somatic symptoms of BP?
Q.I periodically experience odd symptoms that somehow I attribute to my manic depressive illness, primarily because I've used up other explanations. I'm wondering if anyone else experiences: periodic lightheadedness, vague flu symptoms as though a virus of some sort were coming on, lassitude, feverish sensations with no actual fever, need to lie down. I'm really puzzled by this. I know that stress can affect immune response and so on, but this feeling like I'm coming down with a disease I never actually get is really annoying. Is this familiar to anyone?
A.Somaticizing is becoming more common all the time, with the stress levels going up the way they are. Not just the symptoms you noted: abdominal pain, rapid weight loss, even bleeding from the intestines have been among my symptoms, though all tests ruled out physical causes. My mother was misdiagnosed in the 1950's with a heart condition and lived the life of an invalid for 20 years, at which time doctors ran new tests and discovered her symptoms were somatic (want to devastate someone? Tell her her illness has never been "real" and take her off all meds at once...her self-esteem was destroyed and she became wildly bipolar and we descended into hell...) I've also had similar chest pains, blueness of lips, and other weakness symptoms that imitate heart problems, but the tests indicated otherwise. Somaticizing can be dangerous, because if you get used to illness not being "real", you might mistake a real heart attack, etc, as a somatic attack. Other symptoms vary according to persons. Another example: It is possible to have a "false" case of diabetes, with your blood sugar going wild. The only problem with uncovering this: your blood sugar levels go crazy under stress, then to prepare for the glucose test they make you prepare in a way that removes the physical stress that caused the crazy sugar levels, and the glucose test will come back "normal." And the doctor looks like you as if you are crazy...
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