u/Bright_Cattle_7503

I just got diagnosed today. My PCP is worried the bones are touching arteries and nerves causing a laundry list of symptoms that mimic heart failure even though I’ve been completely cleared by a cardiologist. I’m kind of relived that this isn’t “just anxiety”. But I’m also scared because I have PTSD from 2 failed spine fusions.

I live near Philadelphia and it looks like there are some doctors who are familiar with Eagle Syndrome.

Does anyone else have this? Did you get the surgery for it? If so, how was it? Is it a huge scary ordeal or is it like getting your tonsils out?

I want to preface this by saying I’m not buying into the RFK scare tactics. I’ve been in this mindset from the beginning. I wanted to try medicine as a short-term tool to lower my baseline anxiety enough to be able to push through discomfort and accomplish exposures (I have OCD).

I’ve been taking 5mg for 10 weeks and my plan is to give it a full 6 months and if I notice success with completing exposure therapy I want to taper off of this.

Being on it for 6 months, my psychiatrist told me it’ll be very easy to just stop cold-turkey and she said that no matter the duration, only 3% of people experience any withdrawal symptoms at all due to the long half life and out of those 3%, almost all of them were on 20mg.

Any personal stories from people here who can tell me what to expect when I decide to get off of it? Is it going to be an easy stop from 5mg or would you recommend a drawn-out taper?

I was laid off in November and my health insurance expired at the end of 2025. I now am on my own health insurance plan but every month I keep getting info packets on my 2026 plan through my employer. I did not enroll in Cobra and I tried calling that insurance company to see what’s going on and they told me the employer never sent them a termination letter so my plan is active for 2026. I reached out to HR multiple times and they have not responded to any of my phone calls or emails about it.

The insurance I had through work was 100x better than the plan I have on my own. At this point it seems evident that my employer has been paying for the premiums up to this point. What do I do about it? Should I just start using the insurance? I’m already enrolled. Idk what else to do.