My Story. - Marius S

Hey,
it all started out with me having a lump on my testicle. This made extremely worried for a month or two, when the doctor looked at it he said everything looks and feels fine. I thought this was the end of it all but that was just the start of this whole chapter im in right now. I will try to explain all of the diseases i've been in emotional breakdowns through. shortly after i thought i had testicular cancer i thought i had penile cancer (which is still in my mind after doctor have examined me 5 times). This have been so far the biggest struggle in my health anxiety, but lets go further into it.

I remember once i started getting a sudden weakness in my left arm, when i lifted something it would seriously just drop, so i went into google (the normal hypochondriac way) and figured out i must have ALS, i also read that twitching is a common symptom of ALS and at that time i only had twitching in my fingers what so ever, i was in a complete shock with loads of sleepless nights just laying there thinking... thinking... thinking. Again i went to the doctor and he said i do not have ALS, it all stopped there and i didn't have any further ALS fears. After this i went back to penile cancer (Again) after doctor continiously telling me that i do not have it and it's extremely rare, but i was still convinced. I played video games with my friend and i had no fun just because of my anxious behaviour thinking about it. (What if it's spreading?) (What if im dead in 3 months?) which leads to more googling.

Months after this it took a drastic turn into some lung problems because you know the classic anxiety symptom chest pain, everyone knows that (not really hehe) i were one of them. I went to my doc again and told him i worry about my chest pains because i thought it was cancer due to some undetected cancer in my body or whatever... The doctor had a look at me again and shortly found out that it's all due to my constant stressful behavior that keeps making my muscles sore. The pain occured when i stretched backwards and movement changes, the pain become more intense with sneezing, deep breaths etc at times.

Some time after this a day i suddenly woke up being unstable when walking. I went out of my bed and could just feel that i were being dragged to either side, i just felt unstable. Later on this day it drastically became much worse, i got nauseated and had to sit down. After this we went too see some fireworks which made my mind get of it, and boom it were gone. For atleast that time i were focusing on something else. I went home, googled (Dizzines Causes) and brain tumor came up as the first result. I joined loads of brain tumor support groups etc and asked ''Is this normal'' ''Hey please mention all the symptoms of a brain tumor'' and like that it kept going. But what i didn't realize is that some of the most common anxiety symptoms is the most common brain tumor symptoms aswell so i thought about it. (Why would i have a brain tumor? Out of everyone and the rarety of it, why would exactly i have a brain tumor me who already got health anxiety? I went to the doctor and he looked inside my eyes with a ophthalmoscope, he saw that everything was normal inside there and nothing abnormal, so this got my thoughts on something else (For atleast a week) and it came back with new symptoms and it just kept going like this.

Two weeks ago i realized some red dots and redness on my hands out of the blue, i went into google and found out i now had sepsis. I went for a week testing myself for all the sepsis symptoms. But well, if i had sepsis i would be dead by now.

In the last week i convinced myself i had leukemia, it felt very real. I had so many symptoms, or atleast i thought so. But turned out all the symptoms i had was very unspesific to the leukemia itself. I went to the doc and he said he's 110% i don't have leukemia.

Tonight i felt 3 bumps inside my lower row of teeth, the lump that concerned me the most was this bump that was so extremely hard and not moveable at all, i just thought ''****, is this what a real tumor feels like? do i really have Oral cancer?'' And then 2 hours after i realized that it's normal to feel lumps at the inside of the lower row of teeth and that what i felt was probably a bone growth or some other normal thing.

The reason i made all this is because i thought that i need to tell you health anxiety sufferers that it's completely normal being convinced you have a disease when you don't. I would be dead right now if i had all of that i have mentioned up here ^ Maybe not dead but in the hospital for sure! So what i want to tell you is that DO NOT let every little thing you find on ur body or feel think you have a horrible disease! It's commonly totally normal in the human body even if there is a few rare cases where it's linked to a cancer or some other disease. In google you find what you search for, If you are anxious and search for ''Headache for a week, not going away'' I can pretty much tell you that it will not tell you anything about stress headaches but it WILL tell you about brain tumors or other brain disease. Something i learned is that if there is a physical symptom you feel in ur body and you feel the urge to google atleast put ''Anxiety'' either before writing the symptom or after you wrote it. Then you will have results of other people with anxiety having the same symptom because i know how frustrating it is too think you have cancer for every single thing you write into that damn search bar.

I wish all of you anxiety sufferers a good luck and i hope you get rid of it as soon as possible!

Tonight i found out something, why would a 16 year old boy have 20x diseases in under a year? I'm not comfortable with mentioning all the symptoms i've had because then i know they will come sneaking back on me either today or tomorrow. They were all normal anxiety symptoms and i do still suffer from them but not as much because i've learned to control my anxiety a bit more. But i repeat that i hope you all get rid of it as soon as possible and best of luck to you! :bighug1: