r/AskMedical

For context, i have struggled with self!harming since i was 10. My family and school know about this but they aren't around to help me. My mum works away a lot and is not normally home, UK schools don't care.

I have an extremely deep self!harm cut on my arm. It looks like muscle but isnt? I think it needs stitches but im not sure. Does anyone know how to help?

I am 20, approx 160lbs, 5’9 with Rheumatoid Arthritis of the lower extremities. For months, I have been insanely itchy below the knee. So itchy that I’ve drawn blood. I have tried single blade razors and multi-blade razors, I’ve changed my shaving cream, I’ve shaved without cream, I’ve tried to shave every few days and I try every other week, my shower is soft water, and I don’t have any allergies to any detergents that I know of. I’m not allergic to my dog either. But I’m seriously getting concerned. This isn’t a bug or mosquito bite, I have streaks of scabs and small circle “contusions”, i don’t really know what to call them. Just small red raised circles that get dry skin and scabs. I doubt it is Excema, I’ve tried creams and they don’t work. None of my medications, previous, new, or continuous, have sparked a reaction like this and I’ve taken them before or for years without this. This only started like 5 months ago. I have no idea what to do here. Please help, it’s driving me insane and ruining my skin

I had covid multiple times during the pandemic. I was vaccinated once with the j&j vaccine and had a really weird reaction to it. Since 2021 I have struggled with fatigue and brain fog to the point now where I sleep all night and then have to take a 4 hour nap during the day. My liver enzymes are elevated despite my lifestyle changes and now I've been diagnosed with fatty liver. Through imaging they found a 4 cm cyst on my kidney. I am struggling to lose weight. I am 240 lbs, non smoker, non drinker, and I am taking 40 mg of Ritalin a day for ADHD.

I have switched doctors a couple times because I can't get them to listen to me and they seem to ignore my concerns about long covid. I was married this last year and have really good insurance through my wife's work and am not looking to change doctors or medical companies for quite a while so I just want to be able to get my doctor to take me serious into looking at this as a long covet issue because my life is in disarray. I'm too weak to work on my car and house. My jobs is suffering and unless I come up with a diagnosis I may lose my job.

My current doctor hasn't acknowledged that I think it's long covid how do I get her to take it seriously?

21M, 5’8 172lbs, smoker.

I tend to avoid doctors for things that may resolve on their own but I’m unsure if what I have is actually a hemorrhoid.

I lift 4-5 days a week and spend most of my time outside of lifting sitting due to classes and driving. This saturday I noticed a small, long and narrowish bump right behund my anus, like a pea or a pea and a half in length and narrow. Not directly attached, but a few centimeters back hiking up towards the tailbone. If I sit flat, it doesn’t really bother me, but when i sit slouched backwards like towards my tailbone its mildly uncomfortable. It is smooth and hard to touch, and its not discolored (same color as surrounding skin). It hurts briefly if I cough or sneeze, or if I’m not gentle enough when wiping. Discomfort is a little persistent. Just wondering if it sounds like my suspicions are correct, otherwise I might go get it checked out (in which case some random pcp is going to have a fun time lol).

Edit: guess I should add it is more uncomfortable when sitting/walking today than this weekend, which is part of why I posted. No blood in stool.

Throwaway becouse I do not want this on my main.

I am 170 cm, 80-90 kg, have anaemia and have never smoked or vaped. For this problem I was given an antihistamine (fexofenadine), which helps a little.

For the past year I have been coughing all the time, especially at night and when I am exercising.

On a few occasions if I overexert myself, my symptoms get a lot worse, as I will start coughing a lot more to the point of feelling like I am barely able to breatheand will have shortness of breath and chest tightness. Symptoms go away after a few minutes if I stop what I am doing and sit down (though I will have a bit of chest tightness for a few hours after). I had one of these "attacks" during a field trip to North Scotland, and my lecturer said that it looked like I was having an asthma attack.

