Things are sort of worse

Some of the jerkiness, spasms, shortness of breath, excessive yawning used to primarily centered around bedtime hours.

 Now I am having the head jerks and creeping muscles during the day.  The yawning and shortness of breath also are happening during the day at work.

 I’m getting impaired so far as being able to do my work properly, which will mean I will lose my job, in all likelihood.  I have no retirement fund or worthwhile insurance programs.

 There’s a sort of low intensity reverse peristalisis going on at times, an extremely mild feeling of nausea, at times building up to to half hearted unproductive wretching.  Lethargic dry heaves.  The wimpy dry heaves are not common, maybe once every two weeks or once a month. 

I was sick with a normal sickness last week, missed Thursday and Friday.  I was back Monday and felt ok at work.  My intense yawning, seeming sleepiness, and muscle tremors, crawling muscles, whatever it is, came back after coming back home after work.

http://www.drdonnica.com on excessive yawning

The questioner asks: I have for the last couple weeks been yawning all the time to get a deep breath and if I don’t I feel like I’m not getting a good deep breath while I am breathing.� I don’t feel sick and I don’t have shortness of breath.� I have been still been exercising and feel fine but I am constantly trying to get a deep breath like yawning.� Is this something I should be concerned about or not?�

Dr. Donnnica responds: “excessive yawning” is a potentially serious condition.� Usually, it means you are drowsy or not getting sufficient sleep.� This can also be a side effect of certain medications, most notably anti-depressants in the SSRI class (e.g. Prozac).� Yawning itself is a normal response to fatigue or drowsiness, but excessive yawning, especially as you described it as trying to get a deep breath, may be caused by a vasovagal reaction and can even indicate an underlying heart problem.� It is time to call your doctor and get a check-up. In the meantime, keep a log of how often you yawn per hour or per day, how much sleep you get, what medications you may be taking (including cough/cold medications and herbal preparations), what makes it better or worse, and whether it interferes with any activities.� I recommend stopping your exercise routine until you have your check-up.

In my case, the yawning and lightheadedness and lethargy is interfering with everything I do. Just sitting here typing is a strain. I’d lay down and try to sleep but I’ve had plenty of sleep; if I did manage to go to sleep I’d just wake up and feel the same way as I do now, so what’s the point?

My condition is getting worse, I haven’t been having this level of problem for but a few days, although there was a time some years ago that I went to the doctor but the primary symptom I reported was the incredible sleepiness and lethargy, to which the doctors response was to prescribe sleeping pills and not do any tests to determine what was actually wrong with me.

excessive yawning links

http://www.medhelp.org/forums/RespiratoryDisorders/messages/1922.html

The above links includes someone saying:

I had this situation occur last summer where I was consistently taking deep breaths and feeling like I needed to yawn all the time.

This one, http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/003096.htm , offers heart disease as a possible explanation. “A Vasovagal reaction”, it says, “This reaction is caused by the action of a nerve, called the vagus nerve, on the blood vessels. It may indicate a heart problem.”

The vagus nerve, according to http://www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C653304.html
is also called ” the pneumogastric nerve, this is the tenth cranial nerve, with many fibers leading to parasympathetic ganglia in internal organs, and can be considered the presynapse starter for the upper parts of the parasympathetic functions.”

Answers.com at http://www.answers.com/topic/vagus-nerve?cat=health defines the vagus nerve as:

vagus nerve
n.

Either of the tenth and longest of the cranial nerves, passing through the neck and thorax into the abdomen and supplying sensation to part of the ear, the tongue, the larynx, and the pharynx, motor impulses to the vocal cords, and motor and secretory impulses to the abdominal and thoracic viscera. Also called pneumogastric nerve.

[New Latin (nervus) vagus, wandering (nerve), from Latin.]

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nature.com/gimo/contents/pt1/images/gimo2-f7.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nature.com/gimo/contents/pt1/fig_tab/gimo2_F7.html&h=763&w=700&sz=164&hl=en&start=5&sig2=TH00_V7CE4×8Aj7Lf18PjA&tbnid=HDplg3kJUdhSaM:&tbnh=142&tbnw=130&ei=osW0RvKEGqKEeNfntNMK&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvagus%2Bnerve%26svnum%3D100%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26sa%3DG

has some nice images of the vagus nerve’s connections.

