enough air, so I woke up multiple times in the night. On wednesday finally I didn't have any aftereffects from the drinking. I didn't feel ill or something, besides the fatigue. At night I tried to sleep, but I learned fast, that something is different. Everytime my body goes to "deep sleep" mode I woke up. Basically I always perceived everything in my surrounding, until my body switched to deep sleep mode for a second, before I woke up. I concentrated on my body and I thought I woke up, because my body doesn't breath on his own in deep sleep mode. That was my amateurish conclusion. I tried 3 hours to sleep, with constantly light sleep > deep sleep > immediately waking up. I also tried all possible sleeping positions. Nothing worked. I stood up and watched youtube for the rest of the night. I thought maybe I need nutritions, because alcohol drains everything from your body. On thursday I tried to take it really easy and eat a lot of vitamins and minerals. I also decided to call a doctor for a medical appointment. Remember, I'm very sleep deprived at this point. Suddenly my whole body began to tremble, I began to sweat on my whole body and everything began to black out before my eyes. I thought that was it for me. I grabbed my telephone and did an emergency call. I managed to not black out completely at the end. As the ambulance came, my body calmed down again. The emergency personel examined me on the spot. All my critical results were okay. I told them my experience and they told me, they could take me to the hospital, but it would be only a short term solution, because they probably can't figure out what is going on with me. I should call my family doctor. Only he can provide long term help and I should call him tomorrow immediately for an appointment. Another sleepless thursday. I think I managed to "light sleep" 2-3 hours, before I had enough of this torture. I stood up, googled the sh*t out of my situation, illnesses and possible solutions. I found something promising. The diaphragm is the most important respiratory muscle. Therefore you should relax, massage the diaphragm and think of nothing. Before the exercice I tried to make an appointment with the family doctor, but the line was occupied. I thought it was time for the exercice first. I did exactly that for a long time and really tried, but it didn't work as I tried to sleep. I woke up again and again and again. I also totally forgot the time by this point. In germany you can only make an appointment with a family doctor from 8:00 to 12:00 and from monday to friday. How could I miss this time frame? I think I wasn't in my right mind, because I was sleep deprived anyway and I was too into the exercise. Friday afternoon I tried to sleep again, but gave up after an hour. Right as I stood up, my whole body trembled again, I sweated a lot and I think something burst in my brain. It wasn't painfull, but it felt really weird. I called a friend (he works nearby) and told him he should bring me immediately to the hospital. He drove me to a bigger (better and more experienced) hospital half an hour away, instead of the nearby hospital, which was like 7 minutes away. At the hospital was an appraiser, who decides in which department he will put you. You either go to the cardiology, neurology or another department for emergency treatment, etc. After I told him my story, he told me, I have probably a psychological problem. It is impossible to have such symptoms at my age and healthy body. Therefore he lead me to the waiting room for patients with psychological problems. I was really confused at first. How is this a psychological problem. I have red eyes and dark circles under my eyes. Didn't he see my appearance??? After some waiting time, the psychologist examined me and diagnosed me as hypochondriac. I didn't even know what a hypochondriac was at that time and thought, that maybe my body replicates the symptoms on his own, without even having any illness. That was my only logical conclusion to this matter. I saw a documentary with an iron lung a month before and alcohol can stop your breath during sleep by some people occasionally, so I thought maybe my brain mixed everything up and just continued to create the symptom, even after I didn't have any alcohol in my body. I thought, I only have to believe it isn't true, then it will stop. It is all in my psyche anyway, right? LOL Of course the psychologist meant something totally different, but I only learned it after googling about hypochondriacs later. Then I asked, what is it about the pressure I feel in my brain? He ignored my question and only grinned. "What does he mean? Wait, is he telling me, I'm imagining this, too? WTH", I thought. Does psyche influence the body to this extent? I was totally shocked. The psychologist told me, he couldn't admit me to the psychatry, because I have a hospital with a psychatry nearby my home. Okay, so far so good. If everything is imagination, I can sleep tonight just fine, right? I just have to tell myself this is just imagination and try to influence my body somehow. It or something worked, because I could sleep on this friday night. I only woke up with a trembling body. I thought, my body just needs more sleep. The trembling however continued for several hours. Saturday night, I woke up once in the middle of the night with a sweaty and trembling body. I fell asleep and woke up again with a trembling body, which continued until noon. It was a lot less, than the day before. The pressure in my head however didn't disappear completely. On sunday i got a headache and I felt totally drunk. My left side of the face was suddenly numb. Later in the day it got better and I googled what "hypochondriac" means and couldn't believe the definition. It doesn't have anything to do with the body creating symptoms on his own. Hypochondriacs are just people, who are afraid of death/illness and pay attentian to every small little "ouchi". They are afraid this little "ouchi" is part of a much bigger and life changing or threatening illnes and therefore they try to get diagnosed as much as possible, despite the good results, they never give up in their pursuit of the perfect health check up. My personality is totally different from hypochondriacs besides the mandatory doctor visits for vaccination f.e. I only visited doctors 2 times in my whole life. Even if I'm ill or if something hurts, it is too much of a bother to make an appointment and actually go to a doctor. You ask how could I suddenly sleep on friday night, although I'm not a hypochondriac? The answer is, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do whith the brain? Because the only difference is, that (I think) something burst in my brain, then the pressure occured and then I could finally sleep. Besides that I can't think of anything. Maybe my body really just needed time to heal somehting inside me, before it worked again properly? idk Anyway, I woke up on monday without any issue and FINALLY everything seems fine until the pressure and drunkenness returned. That was the sign to make an appointment