Q. I recently started having some physical symptoms and i am wondering if they are psychological or possibly mental or both. While at my dads house the other day, i answered the phone to find a collector looking for my sister, but instead of being professional, he started calling me a mexican and saying i probably didn’t have a green card, i hung up the phone. the same guy calls right back, but this time my dad answers the phone and starts talking to my dad in the same way, telling him that he should go get a job in the fields picking vegetables where white people won’t. he goes on and on with the racial put downs, and my dad and i calmly listen to him, thinking this must be a prank phone call from someone we know. then he starts in talking sexually explict about my mother so my dad hung up the phone. i found his phone number and it was indeed a bill collector. my problem was that after that phone call, my hands and feet went instantly ice cold. my dad had me run my hands under hot water to warm them up. every time my dad would talk about this phone call, my hands would get ice cold and i could feel myself holding back shivering. this went on for the rest of the day. then a couple of day later, my step daughter was at her moms house and called her dad and i to talk. her mom was listening in on the conversation and after we hung up became extremely angry with my seven year old step daughter. i should mention that my husbands ex has bi polar disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder. his ex calls us back screaming at us and her daughter in the back ground. she was mad because she felt like her daughter was making it sound like she was being neglected and that it was boring at her moms house and so on. this was never even brought up during the telephone conversation. any way, she finally told my husband to come and get their daughter, and so he left to go pick her up. when my husband left, my hands and feet and face became ice cold, and i started shivering very hard. i was trying to rock my youngest daughter to sleep, but i was shivering so hard, i kept waking her up. i got up to put her to bed and got extremely light headed. i wrapped myself in a blaket to try and warm up, but it didn’t help at all. pretty soon my hand, feet and around my lips grew numb. it took at least two hours for all this to go away, and even when i warmed back up, my arms were aching. i am trying to figure out what is going on with me, and what i should be looking out for. i also need to mention that i just quit taking my zoloft about a month ago. i was only taking twenty five mg, and i quit taking it on my own. would this be a contributing factor? also, i should tell you that i got put on the zoloft, because of my many issues with my husbands ex. i just couldn’t handle it any more without a little help. i finally felt like i was in the place i needed to be to handle these issues and still feel like i can, but wonder if all this information is enough to help make a diagnosis, or if there are other reasons for these quick onsets of physical abnomalities. thank you.

A. I really do not know what could be causing your physical symptoms. It is possible it is a medication side effect but only a doctor will know for sure. I would advise you to make a doctor’s appointment, preferably with the doctor who prescribed you the Zoloft. Tell the doctor all of your symptoms in a very detailed way just like you did in this question. Sorry I could not be more help. Good luck.

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Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 5 Jun 2006