It’s 2:00 pm now, and I’m still yawning.

12:23 sneezes

12:23 pm now i’m sneezing, nothing abnormal about the sneeze yet, except that I feel like I’m gonna yawn, then instead I sneeze.

i hope i don’t get in a situation where i’m having to sneeze while i’m yawning.

11:35 the yawning begins

11:35 , haven’t been up long, and already the yawning has started.

these are being big yawns, but without much sound, full wide open mouth with the head tilted back .  my eyes are watering, and i’m yawning as i’m typing, there’s not enough time in between yawns to type.  the yawns are not all resolving very well.  What is an unresolved yawn?  A normal yawn resolves, it gets bigger, then smaller.  You open your mouth, such in air, then your mouth starts closing and you exhale.  An unresolved yawn stops at the point where you’ve drawn in the air, leaving you with lungs full of air and an open mouth.  Some unresolved yawns just fade out at the stopping point, where others stop but it feels like you’d open your mouth up more if you could and draw in more air if you could but your mouth only opens so wide and your lungs can only hold so much air so you stop the yawn not because it was finished but because you simply can’t yawn any more intensely.

11:02 am just woke up, still feel tired

i just got out of bed, must have got some sleep, but i already feel like going back to bed .

the right side of my head feels different from the left side, like it is the side that is tired.

the feeling of twitchy muscles persists in dancing lightly around.

my breathing feels bad and wrong but at least i’ve manage to be up for a few minutes without yawning .

based on my experience of doctors in the past, what would happen if i told them about my situation is that they would say that since i am tired i need to get some sleep. conceivably they would prescribe some kind of medicine.

they won’t give any consideration to the idea that my lengthy period of massive alcohol drinking, which went on for years, to the point where I just can’t drink any alcohol at all without feeling terrible, can’t drink a half a beer without feeling like i drank poison, might have actually damaged my liver and related chemical processing system to the point where just taking medicine is a problem.

7:53 am, starting to yawn again

despite the feeling of being extremely tired all day yesterday, when i got in bed at 2 am or so i did not just go to sleep fairly quickly.  once i laid down i started yawning, my eyes watering and my nose running.

i did not sleep at all well; for hours (it seemed, i didn’t check the clock)  I thought I wouldn’t sleep at all.  Apparently I did finally nod off, for it seemed like I woke up about 6:45.   I tried to stay in bed and get back to sleep.   at 7:45 or so i got of bed and sat down at my computers again.

it is 8:00 am now, and I’m still yawning, which means I have been yawning for 7 minutes continuously now.  These aren’t gut wrenching yawns this time, thank goodness, although the gut wrenching yawns will probably show up sometime during the course of the day.

I’ve only been up a few minutes and I already want to get back in bed, which I would be glad to do if I would actually go to sleep and wake up feeling better, but just laying there unable to sleep  is not very satisfying.  it is worth a try though, so i guess i will.

1:30 am

tried to go to sleep at 12:30 am,  that didn’t work.   my muscles are crawling, flexing a bit, the point that feels like it’s contracting moving about  from place to place.  threw up a little, but it doesn’t seem at all to be a stomach virus or flu or any sort of food poisoning. it’s like the muscle contractions make a standing wave as they bounce back and forth, or like their something outside of my digestive system pushing on it or blocking it but that the digestive system itself is basically alright.   When I say digestive system there I don’t include my liver or kidneys, both of which are suspects for malfunction in my view.

sigh, i know feel a lot like i did when i went in for the EEG before.  i don’t remember the yawning being such a problem, although i do remember having big abnormal yawning bouts.

i’m feeling the jerkiness when i lay down and relax now,  my head will twitch , or as happened an hour or so ago my whole head jumps up like i was trying to get up real quick or like you might jerk up if you were laying in bed by yourself in the dark in a closed room and someone said “Boo!” right into your ear.

The mouth injury hurts, my face tightens up in an arc running down from the injured place in the lower right lip across my jawbone and down toward by jaw hinge.

my stomach is sort of spasming, doing some mild reverse peristalysis, i guess.

