u/Kind-Sandwich8833

Hi, my husband (USC) and I are trying to expedite. Honestly, we really need this to work my husband is in a very bad way. I know expedites are very rarely approved but we have to try!

So far we are doing:

Statement from USC pet
Statement from beneficiary (me)
Evidence from various health professionals, including one that states my husband’s condition significantly improves when we are together.

Would it be beneficial to contact our congressmen with an expedite request first?

After a year and 3 months, I have FINALLY found an ENT who knows a little bit about PT!!! He’s referring me to vascular and neurology!! When I talked about Venus Sinus Stenosis he said, yes I thought so too, this is brilliant!!!

My MRIs and MRAs have all come back clear, one hospital discharged me after saying “no structural causes, try white noise and some tinnitus app and live with it” and the other is finally doing something!!

Hey guys. I started 50mg in May, it’s now been almost 3 months. At first I got some side effects like a bad stomach, increased depression and anxiety and sleepiness. When that subsided around a month in, I would feel a little more confident, less anxiety than before taking, and the best/strangest thing is I would get a random burst of happiness, the best I can describe it is the same feeling I got as a kid when we were packing up the car to go on vacation, so excitement and joy/ sense of wellbeing.

However around 2/3 weeks ago any benefit has left. I don’t have any side effects, I have returned to my baseline feeling and it honestly feels like I’m not taking it at all.

My doctor does not want to increase the dose as she got worried about my sleepiness. And even though it’s not a problem any more, she thinks it will be at 100mg.

Finally got a MRI yesterday of head, ears and THANKFULLY a MRA, mainly focusing on the circle of Willis. I’ve been wanting these since my PT began in May 2025. So finally getting them done is a big win for me.

My left sided 24/7 PT does not come with headaches, but vertigo and dizziness. I’ve had eye tests, hearing tests and an MRI of the ear meatus which came back clear. I ended up developing severe health anxiety and am now on Zoloft/setraline after an awful mental breakdown where I essentially had a panic attack for 4 weeks straight and fully 100% believed I would die at any moment from an aneurism, heart defect or brain tumour at any moment because of my PT. During this time I developed anascoria, one pupil bigger or smaller than the other but then go back to normal. I still have this, but after a look behind my eyes they do not believe that it is anything serious, 20% of the population have this. Still it’s utterly terrifying, I went straight to the emergency room when I noticed it, but by the time I was seen it had gone back to normal, luckily I took pictures of it though! I did look at some old pictures and it seems I may have had this before in my life but it’s hard to know for sure.

Anyway now is the waiting game for my MRI,MRA results back. It’s reignited some of the health anxiety I have after recovering somewhat. Please I want to hear your success stories about PT very rarely being anything severe or life threatening.

2 months on 50mg. This is so bizarre but I’ve lost all filters. My jokes are bad but I tell them anyway, I blurt stuff out I don’t mean. I told my husband his breath smells and upset him (it wasn’t in a mean way but I would have never done it like that before!!) I do have social anxiety and so I usually think carefully before I speak but now I can’t, it just comes out.

What surprised me the most about this is that to think before one speaks is a choice, so I would think even with Zoloft you may be more confident but still have the choice to not just say stuff, but it’s like I don’t have a choice anymore!

I started taking Setraline at 50mg 5 weeks ago tomorrow. I take it in the evenings. I started taking it for severe health anxiety where I had a mental breakdown where I believed I would die at any moment as a result of health issues I’ve been having for a year. I couldn’t eat or sleep for over a month. I naturally pulled myself out of this and was feeling better, but still plagued by fear and anxiety about my health issues. It doesn’t help that I’m waiting for over a month for my MRI results to tell me if I have a brain tumour or not. My doctor suggested Setraline even though I felt better I thought I never want to be dragged into the hole I was in ever again.

I didn’t have much side effects until probably week 2. Fatigue, stomach acid, brain fog. Just a feeling of not wanting to do anything, like severe laziness. I had bouts of depression when I was a teenager and it feels like this, I haven’t been depressed for years. In the last week it’s felt worse, just a dumb brain and some intrusive or unwanted thoughts, they aren’t bad thoughts they just feel like “not myself” things to think, out of character. Not in a psychotic way but like dumb things I would never think pop into my head and a compulsion to say them, I have to stop myself.

That being said, I have short bursts of a sense of wellbeing and of excitement, it reminds me of the feeling as a kid before waking up for Christmas. So that’s why I’m sticking it out, I still have hope Setraline will work for me.

I’m on day 12 of 50mg of Setraline for health anxiety/depression.

Dry mouth was the only side effect so far until a few days ago my anxiety/depression felt stronger, but along side that I can only describe this as autism type symptoms. I cannot understand sarcasm right now and I find people have to be very direct for me to understand them, no abstract expressions or hints, and lacking understanding of social cues more. I caught myself wondering about common phrases and what they mean in a very literal way. Like my mom said “get on like a house on fire” a common expression and I just couldn’t stop thinking about what it means literally.

Note that I do not have autism and I have never struggled with any of this before…. Is this just brain fog? It feels so strange, and I do not feel like myself right now.