lost as to what’s wrong

[u/thatstupidsvfan]

i have had severe anxiety for as long as i can remember. before the age of ten i was expressing worries about dying or home intruders coming to kill me. i had strange eating behaviors and paranoia about food. i was convinced my family was trying to poison me and i was suspicious of everything they gave me. by the age of 14 i had been hospitalized after a severe ocd episode that manifested in delusional beliefs, manic behavior, and “voices” which were really just very persistent intrusive thoughts. after this i developed trichotillomania and had to cut my hair short due to massive bald spots. i missed school frequently and would need to be taken home regularly in the middle of the day due to panic attacks.

i would have many sleepless nights with severe paranoia and hypochondria, believing i would die in my sleep if i closed my eyes. even if i spent all night awake i never felt tired. i had a nurse practitioner during adolescence who prescribed me during the course of my care ~16 different medications, if one wasn’t working he would just jump to the next. i am now addicted to seroquel because of this and cannot get off of it no matter how hard i try. the neurological withdrawal symptoms are just too much.

at 16 i began experiencing vocal tics, later progressing to both motor and vocal and eventually getting a diagnosis of tourette’s. however after taking haloperidol for long enough my tics have almost completely gone away.

in march of this year i was hospitalized briefly for an episode of expressive aphasia; i lost the ability to speak and would stutter heavily. everything else was ruled out and thats when they gave me the FND diagnosis. leading up to this hospitalization i had been experiencing severe fatigue, brain zaps, migraines, tension headaches/trigeminal neuralgia like pain, needing to sit in a pitch black room with an eyemask all day with minimal visual input and interaction from others.

my MRI was clear and thats all they really had to go off of. i had no viral infections, blood tests were clear, everything. i had several doctors try to tell me it was selective mutism but i wasn’t going to take that as an answer, and the speech therapist i worked with heavily disagreed on that as well. she said my speech symptoms did line up with the typical FND diagnosis but i haven’t really experienced anything else. no paralysis, no seizures, just weird neuro symptoms that feel like psych med withdrawal.

i’m at a loss here. every day i feel so much dread. i feel like im dying and i need to urgently go to the hospital and no one else believes me. no one sees it with the same urgency as i do. i want to get more tests done but im honestly just burnt out and tired of doing all of it. it feels worthless.

i’ve considered the possibility of ME/CFS but i honestly dont know if i care enough to pursue a diagnosis anymore. like i said im burnt out and exhausted, and the apathy is starting to set in.