Hey Sliv ... far be it from me to try a chuck a diagnosis at you or anything, ok ... but don't write this kind of thing off too quickly ....
I'll give you a brief synopsis -
I left a company in 2005 - where myself and one other guy ( 46 he was at the time ), had carried the mantle between us for 8 years.
I didn't get replaced ... so the poor lad got landed with my share of the workload, then there was a management BI/BO, which was immediately followed by a shedding of an Admin lassie, so my pal got landed with a lot of what she'd done previously too.
He thought nothing of it.
We stayed ( and still do ) in contact once or twice a month, by phone usually.. ocaisionally in person.
Phoned him in june '07 at work .. only to learn he was off, ill.
That was basically unheard of. He'd not had a day off his work in 15 years... not one.
Eventually, after trying for a couple of weeks.. I got hold of him at his home.
He told me he had , over the period of about a year, developed :
Pins & Neeldes type sensations, firstly in his hands, then arms too.
Various Skin Rashes & Nasty boil / pustule septic 'eruptions'
What he 'believed to be ' irritable bowel'
Dizziness, and loss of feeling in both legs progressively
Poor digestion & excessive heartburn-type problems .. eventually
leading to inexplicable bouts of vomiting
A very noticeable inability to concentrate.
Insomnia.
Eventually, ( this is whilst still at work ) he got up from his desk to make a coffee .... and the next thing he knew, he'd woken up in hospital 3 days later. --- apparently , he'd unknowingly walked out of the building, gone about 1/2 a mile on foot within the industrial estate and been found collapsed on the pavement. - he has no recollection of the events of that day at all.
So.. tests etc etc all followed ... lots of the usual things 'suspected' ... nothing showed up anywhere...
eventually diagnosed as what we as laymen would best understand as a 'stress induced nervous breakdown'
He had all these 'physical symptoms of something', and yet, in essence, there was nothing physically 'causing' him to be ill ... there were physical 'symptoms' but no physical cause... it was attributed to the stresses of what he was being subjected to at work.
He was eventually diagnosed with, and subsequently treated successfully for Depression.... brought on by what had been building up on him at work.
Now.. I'd always had a bit of 'difficulty' getting my head round what I perceived to be, to all intents and purposes , a "pile of horsecrap-pseudo-illness" like stress related depression. -- never really believing such a thing was real.
And so did this lad too. -- very much an 'old school' type guy, who got on with whatever life threw at you, and got on with it, without complaint.
Turns out both he and I are both very wrong .. and this type of thing is all too common and very 'real' indeed. - he's basically back on his feet now, and almost good as new. But he definately got a scare.
Not that I'd wish to suggest you are in the same boat.. but just to mention, don't write ANY possibility off....
I'd not have believed that these physical manifestations of ill-health could have been remotely connected to his "workload" and its effects.. but its been conclusively proven to have been exactly what was wrong.
And I guess it needen't necessarily be 'work' .. it could be attributed to a myriad of other root-causes.
Really hope you get to the bottom of everything...
don't write anything off !
All the very best to you.
