#1
Turns out untreated autoimmune disorders wreck your nervous system 👍.
#2
When you go to a doctor with a complaint, you expect them to provide you with a fitting diagnosis. Then, once you get it, a plan for healing/help can begin. Yet, such a plan of action works properly only in cases when the diagnosis is right.
Studies show that there is around a 10-15% medical diagnostic error rate. If you take this percentage to the United States, it translates into 100-200 million errors per year. Sounds pretty horrific, doesn’t it?
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Neuroendocrine Tumor, specifically.
Luckily slow growing and removed with one surgery.
Took ten years to get a proper diagnosis. Shocking the Lexapro didn't fix it.
Don’t fret – not all of these errors are serious. Only about 10 million of them result in death or disability. Okay, the word “only” might not be the best fit here, as even one serious harm is too much, but you get what we wanted to express with it, don’t you?
Someone getting misdiagnosed with anxiety happens more often than you might think. In fact, there’s a whole list of conditions that get mistaken for it. It includes rather common things such as endometriosis, inflammatory bowel disease, fibromyalgia, and less heard of conditions such as inappropriate sinus tachycardia or Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome.
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For more examples, you can check out the list we created today – it’s full of stories from the internet.
But why does anxiety disorder get mixed up with all these various diseases so often? Well, you see, anxiety symptoms overlap with many of those of other medical issues, driving doctors to make wrong assumptions when they’re presented. The assumption is made even quicker if the patient already has a history of mental illnesses, mostly anxiety itself.
#10
He found out years later, he had had about 10 small heart attacks.
#12
The first time my doctor blamed it on anxiety, then depression, then "you are just getting older, try exercising more". This went on for two years until I had a spell while grocery shopping where I don't recall walking through an entire department and finally come to and hear my daughter yelling "dad are you ok". I went to the doctor the next day and said I was not leaving until we find out what is wrong. One MRI later we find a tumor at the base of my brain wrapped around the nerves and spinal cord. Had surgery a month later and they removed it all.
Two years later all of the symptoms came back and I asked for another MRI and we found I had a clival chordoma which is a super rare bone cancer of the skull/brain. It's so rare they call us the 1 in a million g**g because that is the ratio of being diagnosed with a chordoma. I had surgery to remove the tumor but unfortunately it entered my dura and spine so it will more than likely spread.
Long story short, you know your body and you know when something is off. Don't brush it off and don't let others dismiss it either. Be your own advocate for your health and tell your doctors what you feel you need. If they disagree or gaslight you find a new doctor. They call it practicing medicine for a reason and most of the time they are basing your diagnosis on the first search of WebMD or clinical reference that matches most of your symptoms.
Of course, not only are symptom lists to blame here. The lack of knowledge by clinicians and limited time with patients can play a part in it, too. Essentially, some doctors might lean towards diagnosing anxiety because it seems like the simplest explanation for vague symptoms.
Then, there’s a whole other problem of women specifically getting misdiagnoses because doctors don’t take them seriously – something people dub as medical gaslighting. Basically, when women come with complaints, they get written off for weight gain, imagination, and mental health.
#13
Funny how my dad and grandma have the same condition (psoriatic arthritis) and I had most of the textbook symptoms, but hey, here's a Lexapro.
#15
And so, both medical gaslighting and anxiety misdiagnosis cases eventually lead to patients suffering longer than they have to without proper treatment. This can result not only in harmed health but in people forming distrust in clinicians, discouraging them from seeking further care.
Have you ever been misdiagnosed with anxiety or anything else? Share your story in the comments!
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I kept being told that my aura symptoms were something that I was imagining due to anxiety for years until I finally saw a neurologist. It turned out that I wasn't imagining the vertigo, visual changes, sensory sensitivities, motor difficulties, tinnitus, or numbness, tingling, and weakness. This is all my migraine aura.
'Anxiety' is a common assumption for any symptom for women.
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The tricky thing was that the heart condition triggered medical anxiety for me, so I *was* experiencing anxiety...but there was a root cause.
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