I don't mean to be dramatic, but I need some serious help. I'm a 36 year old mail with a disturbingly long laundry list of problems, and I've managed to get myself wrapped up in self-diagnosis insanity and simply can't figure out what to do.
I have emotional issues that need to be addressed, and I am aware of that, but my problem(s) right now is (are) physical.
sometime in the fall of 2006 I noticed a lump under my jaw. Of course my heart dropped. I went to a doctor in December of 2007. He said "I don't feel any lump." COmpletely nonchalant. I went to multiple docs after that, and all said "I don't feel anything"
Finally I went to an "alternative" clinic in Irvine, and the doc there sent me for a cervical and abdominal ultrasound. They found several enlarged nodes in my neck/under my jaw, none over 2cm but a couple close. The report also stated that my spleen was enlarged.
Bloodwork at the time (and all previous and since) was normal, except I was shown to have elevated levels of EBV. Not an acute infection...but chronic?
Anyway...since last fall when I noticed the lump...my health has gotten worse and worse. I have almost no energy, and am completely terrified that I have developed a blood cancer. I can feel multiple small nodes in my neck on the left side, including some down near the pit near my clavicle. NONE are large, at all. NONE distend the skin...nothing is BIG, but there seem to be a LOT of them. They are mildly tender sometimes as well.
Other constitutional symptoms include flattened (almost square looking) stool, temperature problems (feel hot, clammy, chills, but no fever!), occasional night sweats (but nothing consistent, and was only bad when I had the flu recently), and fairly severe dizziness. I have had vertigo attacks most of my adult years...maybe once a year lasting only a few hours.
The thing is...I've already been to several doctors...I've spent thousands on testing and have NO results, and at this point I wake up every day thinking I have cancer and that I'm a goner. I can barely function and my life is truly completely on hold.
Part of me wants to go to (yet another) doctor and say LOOK, I need a biopsy done to PROVE to me that I don't have cancer, but Im not sure if I want to know! Yes, the mystery would be over, but then I would be stuck in the cut/burn/poison realm, or (equally as bad) stuck with "alternative" methods which are immmensely confusing, diffuse, and most of the time clearly just a scam!
I am at a total loss here, completely paralyzed, and it really seems that NO ONE can help me!
I've tried to talk to the people who care about me, but they dismiss my concerns because I am a big, strong looking guy, but I don't feel big and strong most of the time. I feel weak, tired, listless, malaise, and DREAD every single damn morning when I wake up.
This can't go on much longer...I am at my wits end.
SOMEONE, please help me?