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Does anyone suffer from severe anxiety after brain anuerysm coiling

I was diagnosed with three aneurysms three years ago.  Mine did not burst but I had to have one of the coiled and they are monitoring the others.   After surgery I went back to work and thought everything was fine.  I was driving into work one morning and had this weird sensation that I was going to black out luckily I was able to pull over.  My entire body was vibrating, heart was racing and felt OK this is it Im dying.  I was able to call ambulance after a few minutes and was taken to hospital.  They did a scan and everything looked ok.  I have had two other incidents since then and it is so scary.  They never figured out what the incidents where and told me they were severe panic attacks.  Because of this I am anxious when I have to drive or when I am alone.  Always afraid I will have an attack.  I now suffer from severe anxiety and am not sure what the answer is.  I have tried many types of medication but nothing seems to work.  I have low blood pressure vertigo and chronic migraines so the medications I have tried have just made me feel worse. I used to be such an outgoing person and now I am afraid to leave my home and have withdrawn from people because I find just communicating is exhausting.  The stress has caused me to lose words when talking to someone, I've lost focus and the ability to think clearly.  Not sure what the answer is. Has anyone experienced this and do you have any advise
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973741 tn?1342342773
I think that you have had a bit of a traumatic issue with the aneurisms.  Health scares like that ca definitely lead to anxiety and health anxiety.  I fully understand why you feel the way you do.   I had something health wise that involved terrible vertigo, debilitating vertigo.  I'm a mom and being unable to function at all just does NOT work.  And the vertigo would start with a fullness in my ear.  Well, whenever I would think I was starting to feel that fullness, I'd get very anxious.  That's just my story of how a health incident sent me down the road of anxiety over it recurring like you fear your panic attacks might.  If it were me, I'd now look at it like anxiety is something to be treated in general.  This is done often very successfully with a combination of medication and talk therapy.  After several months of no new vertigo attacks for me, I started to feel more confident that it wouldn't happen again.  I did have another one about a year later completely out of the blue.  Oh well.  But if I were battling the anxiety long term, I'd take steps to overcome it.  This is my recommendation for you.  I'd speak to your primary care doctor first and get a referral for a therapist and talk about your next steps to working on this. It CAN get better.  :>)  hugs
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Again, someone who has suffered these kinds of medical problems should be very very careful about getting anxiety treated with meds.  I would definitely not do that until your specialist said it was safe to do.  Therapy, of course, is always safe to do.  
Avatar universal
What you're describing does accord with getting panic attack disorder.  But given your medical experience, you have more reason to suspect something physiological than perhaps others do.  Doctors very often ascribe to anxiety what they can't find, but that doesn't always mean it doesn't exist, it often means you need better doctors.  A certain percentage of those who are diagnosed with a mental illness in fact have a physiological disorder causing the anxiety.  Examples are many -- thyroid problems, nutritional deficiencies, concussion syndrome, blood sugar problems, dietary intolerances, and many others.  For most people, psychiatrists who call themselves functional physicians, which means they actually still practice medicine and first look for physiological causes, estimate that at least for their patients about 10% at the least have a physiological cause for their problem that can be found if a doctor just looks.  But for you, again, you've had problems that make it more likely to be physiological, including the vertigo.  So you have to keep looking at that angle, even if it means going to someplace like the Mayo Clinic where docs will look much harder than most docs will.  But once you start having anxiety attacks, even if they are caused by something that can be found, you can become used to having them, expect to have them, and so you can still end up with a chronic anxiety problem.  So while you do need to keep looking at the physiological, you also should at this point try seeing a therapist who specializes in anxiety treatment to see if you can't learn to deal with it in the meantime until you either find the cause or fully eliminate a physiological cause.  It could just be from the intense stress of what you've gone through.  So I would say, keep at it from both angles, because wherever it came from, it's there now.  All the best.  
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I'm not suggesting medication at this point, which I might without knowing your history given you're becoming so isolated by it, but until you know, again, if it's something from what you've suffered physically, I'm not sure how you'd know if the medication was safe for you to take.  I'd want to know that first.
Thanks so much for your advise. I will be seeing a therapist soon and am still pushing for more test to see if something else us going on. Time will tell
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