OK, so here's the deal.
Back in February 2022 I decided to restart training. I found a chalistenics place nearby with pullup bars and so on so I thought "let me try to take it easy and do some of this stuff before even going to the gym again" so that's what I did. I also did some flexibility and mobility work at home.
One day I was at this chalistenics thing and did a bunch of pullups, chinups, pushups, dips and leg raises. The dips and leg raises in particular gave me some pain in the chest and belly, around the plexus area, immediately underneath my sternum. I went home and was a normal day. I also started to do some jumps but I was at 97 kg in bodyweight. After one jump, as I landed, white spots began to appear in my visual field due to the shock of the landing. On top of it all, my right knee was messed up so I couldn't put my right leg into my landings, meaning that the shock of the landings propagated through my spine. I also did some overhead kettlebell presses with my 24 kg kettlebells for a while.
On Feburary 24th (the same time when Russia invaded Ukraine) I woke up at about 6 AM or so, suddenly, with an incredible "rush" (I can't describe it in any other way, just an incredibly scary rush) in my body and I was sure it was a heart attack, it was like a "pressure" in my entire body combined with an extremely powerful (more powerful than anything ever experienced) rush of adrenaline. So I got up and was sure I was going to die, but I tried to focus on surviving, to calm down. It took about 5 to 10 seconds to recover. Incredibly scary stuff.
For the rest of the day I felt super weird but my blood pressure was normal, heart rate was normal and so on. I took some EKGs with my watch, they were normal. Then it happened again, always when trying to sleep. It would happen pretty much immediately if I tried to sleep on my belly, with my head turned to the left - in a few seconds that incredible adrenaline rush would immediately launch and it feels exactly like dying, there's no any other way to describe it.
So I though to myself "if this ever happens or I feel it happening, I will take my heart rate and oxygen levels exactly then" and that's what I did. If it was a panic attack or something like that, I should see a high heart rate. It happened and my heart rate was 57 bpm, so I don't think it's a panic attack, it's some other thing.
I also found out that if I tried to do some kettlebell overhead presses it would immediately worsen the symptoms - dizziness when turning the head and a feeling of "losing control of my body", plus some "tickling" in the chest area.
After a while, the symptoms went away (this "rush" thing happened about 6 times or so and it was equally terrifying every time it did). I thought maybe it was just exhaustion from not being used to physical effort anymore (which in part I bet it was) and you know, I started training again but with less volume, so I don't get too tired. I also went in the park and jumped here and there.
But one day after I jumped and landed I felt some bad pain in my cervical spine, like a neck injury (again, possibly because I coulnd't brake the landing properly due to my right knee being hurt and due to being too heavy) and immediately knew it was worse than it looked. This was in April 2022. The next day I started having pain in the cervicothoracic area, sometimes upwards towards the head.
This has continued ever since - the weird thing is that it sometimes gets better after physical effort, even after squats. But there is pain in the thoracic area as well, especially where the bar sits when you low bar squat. The symptoms improve with beer, xanax or aspirin.
Also, for a few years or so I've started staying "stiff" with my trapezius so I stay upright and not hunched back - but the problem with this is that I can't "relax" anymore - I always stay stiff and tight with my trapezius (which is the place where it hurts) automatically. It's just how I stay, I have to actively think to relax and even then I don't relax completely.
MRI shows C2, C5, T6, T9, T12 and L5 issues with my spine. My guess is that the weird rush symptoms were an inflammation somewhere in the thoracic spine which made me feel like "losing control of my internal organs" (I have no other way to put it, it was like disconnecting the self from the internal organs). And since there are spinal nerves in the thoracic spine which innervate the area in that spot, this is my hypothesis.
I'm going to the neurologist tomorrow but I don't have much hope - the problem is complex, with a lot of details, and these people are there to just make an opinion in 15 minutes and come up with something and most of the time they don't care, they simply say "you're imagining, it's a psychiatric thing" etc. It's been going on for two years, already, and I don't even know its nature, its ethiology - is it nervous? Is it mental? Is it exhaustion? Is it circulatory? I even went as far to assume that the vaccine might be involved, as there is a lack of explanation for these weird symptoms.
But in truth, it has to be the spine, it's the most straightforward explanation. I now have pain the left clavicle and left shoulder, which should be consistent with the cervical nerves projecting pain there. I will update you after the neurologist visit, tomorrow.
EDIT: One more thing - I feel much better if I don't stay in bed. If I walk around I'm pretty good. As soon as I stay in bed, with my back against something, then it's much worse - there's dizziness and weakness.
