u/Imaginary_Row2888

So my fiance started Reta last week. Did her second dose yesterday. Started her out at .5mg. This morning she got really dizzy and couldn’t drive to work. She’s feeling really weird and nauseas. Took her blood pressure and it was 134/82. She’s not gonna take anymore but I was wondering if there was a way to help her get it out of her system or do we just have to wait it out? I know the half life is 6 days I just hate seeing her feel bad and she’s scared half to death.

What’s up guys, new to Reddit! Just wanted to share my story to hopefully ease some people’s minds.

I’m 32 and overweight. December 1 we ate dinner, I immediately thought I was having a heart attack. We were leaving for a vacation to Colorado 2 days later. Well I was stressing so bad, didn’t sleep but maybe an hour because I was afraid I was gonna die in my sleep. December 2 I wake up and I feel like I’m drunk and have the flu. Terrible. I go to Colorado and feel terrible still, still dizzy and just miserable. Still worried I’m having a cardiac event. I go to the urgent care, they do an ekg and chest x ray, both clean. I continue on. We get back, I go to the doctor they run bloods and say my b12 is low. I go on weekly injections. My spells would come and go. I’d feel ok and then BAM it’d hit me. Day to day life was a struggle. The entire time I’m googling symptoms, terrible idea. I thought I had a cardiac event, then cancer and all the scary stuff. IM CONSTANTLY SELF CHECKING TO SEE WHATS WRONG WITH ME. I go back to the doctor, they say it’s my ear crystals. Go to an ENT, he says it’s not my ear crystals. Go back to GP and they basically shut down on me. I swap providers and start over. They checked my blood pressure while laying standing and sitting, all normal. They do bloods. I test positive for alpha gal, I quit eating red meat and still feel bad. I get my own bloodwork done to check all my biomarkers, find a slew of issues. ALL my vitamins are low, testosterone is 137 which is terrible, so I start trying to fix my vitamins. I bring up testosterone to my GP and she refuses to acknowledge it. They then order a CT on my brain, I start really freaking out thinking “this is it, they’re about to find the tumor”. CT comes back clean. I go back, they start treating me for vestibular migraines. I’m still googling symptoms, now I’m at the MS stage and then the ALS stage of my self diagnosis. Terrified. I have a fiancé and I’m just terrified the end is near. I discover als and ms and BAM I start twitching. I have tremors in my hands. Everything matches up. I finally get pissed, I decide to pick up martial arts and lifting weights to get my health in order. I’ve lost 40lbs so far, feeling slightly better. I had weird side effects on the migraine medicine they gave me that were samples that she said “needed to go anyways”, kinda weird and not reassuring. I start talking to people and these people are on anxiety medicines and they’re all telling me similar stories and they’re like “man you need to try treating your anxiety”. At this point I’m basically living on Google. Then I get on social media and the ad targeting and algorithm then starts spamming me with ALS stuff. I finally have had enough, I delete social media, I delete the internet apps on my phone and I just detach completely. I reach out to my doctor and ask for anxiety medicine and I start 25mg Zoloft 2 weeks ago. I will say my life has returned to about 80% normal. I can function again, laugh again, live a fairly normal life. My twitching is still there. Some days worse than others. I don’t self check as much. I’m hoping I’m on the right path, I feel like I am. My health is a lot better, martial arts has built new friendships, I found religion, all kinds of good things have come from this in a twisted way I guess. My advice to people going through this is:

1: STAY OFF GOOGLE
2: See a doctor, get checked.
3: STAY OFF GOOGLE
4: Take time and smell the flowers. Remind yourself everything is ok and calm down.

I spoke with a friend who works at a neuro, she said she sees this ALL THE TIME. She said to research FND, Functional Neurological Disorder. Can be related to stress and anxiety. Will the twitches ever go away? I hope so. But compared to December where I couldn’t function, I barely left my couch, I felt drunk constantly, constantly thinking I was gonna die, night time became my enemy which I combatted that fear of dying in my sleep by staying up late to where I’d “only have to make it a few hours” before the sun came up. My body was trashed, hormones out of wack(still working on this), vitamins in the garbage and I weighed 307lbs. I think my body basically got stuck in a feedback loop of “self check, find a symptom, google symptom, self diagnose, panic” and it repeated every waking moment. It was terrible.

I hope my story eases some people’s minds. Everything is gonna be ok! Your brain is so powerful it’s ridiculous. Mind body syndrome is a real thing. Anxiety is a real thing. And this is coming from someone who never understood anxiety in people. I used to say “why don’t you just not think about it?” And then it happened to me and I was like “oh I get it, you can’t just top thinking about it” lol. Everything will be ok. Any questions, reach out!