My doctors are not sure what is wrong with me, as the tests they have done on me have shown nothing. The tests were:

• Two chest X-rays which showed nothing unusual
• Blowing into a peak flow meter in my GP's office which had a reading of 400 L/min

All of these symptoms started after a bad chest infection.

I know it's probably nothing serious, but I just want to know what is wrong with me.

About a week ago, I developed a rash and swelling on my face. A few days ago, I went to the doctor and got steroids and a cortisone shot. Been doing ice packs, massaging my face, staying hydrated, etc. Swelling not going down. What more can I do?

36F

tl;dr I have an abnormally high pain response. Are there pain specialists who could help me understand why and provide consultative support when I go in for procedures to make sure I get an appropriate level of medication for my body?

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I have an abnormal reaction to pain, especially related to medical procedures. For every procedure I've ever had my pain level is consistently much higher and lasts much longer than is expected.

I also seem to be resistant to various pain medications. Dental procedures have required 3-5 times more doses, Rx NSAIDs for injuries have sometimes required max doses fairly quickly, and I tend to need stronger narcotics and for a bit longer than typical.

When I try to explain this to medical professionals my pain is often dismissed (particularly by men), is met with skepticism that I'm just drug seeking, or panic about potentially saddling me with withdrawal symptoms etc. (and I do get that there is a genuine problem with opiates in the US but the medical field has kinda overreacted to the point where doctors are too conservative in many cases. but I digress)

Typically as things progress the doctors finally start to believe me and increase my dosages but by that point my pain has been going on longer and at a higher level than necessary.

I get so frustrated because opiates are just not a problem for me. I don't like taking them because they make me too dizzy to read and really drops my mood level- except when I'm in pain and the pain relief outweighs the downsides. I have always had several doses left of a prescription because when my pain level gets low enough I just naturally lose interest in taking them and I stop.

I even get pushback when asking for non-narcotics like NSAIDs etc.

What I'm hoping for is to work with some doctor who can work with me to do whatever tests/evaluations needed to validate (and verify for other doctors) whatever combination of low pain tolerance/special needs around prescribing I have. I'd also love to have this person available as a consult to my other doctors as needed to help manage my pain a little more aggressively than the other doctor is comfortable with.

Is this a thing? How would I go about finding a doctor who could do this?

Hi I’m new to posting on Reddit so apologies in advance I’m not totally sure how this works.

Let’s get into a little back story, I’m 21, female and it’s important to note that I’ve had significant sleep issues for most of my life. When I was 14–16 I wore a CPAP machine due to sleep apnea. It even left a permanent line on my nose, not exactly ideal as a teenager already dealing with life and trying to fit in and going to bed every night feeling like an old man lol

During that time I had multiple sleep studies done. Because of the sleep apnea I experienced severe nightmares, sleep paralysis, and what I know medically aren’t called hallucinations, but that’s what it felt like. I would wake up feeling fully aware. To other people, I was up and moving around. I thought I was seeing my room as it actually was but I was also seeing figures, shapes, objects, creature just really strange dream like things.

That went on for about three years and eventually after the sleep studies it turned out I had breathing issues and anatomical problems with my throat and nose. I had surgery and that mostly resolved the sleep apnea.

Fast forward to now at 21, I still struggle with nightmares but very rarely have sleep paralysis. I dream every single night, multiple dreams per night, and I’d say about 75% of them are bad. I often wake up feeling unrested.

That’s some background for context.

Now getting into the main issue:

I’ve always had recurring dreams. Usually, they’re the same exact sequence every time. For example, since childhood I’ve had a dream where I’m about seven years old at my childhood home. I walk outside and go down a hill near our garage and see my childhood cat with a bright blue collar. I make eye contact with him, and suddenly everything starts spinning. I lose my balance fall and hit the ground and then wake up.

That dream clearly feels like a dream very clearly things are off. I’m a different age, the world spins, and even how the cat moves doesn’t feel real.

But for the last year and a half something very different has been happening.

