N. Fowleri = huge anxiety attack :(

[TuckerAylomen]

Hi, I'm Tucker and I'm new here, I've had severe health anxiety for around 5 months now, all started after my first ever panic attack.

My story is that I was working a long over night shift at work and I took a 'substance' a friend gave me to try to keep me awake (I know, it was a stupid thing to do!) well, having never done anything like this before I started to panic, had palpitations and ended up calling for an ambulance, they ran an ECG and all was fine, I had just had a panic attack. (to be honest I couldn't feel my finger in my left arm, my heart was racing and I was getting dizzy, all this coupled with not breathing properly had me very worked up to the point of insisting a colleague of mine went to get the AED we have because i was convinced my heart was going to stop).

Well after that rather stupid escapade by me I've not been the same, I've convinced myself I've damaged my heart and even had panic attacks triggered from the occasional sharp pain in my heart, in the last two weeks I've been taken into A&E 4 times thinking I'm going to die and they run tests on me.. all is clear. although, I don't always think they've done enough tests or they missed something each time, which leads to another attack.

This leads up to what happened yesterday, and what has now had me in a panic since then...

I currently have a cold and my sinuses are blocked up, which makes trying to eat uncomfortable! so I saw something called a Neti pot on the internet, figured I'd give it a go but with a small 5ml medicine syringe I had in the medicine cupboard, I read that you should put salt into a warm water solution and rinse out the nasal cavity with it, so I run the hot tap, til it gets hot, put some water in a jug then use the cold tap to cool it down to a reasonably low temperature added salt and stirred till it dissolved, then proceeded (like an idiot... do you see a trend occurring here?) to gently squirt the solution into one nostril and let it run out the other.

Then I noticed not all the water had come back out, uh oh! I start to panic... what if it does damage?

I figured someone who used a neti pot has likely had this problem too! so off to google I go.

I type in Neti Pot and one of the suggested searches was Neti pot death, being the anxious kind of person I am I had to look into this and alas it turns out that the bacteria N. Fowleri can turn into a deadly brain eating Amoeba, what's worse is I find out that the bacteria has killed people using tap water to rinse out their noses!

I started to panic, reading more and more information on this thing and I found out it can take up to 12 days for it to show any signs of infection, but after that it's 98% fatal.

I'm now sitting here one day afterwards panicking, I've had a fever today which has now gone, and a headache, as soon as these symptoms (probably to do with my cold but I still got really scared) started I convinced myself I was going to die, they have now both subsided and I've had to buy a bottle of olbas oil to keep sniffing to check I still have my sense of smell (the first sign the Amoeba is killing you)

I'm really not sure what to do now, my health anxiety is getting worse and I'm waiting for counselling, I'm on Fluoxetine currently and have some sleeping pills to help me get to sleep at night because I lose sleep worrying about things.

So far I've had 5 ECG's a chest Xray and blood tests because for months I've been convinced I'm going to have a sudden heart attack, which then moved onto having cancer and now it's a deadly parasite....

Sorry for the long post, I just have a lot to vent out at the moment... I try not to tell my partner everything because I can tell it's starting to really upset her.

-Tucker

[TuckerAylomen]

I've just woke up this morning and I can't smell anything I'm really worried now... I'm not sure if it's because I've used Olbas Oil all night to clear my sinuses but I can't sense a single thing... I've tried everything from bathroom cleaner, shower gel and cough med and I can't smell any of them

Edit: I've just had a shower and I've managed to smell a little bit now, I can smell strong things faintly... Maybe it's the cold? All I know is that it's Day 2 of 12 and I'm still really on edge over this, my medication doesn't seem to be helping me an awful lot but I have just switched meds so... that might be why.

[robertdcd]

Tucker,

I used to have this fear a lot (and sometimes still do) and I found getting a nose stick helped me out quite a bit. Even when my nose was hard to breath through I could smell the stick eventually and thus I knew I had my sense of smell and it helped me calm down. Also remember a cold can cause your smell receptors to get swollen a little bit. Don't worry!

http://www.amazon.com/Vicks-Inhaler-Soothing-Vapors-Decongestant/dp/B000052X7B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1363195053&sr=8-1&keywords=VICKS+VAPOINHALER <something like that.

The neti pot deaths you are referring to came from Louisiana an extremely old homes with poor water control. It was unbelievably rare. Don't worry about some water from a neti pot stuck in your nose. It's a saline/salt solution. No problems will arise from that and it will drain and dry out.

-Robert

[TuckerAylomen]

Hi Robert!

Thanks a lot for your reply, I've stopped using olbas oil as my cold is subsiding a little, so now I can occasionally smell it to test my sense of smell.

I wasn't aware the water systems were poorly maintained in those deaths! That's also quite a relief! thank you so much for your help! :D

[lawkcrabb]

Tucker, try not to worry about this!  I know it is hard to do, I have worried about it too.  It is extremely rare!  Take a deep breath, you are going o be okay!!