by my family doctor and I did it for tomorrow (tuesday). I decided to hid the "hypochondriac" false diagnosis and only told the doctor about my headache and brain problem and that I couldn't sleep properly the days before the pressure in my head occured. I was afraid he would also tell me something like I should go to a psychatrist and I didn't know what exactly triggered the first appraiser to send me to a psychatrist. Therefore I didn't tell him about the whole thing. My only goal was, that he sends me to a neurologist, so that he can scan my brain via magnetic resonance imaging (In germany it is harder and slower to go directly to a (specialist) neurologist, without the approval of a family doctor and I think you even have to pay yourself for him, because your health insurance doesn't pay without an "approval"). The family doctor told me, there are no specific symptoms he can match with any illness, but he is very concerned about my numb left face on sunday. He told me, an appointment by a neurologist would take months. It would be better and faster to drive directly to a hospital and make an MRI there, if something really happens. (Yeah FML, honestly...) He thought about it really long and asked me, if he should make an appointment by a neurologists anyway. I felt great that day and thought maybe I don't need it anymore and several months would be too late anyway right? We decided on careful obeservation of the symptoms first. The rest of the tuesday and yesterday (wednesday) morning, I was the happiest man alive, because nothing happened. I really thought it was finally over, but the drowsiness returned suddenly at noon, with a really big headache. The headache was over quickly but the drowsiness lasted till night. In the evening I even think I got something similar to the beginnings of a stroke. At least it felt that way. I didn't want to call the emergency again, without a real reason and luckily I didn't, because it was quickly over and I can still write this text right now. Yeah, I think it's the beginning of the end. I don't think I can get an MRI in time to get me recovered. Regardeless, I will never give up and fight to the end, no matter what awaits me in the future. I still don't know the real reason what exactly happend to me and what my illness is, but I think it has something to do with the alcohol, because it started from there. No matter what, my case is clearly an exceptional case, but never forget that alcohol is also a neurotoxin and a very dangerous substance, that should never be underestimated. Stay safe and be careful. It could be over very quickly from one moment to the other. The motto from my university was something like: "Everyone is the creator of their own luck". This never sat well with me, because you can't usually influence luck, but you can influence success. My life motto was always: "Create your own success" Focus only on the things you CAN influence. Don't wish other people luck. Wish them always success. These are my parting words. I wish all of you success in life, because you are awesome. Keep this hobby of novel reading alive. It's the best to see people enjoying their hobby together. I'll give you all my first and last virtual hug. Yeah, I know very cheesy line I got a little emotional here. Maybe we will see each other again on nuf, but I get the feeling, I will be either absent forever or for a very long time. I don't even know, if I will look up this thread again. Therefore, please excuse me, if I not reply or like any comments, if there are any. I don't think so because of this huge wall of text and lame thread. I just wanted to write my story and leave here something behind. I know it's somehow selfish of me. Anyway, it's not as final as it sounds. I just have to concentrate on rl and my situation right now. Please have fun for me as well, then I'll give you something of my own success and luck back. Viel Erfolg Chris
I also wish you good health friends, I will wait for you to reply to my comments, take it easy, i wish you the best. Ceritanya singkat namun masih melekat,bukan takdir dia hanya sekedar hadir.
I'm not a doctor but based on your story I'd recommend recommend getting to a competent hospital, like right now. You have way too many red flags for a head injury and the prognosis for those are almost invariably related to early detection. I know that might sound alarmist, but I'd rather have a false alarm now than lster discovering I had something like cranial bleeding. You also seem to have discounted potential head injuries while too drunk to remember. Good luck and I hope for your good health and long life. Edit: I should also mention that "It would be better and faster to drive directly to a hospital and make an MRI there" sounds like doctor-speak for "You need specialist attention faster than I can get it for you, go to the hospital emergency department immediately and get tests done." They might not be able to force an emergency priority transfer based just on your assessment and are getting around it this way.
Oh no!! That sounds really bad >.< I hope you can figure out the exact cause/reason behind your illness and get better soon though!!
Get your head checked. Something seems to be broken in the brain or in your central nerves system. Check your eyes and ears first. And do not rely on psychotropic drugs even if they are prescribed to you it have multitude of effects even besides it's dangerous dependencies. I got an aunt that develop multiple new allergies and allergic reactions to foods and some drugs she had been using all her lifetime without problem.
I just hope everything gets better for you. I hope there is day where you look back at this and think, "Wow, this happened me, huh? I'm glad it's over." Thanks for your message. And I really resonate with your motto. It is better to think about factors you can influence than not. Take care; hope all goes well. This is my first virtual hug to you. You should come back to give more hugs to us.
It's perfectly natural to want to leave a statement in such an iffy situation. I've prepared my own life statement for family even though I'm not confronting my own mortality. Know it's hard, but until there's an actual diagnosis/prognosis, try not to freak out too much. Reach out to your family to inform them of your concerns. At the very least, they can be there to provide moral support. Hope all goes well.
Sleep apnea. The muscles in your throat to relax way too much so when you sleep it collapses and chokes you. It's not the "totally can't breath" type of choking but the "not enough air" type. I'm not sure the alcohol had anything to do with it other than starting the ball rolling. Don't go to the normal doctors, go to a respiratory specialist and tell him/her you want to be tested for sleep apnea. You might either need to be put on a ventilator (it's not as bad as it sounds, it's just a small air pump you put on when going to sleep) or surgery to alter the muscles in your throat. Hope he comes back and reads this.... it would be ironic if he left just when he gets diagnosed.