I’ve been having dreams that continue from night to night and It feels like I’m fully living a second life when I go to sleep.

This happens consistently every night. Not all of my dreams are part of this, but there is one continuous “life” that I return to. When I wake up, I also remember other unrelated dreams, but this one is ongoing.

In this dream life:

I am the same age as I am now and continue to age. When I turned 21 here, I celebrated my 21st birthday there that same night. I have a different job, drive a different car, and live a different life.

In that life I even have a daughter. I went through the full nine months of pregnancy, had her, and have been raising her. She’s now about a year and a month old.

Something that feels important to say is that in my real life, I don’t have a daughter, and I’m not in a relationship. Being a mom is something I think I would want eventually but it feels very far in my future. I have a lot of personal work I’d want to do before being in a relationship or having a child. That’s part of what makes this confusing I wouldn’t expect to be in that stage of life right now. But even with that, I love the daughter I have in this other life very much.

What’s also strange is how normal everything feels. There are no typical “dream” elements. No distortions, no unrealistic physics, nothing that feels off. I’m even fully aware of my actual “real life” when I’m in the dream.

It feels exactly like real life.

Time moves normally. I do completely mundane things:

mowing the grass

budgeting

cutting my nails

getting haircuts

showering

being sick or taking care of my daughter when she’s sick

dealing with my car breaking down

reorganizing a closet

following a weekly cleaning schedule

going to grocery stores, coffee shops, restaurants I recognize and prefer

Waiting in lines or sitting in traffic

In this dream world, I’ve dealt with very real-life challenges. I’ve gone through financial struggles, relationship problems, and issues at work with coworkers. It’s not some perfect version of life. There are problems there just like there are here. There are political issues, things happening in the news when I watch TV, and situations that feel very similar to real life just with different people in positions of authority. I’ve even traveled to different places and experienced new things over the course of this year and a half.

It’s like I go to sleep here and wake up there, and when I leave off, I pick right back up the next night.

At first, for the first couple of months, it wasn’t a problem. The only thing I noticed was some confusion mixing up details or having moments of “did this actually happen or did I dream this?”

Around month four, it started to affect me more. I shared it with some friends and family, but the response I got made it feel like it wasn’t a safe space to keep talking about it. Hence why I’m posting this on a throwaway account.

Since then, it’s continued and the impact has gotten worse.

I struggle with keeping track of things like dates appointments, real life, work responsibilities, etc. across both “lives.” One maybe positive thing I’ve also noticed is that I’ve learned things in that world especially since my job there involves interacting with the public much more than my real-life job where it’s more corporate and team focused versus dealing with the public. I’ve genuinely grown in areas like patience and communication, and those things have carried over into my real life.

But the emotional side is where it’s getting really hard.

I’ve grown attached to people in that life.

I miss my daughter when I wake up. I miss friends and coworkers who don’t exist in my real life.

And it’s starting to feel like the lines are blurring.

Honestly, as much as I love certain aspects of that life, I wish it would stop.

It’s affecting my real-life relationships and day-to-day functioning.

What makes it even harder is that it goes both ways. When I’m in that dream life, like I briefly mentioned above I miss this life. I miss my family, my animals, my coworkers people who aren’t in that world.

So it feels like I’m constantly being pulled between two lives, never fully present in either one.

I’m at the point where I feel genuinely miserable. I don’t know why this is happening, and I don’t know what to do about it.

I’m posting here to ask:

Has anyone experienced anything like this?

Any thoughts or advice would mean a lot.

I’m planning to post this in a few different threads (dreams, advice, maybe medical) just to see if anyone out there relates or has insight.

If anyone can give me a logical explanation to what’s going on, that would be greatly appreciated. I know our minds can be incredibly powerful so I’m hoping there’s some sort of medical or logical explanation for this!

I’m happy to go into more detail if that’s helpful I didn’t want to overwhelm the already very long post, but I can expand on anything if needed. Both with my dream life, and my “real life”

Thanks in advance.