Extremely scared again! Please help!

[MT1403]

Hello everyone,

First let me say that I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday! I am so scared right now and this is the first place I had to come to try and feel better. My boyfriend lives in Virginia. He is at Quantaco training to be in the FBI. I live in Florida and he came down to visit me for Christmas which was great. The problem is that today while we were talking he asked me if I was getting sick and I said no and then asked him why he would ask me that. He said that I coughed throughout almost the entire night last night while asleep. This scares me because I sleep alone unless he is in town so I don't know if I cough at night. But the reason this scares me is because my brother who passed away 7 months ago had a really bad cough before he died and now I'm worrying that the same thing is happening to me. His cough was caused by a viral infection he got in his heart that went undetected. Ever since my brother died, my obsession has been with my heart, but now that my boyfriend told me I coughed all night long has me really worried. I've been to the doctor and have had blood test, EKG's, and chest x-rays, and everything comes back normal. I'm so scared. Please help me.

[eeyorelover]

Hi MT
I am so sorry about your brother's passing.
I know that when something like this happens it causes one to think about their health more but if you have been to the doc and he/she says that you are ok - then you have to trust that with all the tests that you have had done - if something were wrong it would have shown up on one of them.
I don't know why you are coughing at night. It is probably something that is totally harmless but maybe just so that you can feel better about it - call up the doc's office and ask about it.
If you need someone to gab to I am usually on real late in chat.


Sandy
(eeyorelover)

If the world didn't suck... we'd all fall off

[ItWillPass]

Uch... that is SO normal for you to be afraid right now... But... you just have to remember that you went to the dr, and everything was fine. Did your brother go get blood work done? To the best of my knowledge... if you had a virus your white blood cells elevated. So... that would for sure show up in basic blood work. I have also been told a rule of thumb... If something does not keep you up at night... chances are it is not serious. So, since you didnt even realize you were coughing without being told, chances are it was just a little tickle in your throat. If you are worried, you could try tape recording yourself on nights that your boyfriend is not there?

[MT1403]

Thank you for your replies. It's just that ever since my brother died I don't trust doctors anymore because he was in the hospital for an entire week and had every test that could have possibly been done and they said he would be okay. That is why I can't relax. I keep thinking that the doctor's are missing something and are ignoring me when I give them a new symptom and just dismiss it as my anxiety. Another thing that worries me is that when I got my blood work done, my doctor said that my white blood cell count was a bit elevated but he said that could be due to stress and again dismissed it as my anxiety and said come back in a month. It seems like every doctor I go to looks at my record and automatically associates everything I describe as anxiety. It's so frustrating. I try to convince myself that it is just anxiety because of what happened to my brother and it just brought my own mortality into perspective. Thank you again for your help. Hope you are all doing okay.
Melody