Hello. I would absolutely love to hear how your doctors appointment went. Can you update us?
Up until that last part it sounded like it could be a combination of things. For one thing, you are describing covid symptoms. Anxiety attacks always appear to come out of the blue, but seldom do -- when you look back you usually can see that you were getting anxious about something over time and then the anxiety attack came. It seems out of the blue when that first one hits, but again, it's usually not. But you're also describing what could be a whole lot of things and only a very thorough run through capable medical professionals could sort that out. You are not still on red hot alert. It's not cortisol. If it were you would be having pretty regular anxiety attacks, not just the one, and even then, the cortisol would be red hot only when it rose to the level of an anxiety attack, which it does because of your thinking, as far as we know. Unfortunately, if you're an anxiety sufferer mentally, we don't know the cause of that, which is to say, just because anxiety attacks are associated with high cortisol release doesn't mean the cortisol is the cause, it's the effect. Your adrenals can be working just fine and still have anxiety attacks. But the low potassium, if low enough, could also be an explanation for some of it. If you're not getting enough electrolytes in your diet you can have lots of problems. But then there's that last part, meaning you might have buried the lede. If you went off all those meds cold turkey or any one of them that could explain everything you're going through. You could be suffering a protracted withdrawal, and if you were on them for years probably are. That doesn't mean that's the reason for everything, but it's pretty likely it's responsible for a lot of it. Unfortunately, it's been awhile, so it's going to be hard to know. The best way to know if that's the reason is if it starts within some weeks of stopping those kinds of meds you can test it by going back on them and if it all goes away you know it's withdrawal. Because it's been months now it's not necessarily going to work that way. Stopping one drug cold turkey is God awful enough, but doing 3 is really a mind number. Now, it could also be that off the meds whatever it was that got you on that stew in the first place came back. Meds don't cure mental illness, they just treat symptoms. One way to know that is if this feels like it did before you were on medication. If it's a lot different, then that's usually a sign of withdrawal. In your case, can't tell. So you're left to see several medical professionals to figure this out -- it won't probably help to do it over the computer because you're going to need to get tests to rule out migraines, electrolyte problems, yada yada yada. If it's withdrawal, because it's been awhile you're probably too late to go back on the meds and see if everything goes away and you can then try to go off of them one by one at a pace that suits you, which means as long as it takes. Docs really don't have a clue how to deal with it when meds cause your problems because that's not something drug companies need to know how to do in order to get FDA approval. If they don't know, docs don't know. But the person to see to try is a psychiatrist. I did experience a protracted withdrawal, and because my psychiatrist refused to tell me about such things it took me a long time to figure it out on my own and by then it was too late for anyone to fix it. I've never found anyone who knows how to fix it. But the happens very rarely and so it's unlikely this happened to you, so just keep seeing who you have to see and figure it out. Peace.