Why am I having severe night sweats?

[Brieezybreeze]

I have dealt with anxiety and depression for a few years. More recently my anxiety got out of control so I decided to seek help from my doctor. I was also struggling from extreme fatigue. I knew I needed something for anxiety but I also felt as though something wasn’t right. I would sleep in till the last second till I had to be to work, I would use my lunch breaks to take a nap, and I would go home from work and pass out for 2-3 hours. When I mean I was tired I mean like beyond exhausted all the time. So anyway my doctor started me on Celexa and ordered some bloodwork. My bloodwork came back that I had Lyme disease. I took the doxycycline for a month and man that stuff is brutal. I honestly didn’t feel much better. Still exhausted as always. And then I started to develop night sweats 2 months later. But I was also sick with a sinus infection and some kind of throat infection. I have been on so many antibiotics this year it’s not even funny. But ever since then I have had night sweats for about 2-3 times a week. I told my doctor and he recommended I see an infectious disease doctor. I saw him about a month after which was the soonest they could get me in. He ordered extensive bloodwork. They said that I didn’t have Lyme but I was recovering from mono. Is it possible to have Lyme and mono is one year?? Or did I never have Lyme and it was actually just mono? Are my night sweats really from mono? The last two weeks they have increased to every single night and there getting worse. I wake up drenched in the middle of the night. My husband woke me up just the other night because the bed was soaked. My clothes get completely soaked and everything. I’ve tried sleeping with no covers I’ve even tried sleeping naked nothing works. I get really hot and wake up in a pile of sweat and then as soon as I get up I have chills. My doctor now wants to cut back on my Celexa and see if it makes a difference. I’m so frustrated any help or advice would be great. My father had lymphoma and he told me he had mono n then night sweats before they diagnosed him with lymphoma. I’m only in my early 20’s I’m kinda freaking out and frustrated.

[Paxiled]

Okay, you say you suffered from anxiety for years but apparently managed it without medication.  Then you started suffering symptoms, but it's not clear if the increase in anxiety occurred before you started feeling sick or after.  Mono is a very serious illness that makes you really really sick.  It can adversely affect the liver.  It can definitely cause sweating, but probably more in the earliest stages.  It does cause extreme fatigue.  It's often hard to distinguish it from other illnesses -- way back when I was in college they thought I had mono but it turned out to be tonsilitis.  Sometimes it takes the body awhile to manifest symptoms doctors can find; until then they can be very confused.  As for the Lyme, it's possible you tested positive and the antibiotics worked and so you later tested negative.  It's possible you never had it.  It's possible you still have it.  It's a very hard disease to diagnose and treat.  There are two levels of Lyme -- the basic disease that is kind of like having the flu and the chronic version, which can feel like fibromyalgia.  The problem here is that, and I know a certain person is going to chime in opposing this, you had some complications going on and your general doc was out of his league in trying to treat them.  He should have sent you to that specialist before putting you on Celexa.  It's pretty dumb to put you on any medication to treat symptoms before the bloodwork comes back.  When it came back positive for Lyme, that disease causes every symptom you're complaining about.  So does taking antibiotics.  Right now your immune system is totally messed up and you're vulnerable to all kinds of things until (if) it recovers.  Your beneficial organisms that protect you from bacterial and fungal infections and maintain your emotional system are probably in crisis and need to be replenished as best as possible -- you can help that by taking the best multi-spectrum probiotic in the refrigerated section of the best health food store in your area and also by eating foods that are very good food for probiotics, such as cultured or fermented foods like kim chi.  Now, more bad news -- one of the most common side effects of Lexapro and Celexa, which are both made by the same company and have the same root ingredients basically, is night sweats.  That's why a good doctor would never have put you on that if he thought you might be suffering from a disease state, and you were and are.  Antidepressants can have both start-up and long-term side effects, and these effects start before the beneficial effects do.  If bloodwork was called for, and it usually is a good idea to do that whenever someone has the kind of symptoms you were reporting because while anxiety can cause a lot of horrid stuff anxiety itself and the same horrid stuff can also be caused by a host of physiological problems, so it's good to eliminate them before deciding it's from anxiety.  It appears the anxiety spike was caused in your case because you were very sick and with that underlying anxiety problem you had you reacted with additional anxiety.  So if you have either Lyme or mono, both can take a long time to fully recover from.  Time will take care of it if you're otherwise healthy and take good care of yourself and are young.  So lastly, if you've been on the Celexa for two months, make sure you taper down on it slowly.  Don't quit abruptly -- these meds are hard to stop.  But it very well may be the cause of your night sweats.  I got them from both Lexapro and Celexa, and again, they're a common side effect of those drugs.  I really do have a horrible anxiety problem and so I dealt with it by taking a shower before going to bed but sometimes woke up sweating anyway and had to take another shower to be able to sleep.  That usually worked for me, but given your illness situation, maybe not such a good idea for you right now.  I'd go all the way to stopping the Celexa, get past your illness state, and when you're fully recovered and back to full strength for awhile, decide then if you want to use medication or therapy to tackle the anxiety.  I'm basing this on your statement that you have dealt with this for years without meds, so you can probably go back to doing that for awhile.  If you were able to do that, I'd suggest therapy for it rather than meds assuming when you recover fully from your illness you go back to not being so anxious that you can't function.  I know this is long, but your situation is complex and you have a pretty severe possible set of illnesses that do take a while to recover from.  This wouldn't be the optimal time to start adding side effects of antidepressants if you don't need them.  If you do need them, if your anxiety isn't from the fear added by an illness that you will recover from after some patient time coddling yourself, that might be a different story.  All the best.  

[AnxiousNoMore]

Lyme is a complicated disease that my spouse got diagnosed with. She is seeing a naturopath which her doc steered her to. I don't know much about it but she said it is incurable when it has been untreated for a while - fwiw. Her niece also got diagnosed this summer.
There is a Lyme forum for best info. https://www.medhelp.org/forums/Lyme-Disease/show/148

[Paxiled]

Not sure the poster has Lyme, the specialist said no.  But again, there are two types of Lyme sufferers.  Most who get it have a bit of flu and then it's gone.  A minority get it long-term, and it's hard to get a doctor who actually knows how to find it and is willing to take the time to do so.  But I'm not sure it's ever incurable, just very hard to cure.  Some can get cured with antibiotics.  From what I've read, the very hardest part is getting an accurate diagnosis -- many diagnosed with it don't have it, many who have it are diagnosed as not having it.  It's like fibromyalgia -- most docs can't diagnose it properly and many diagnose it when it doesn't exist.  But at least with Lyme if you do find it they know what causes it and so intense treatment might fix it.  Or not.  Sorry about your spouse.  These hard to find diseases are a bear.