My story - PSSD and Long Covid + possible drug damage

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dog_lover
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Joined: Thu Jun 24, 2021 5:10 am
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My story - PSSD and Long Covid + possible drug damage

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Hi everyone. Just wanted to write about my experiences and why I’m here, to get some clarity and see if anyone can relate.

I was prescribed citalopram (40mg) at several points in my early 20s (now in my early 30s), for things like OCD and exam anxiety. I never took it for more than a few months at a time. It affected my libido and made me less anxious and neurotic, and I do remember burning sensations and coldness in my extremities, fatigue, but there wasn’t a night and day difference like some of the people on this site experience. A number of years off it, I recall that I retained mostly normal sexual and emotional function. Maybe my internal experience of life was dulled a little, but not drastically, and my libido seemed to return after stopping, albeit slightly weaker.

However, I experienced a really extreme change in mid 2021 when I caught covid.

*****I know this isn’t a Long Covid support forum, but I’m here because a lot of my symptoms seem to match up with PSSD sufferers. There also seems to be a symptom overlap between Long Covid / Covid vaccine injuries on the one hand, and PSSD on the other (see here - https://rxisk.org/welcome-to-mondor-frodo/), possibly suggesting a common etiology. I feel hopeful about the research being done by Healy and Luisa Guerrini*****

Anyway, to continue my story - I caught covid in mid 2021. The illness started out pretty typically - respiratory symptoms, followed by anosmia and extreme fatigue. A doctor (yes) prescribed me ivermectin and doxycycline a week later. I was mostly bedbound this entire time.

At some point during this period, I started having intense, strange headaches and sensations of pressure inside my skull - a squeezing sensation. So intense I'd need to lie down and shut my eyes. Like some kind of muscular spasm around my eyes? Recall at one or two points over this period, I also experienced the sensation of a 'brain zap' or electricity in my brain, lasting only a microsecond.

Other things I noticed: increase in genital numbing, vertigo, weakness, loss of balance. Something also fundamentally altered about the way I experience stress - for example, if I drop a coffee mug or a cyclist zooms past me, the usual ‘adrenalin rush’ feels very different now. It’s almost impossible to put into words.

It was all a blur and I actually can’t remember whether these more extreme symptoms started before or after taking ivermectin (the doxycycline I took a week later, after these symptoms had started, that I remember). This makes it challenging to pinpoint the cause.

Symptoms to this day include:
  • some degree of genital numbness / low libido, seems to fluctuate
  • feeling of diminished consciousness, impaired cognition, brain fog
  • anhedonia + blank mind
  • my grip strength has reduced greatly, and my balance is worse off
  • memory just doesn’t work like it did before. discontinuous change.
  • something very strange going on with emotions. i still have them because they are there in my body and i can feel the physical sensations, but there is an odd feeling in my forehead, like a feeling of pressure, whenever an emotion arises, that somehow seems to blunt it.
The symptom that bothers me the most is the last one - the feeling of pressure in the forehead / eyes seems to be connected to the emotional blunting. I’m not sure this is the same as emotional blunting from SSRIs - I very much still have emotions, but can’t seem to feel them properly. My body will manifest the physical sensations, I can even cry, but instead of feeling anything I’ll get a cloudiness and pressure in my forehead.

Another thing worth saying is that my symptoms don't seem to be fixed. Every now and then I'll get 'windows'. Haven't managed to find anything medically abnormal, except for possible thyroid and hormone dysfunction (low TSH + low Free T3, and low testosterone but need to get this re-checked). Interested in testing for autoimmunity (but no clue where to start) and small fibre neuropathy. Any other avenues welcome.
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