Update on misreading words and brain tumor anxiety

[Mostu]

Hello. I'm new to the forum, but I lurked on it for a long time. I already posted my concerns on Reddit, but I'll just copy it here, because the community here is bigger, and so is the feedback.

A week ago I wrote:

" Hey reddit. I'll start by saying that I'm a huge 22 year old hypochondriac. It started in last December, when I pooped a lot of blood and I was convinced that I've got colon cancer, I couldn't function properly for a whole month before I got my colonoscopy which revealed a small benign polyp which was removed.

Anyways, since yesterday all I've been reading about is brain tumors. The reason of that is, when I was in work yesterday (slept only 6 hours and didn't have breakfast, then worked from 8 am to 2 pm) I kind of tripped twice when I was standing and wanted to turn around. Like, I'm clumsy overall and I sometimes trip or bump onto things, but never so often. Also, when handing the change to the customer (I'm a student but I work part time as a cashier) I dropped a coin twice. Or when he asked me for certain cigarretes, I grabbed the blue instead of red ones etc. After the day of overall lack of concentration I started googling and I found that brain tumor may cause clumsiness, loss of concentration, balance etc. I had a CT scan done 4 years ago due to head trauma but it was clear. However, I've read that tumors can grow fast. Should I go to doctor or observe myself for couple days? I've never had headaches as well. "

Today I wrote:
"Last week I made a thread about my concerns about brain tumor. It basically started when I slightly lost balance and was overall clumsy, but I figured it was due to lack of sleep that day. Anyways, since that friday I "experienced" (putting it in quotation marks because I feel like it was placebo) symptoms like depersonalization, weird vision, lack of coordination etc but they all came and went away quickly. However, I'm experiencing one symptom that sticks around since couple of days- misreading stuff. It started when I was on reddit, and I saw a thread named "this is happening on reddit server" but I read "server" as "silver". Normally I probably wouldn't pay much attention to that, especially that reddit silver is a thing, but I immediately remembered how a brain tumor can impact your speech, writing and reading. So I started to dig through all the sources about aphasia but I couldn't find any information or stories about people who had a brain tumor and their only symptom was misreading things. I also noticed that this happens only when I think about this ("okay, another article, I hope I read everything right... ****, it said "write", not "white"), but when I somehow manage to not think about it, for example yesterday in a cinema on a movie with subtitles, I didn't read anything wrong, or so I think. Sorry for a wall of text! "
Help anyone?

[unsure_about_this]

I often drop things or misread because of my disbaility, Try not to google because everything comes back with cancer.

See your doctor/gp

[schmol]

Hello there,
I have this issue too. However, one of the things that should calm you down the most is that you wrote this whole wall of text without any grammar mistakes I can put my finger on. Brain tumors have a lot of symptoms, and if you are fine other than this, it is probably nothing to worry about. I often misread or spit out the wrong words or jumble up the order of things when I am having bouts of paranoia and anxiety. There really is probably nothing wrong with you. If it continues to worry you, a trip to your doctor should put your mind at ease.
PS: If you have never had a history of brain cancer in your family, that is another good sign there is probably nothing wrong.

[Mostu]

Thank you schmol, that's a nice perspective that I didn't see before - if I'm able to write properly and without grammatical errors or jumbling up words, the language comprehension center in my brain isn't probably damaged. I also don't have any history of ANY kind of cancer in my family, but I feel like a black sheep in terms of health, lol. But still, I do realize that reading words wrong is perfectly normal and mostly overlooked by most people, but since a couple of days, literally every word that I read wrong makes my heartbeat go up by 30 bpm. I also mentioned that I had CT done 4 years ago and it was clean - it shifts the odds even more in my favor, right?

[tan235]

I do it all the time! I've never ever worried about it. I just read today 'Scam' instead of 'Scan' - you can understand why I read it like that just like 'Silver' and 'Server' - sometimes I feel like I can't even read, I"ll look at words and my brain will just switch off and I'll have to go and do something else .... I also write words wrong all the time, miss important words out of a sentence, right the wrong word - see what I did there, there's an example ... it should have been write! i do it all the time and never NOT ONCE did I worry about it!

[Mostu]

Glad to hear that, however I never had such problems - that's why it's worrying me currently.

[tan235]

I never had them too - don't forget we all start somewhere with this spiral
It's not really until you go 'oh I should google this' and normally thats' where it all starts.
It's normal - our brains are amazing things, but they are allowed to mess up every now and then and should = otherwise we'd be robots!
Of course go and see a GP if it worries you but unless you have something else like numb hands, or headaches, feeling dizzy, etc etc they will probably send you away and see it's nothing.

[Mostu]

Thank you. I also noticed that the problem didn't start until I actually started reading about it, making it even more plausible that it's anxiety related. I'd love to just get over it without going to the doctor, also in my country the queues to neurologists are long, like 4 months at least. Unless you pay of course, but I'm a student so yeah I'd also love to hear from someone who knows about MRI/CT more than me, because I had one 4 years ago and I wonder if that alone doesn't exclude the brain tumor already.

[muzicdejay]

Hi, sounds to me like it's the anxiety. I'm really clumsy and forgetful when I have something on my mind, I put the tea bags in the fridge, loose my car keys, forget if I ate like an hour before etc, I think our minds are so caught up with anxiety and worry it''s normal that we can't fully concentrate on the everyday things we do.
I've even forgot how spell my surname a few times (No joke) because I'm worrying myself about a health issue.
Of course any concerns get checked by your doc but I bet it's all to do with the anxiety.

[Sparky16]

There's a sign on the pizza place in my town that is advertising "Cinna Squares". I keep misreading it as "China Squares" because my brain keeps trying to correct it to something that makes sense.