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spazrunaway | 4 years ago

I had a similar situation, and definitely had anxiety, but I absolutely do not believe that explains everything. I had a temperature of 99.5-100.5 for several months after having "recovered" from covid, and none of my doctors believed "psychogenic fever" was a valid thing.

In my case, I'd been dealing with anxiety my whole life, but it never caused physical symptoms. Then I had covid, felt better for 2 weeks, then suddenly started experiencing low-grade fever, night sweats, fatigue, no appetite inability to sleep for days on end (this was the worst. would feel like I stopped breathing whenever I started drifting off, and it felt like my body would then jump-start itself and violently kick me back awake). None of my doctors knew anything about long covid, and I started to wonder if I was dying of cancer or something. The symptoms were distressing enough to make anxiety a logical response. So, yeah, at some point, anxiety probably created additional symptoms, or made me more distressed by my symptoms, but neither I nor any doctors I've met believe anxiety can cause a fever, at the very least.

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gonehome|4 years ago

There could very well be a non-anxiety effect and I'm not trying to dismiss that.

For me, I've experienced the difficulty sleeping, early morning wakefulness, heart rate, nausea, stomach issues, and sweats as physical symptoms of anxiety. A big/scary event (getting covid, death of family) can make the physical symptoms more apparent.

Not sure about low grade fever, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Again, doesn't mean it's not something else but I think people tend to dismiss anxiety as someone not taking the claims seriously - when to me anxiety symptoms are serious and miserable, they just require different treatment (unfortunately Hypervigilance makes things worse when anxious about symptoms and thinking they're not anxiety related).

I still have a hard time telling the difference between actual infection/physical illness and anxiety personally even knowing all this about myself - it's hard.

ovi256|4 years ago

> I stopped breathing whenever I started drifting off, and it felt like my body would then jump-start itself and violently kick me back awake

That sounds a lot like sleep apnea, and will kill prematurely if left untreated. You should get a sleep study to check that.

spazrunaway|4 years ago

I did an overnight oximetry test for that a few months ago, it was apparently fine.