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Do You Ever Experience Phantom Symptoms?
I recently read through old medical blogs from my son’s PH days and I noticed there were many times that he experienced phantom symptoms. Phantom because tests and blood work sometimes didn’t reveal a cause.
Many times it was his abdomen and stomach and when nothing obvious was the cause he was told he probably pulled a muscle. Looking back on it I now wonder if was early warning signs that he was going into heart failure. Once he also struggled with what sounded to me like a UTI, but once again tests cleared him of that.
Another time it was his inner thigh. There was concern of a blood clot but tests cleared him of that too.
I remember the frustration and worry from these experiences. I know his pain was very real and matters were made worse by not knowing the cause of the discomfort.
Have you experienced phantom symptoms? How do you deal with situations like these?
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1 Reply
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Colleen,
In this situation it is always helpful to me to have a doctor that listens and takes my concerns seriously. I always like to have an explanation for my symptoms though and hate to not know why something is going on. Because of a lot of nerve damage I have in my body, I get a lot of referred pain. For example, when something is bothering me with my stomach and feeding tube I end up having back pain. This is the same idea when women experience back pain along with period cramps. It is all referred. Sometimes without an obvious explanation or something that can necessarily be “fixed”.
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