Aches, hypersensitivity all over body, paired with anxiety, "fight or flight" feels
I am 48 and having some symptoms that are really interfering with my life. I'm not sure if it's perimenopause related, or a drug reaction, or something unknown. Halp! For the past week, it feels like there is a dial on body sensitivity and mine is turned up to eleven. It hurts to walk barefoot, open jars or peel stubborn plastic labels. Feels like normal pressure on my body is painful, as if I lost all padding around my bones! I feel anxious and kind of "fight or flight" like with odd cold rush sensations in my body.
Background: Last summer, I started having irregular periods. After two months without having one, I had a week of these weird flu-like symptoms (entire body felt too sensitive to touch to the point of pain in walking, typing, doing normal body things), chills, and even a low fever. With some mental emotional stuff too... anxiety especially. I found out it could be something called "hormonal flu" that some women experience in peri. I started my late period and the horrid symptoms went away.
I joined Maven through a wonderful employer benefit, got a menopause specialist obgyn, and got on Slynd, a low dose progestin pill to stabilize my hormones / prevent ovulation and the crazy spikes in hormones. I have had ocular migraines, so the doc will not start me on HRT until full menopause.
Progestin mini-pill seemed to work great aside from a full month of bleeding! Slept great, felt good...
Until 10 days ago. Trying to treat the night time version of Restless Legs which is called PLMD (periodic limb movement disorder), since a sleep study showed it was killing my sleep, a sleep doc started me on low dose Pramipexole. I do have low ferritin, and am working on that, since it can cause RLS / PLMD. Pramipexole is a dopamine agonist given to parkinsons patients, but also to Restless Legs folks at much lower doses. It does not agree with everyone. That night, all my weird symptoms came on--aches, body hypersensitivity, bad sleep, anxiety.
I stopped taking the Pramipexole after 2 nights, tried Ropinirole (another dopamine agonist) for 3 nights, stopped that, and now 3 days later, I am still feeling these symptoms and really at a loss of where to turn.
Has the progesterone low dose just stopped working and I'm back in hormonal flu and it's nothing to do with the RLS drugs? Is it a prolonged reaction to the drugs? Do I have fibromyalgia?
What doctor do I even go and see who knows about all these things?? I woud love to take a muscle relaxer or something right now to just feel comfortable, but more than anything want to know what's happening in my body. The anxiety it has brought seems to in turn make it worse, in the way that focusing on bodily sensations can instensify them, especially "stress response" type feelings. But in my gut I think I know that this is not caused by anxiety.
Thanks for reading this far! Would love your thoughts.