Today’s yawning and related misery

Today I started yawning at work and people started making comments such as that I sounded like a bear, and making mocking imitations of my yawning sounds. I felt miserable. The yawning is sometimes accompanied by a feeling that is much like being tired, but with being sick mixed in, and it was today. I left work early. It is bad enough having something wrong with you, much less having your coworkers make fun of you in addition. I had to use my vacation time to take off because I have used all my sick leave.

I have spend several hours in bed since coming home early from work, but have been unable to go to sleep, although I feel tired.

I have an injury in my mouth, in my lower lip, that hurts when my mouth gets stretched, such as when I grimace in pain from the pain caused by the lip injury, or when I yawn.

I have read a number of reports on the internet of people that have somewhat similar symptoms to my yawning symptoms.

Right now the right side of my face, the side that has the injured tissue in my lip, feels warm, flushed. I feel a crawling sensation in my muscles, a sensation that I’ve had from time to time since I had the seizure/convulsions/muscle spasms that impelled me to get the EEG.

My teeth are clenched. I’m clenching my teeth a lot lately. It’s sort of like my head doesn’t want to stay up anymore and the whole skull is just resting itself on my teeth. I can combat the teeth clenching by tilting my head back but then I’m just staring up at the ceiling.

I am fairly sure that my health problems are going to lead to me losing my job. I don’t have anywhere near enough money saved to retire. My health problems is too vague and tenuous for doctors to care about or be able to detect and treat.

yawning abnormally, dizzy, short of breath, food climbing back up

I am having the following symptoms:

1. Yawning abnormally

I am yawning too much, too frequently, too intensely.
I will do a massive, mouth open all the way  yawn and not be able to resolve it, leaving me with an open mouth trying to inhale more but unableto because my lungs are fully expanded.
I had a several hour nap; i can’t really be yawning from normal tiredness.

2  Dizzy

if i get up and try to move around to do things i will feel dizzy and weak

3. I feel short of breath.

I am yawning too much, too frequently, too intensely.
I will do a massive, mouth open all the way  yawn and not be able to resolve it, leaving me with an open mouth trying to inhale more but unableto because my lungs
are fully expanded.
I had a several hour nap; i can’t really be yawning from normal tiredness.

2  Dizzy

if i get up and try to move around to do things i will feel dizzy and weak

3. I feel short of breath.
4. My food is  climbing back up.

I don’t think it will actually come back up.
Last night i i had some dry heaves.

I have had the massive yawning and unresolved yawning but it wasn’t as pronounced or troublesome.  When a massive, excessive yawning episode doesn’t involve a bunch of repeated unresolvable yawns it is much like a bout of intense normal yawning, hard to tell from normal yawning.

A few years back I was having what I would describe as seizures or convulsions, at their worst, or severe spasms, extreme night jerks.   These spasms happened primarily after laying down for bed and getting nice and relaxed.  I went to the doctor and got blood tests and an EEG; neither showed any problem.  When they gave me the EEG back then, they  made me lie down and relax.  This predictably enough produced the contractions.  They told me to be still.  I had gone to the hospital complaining of uncontrollable involuntary muscle spasms that occured after laying down and relaxing, and rather than do something to document the presences of the symptoms, such as getting a video camera to tape the shaking and jerking, and getting a doctor to come watch, they expected me to suppress the contractions through will power.   Since I was of course not able to make my involuntary muscle spasms just stop for the convenience of the EEG reading workers,  I have a feeling that my EEG may not have been recording properly, making the entire thing a waste of time.   At any rate, the EEG did not reveal anything in my brain waves to explain this spasm behavior .

Although my digestion feels troubled right at the moment, the yawning and dizziness doesn’t necessarily involve feeling any digestive distress.    I think whatever is causing the yawning and dizziness is affecting my digestion, and it’s getting worse.

I had a major drinking problem, alcoholism would be what some folks would call it, for a long time,  ten years or so.   At the end of my drinking era  I became unable to drink alcohol without feeling sick.   Even a half a 12 oz beer would make me feel bad and feel that my capillaries were expanded.  Thus while I’d had some ” quit, started again”sessions during the drinking years, at the end my quitting wasn’t really the result of a choice to stop drinking but rather just that I could not physically drink and have any pleasure from it.   So it’s been years now since I had a drink.