Does anyone get fixation on a celebrities death and then see that as a sign?

[87sal87]

I know this is going to sound barmy, but in my own mind, if I write it out, it might not seem as crazy.

When I was little...maybe about 8 or 9, I remember watching a documentary about Richard Beckinsale (The Porridge actor for UK peeps), from a young age I loved old comedies and comedians. So watching stuff like this with my parents was a common practice.

Anyway, for people who don't know, he died at age 31 from a heart attack, he had a rare heart defect that was never found until he died.

This really stuck with me and upset me as a child as I've always had this thing in my head that I would die young and I've always had this worry about my heart.
No one listened to him either and he had pains in his arms and they only found high chlorestoral and my chlorestoral has been high in the past, with no other symptoms. He was scared of dying and new something was wrong but no one listened to him.

I don't know how to put it, but I'm 31 now and to think someone could just have a heart attack at my age is terrifying and his story has stuck with me from a young age. I feel like I'm almost 'sensing' that I'm going to be a similiar story to his, with no one listening to me.
It's playing on my mind even more lately and I've been watching Porridge on Netflix and I guess it's just got my mind racing.

Anyone else had the same? It's a long shot, but as I say, I just wanted to put it out there and see if it sounded less crazy.

[87sal87]

I guess this IS just me.

[ServerError]

The idea of a sudden death even at my relatively young age from some undiagnosed heart defect or something like that doesn't scare me in the slightest. Once I'm dead, I'm dead. It's not like I'll be sitting around ruing it. I'd rather go quicker when I have to go.

I don't really fear being dead at all. My fear is of a long drawn out period of suffering.

[artist12]

I think it's really normal for us to run with confirmation bias when we are having health anxiety flare ups. As in, we are worried about something, we see a news article or hear a story from a friend or family member, and take it as a "sign" that this could or will happen to us.

A few years ago my mom told me a story about her co-workers daughter who wasn't feeling well for a few weeks, went to the hospital and was told she was diabetic and that she had to be admitted because she was in danger of going into ketoacidosis.

Well, sure enough I took that story and lodged it in my brain and am forever convinced that I'm on the verge of diabetes (it runs in my family) and that the "universe" had my mom tell me that random story so that I would know to take it seriously if I ever started having the same symptoms as her. I know it sounds nuts but I couldn't shake the feeling, either, that it was on purpose that I had come to hear such a random story because so many of the general ill symptoms I was having matched hers.

It's nearly impossible in this age but I really try to avoid all news articles and stories about random illnesses, medical rarities, etc because they will really stay with me, and those are not indicators of what happens to the average person. Those stories gain legs because they are rare! Try to remember that.