Exposure to illness???

[birdinumnum]

I am wondering whether exposure to illness is making my HA worse and am considering a career change.
Do you work in the health profession?
(To include doctors, nurses, auxilleries, hospital cleaners and porters, theatre staff, physios, ot's, dieticians, speech and language therapists, complimentary therapists etc.etc.)

[lass]

I so know where you are coming from with this! My job is secretary in the health screens department, so I get to type up all sorts of complaints and diagnosis. I spend all my time thinking - "I've got that". I also share an office with a radiology secretary who will often tell me about various cancers picked up on Xrays and scans. Then I get into the mode of thinking "If it can happen to them, it can happen to me".

However, the plus side of my job is that I have loads of people available to reassure me if I have any symptoms I am worried about, to ask questions if there is something I don't understand that I am told by another doctor, etc.

My other part time job is as a beauty/holistic therapist. This involves taking details of people's medical history, and they LOVE to share all the gory details, and to pass on gossip about "you know so and so, well they've got .....".

Sometimes it really gets me down and it's hard to keep things into perspective. I don't think about the 99% of people who come along to the hospital and are found to have something minor and incurable, I only focus on those who are found to be terminally ill and can't be helped.

I've thought about it like you have, but for the time being I enjoy my job and I enjoy the support of my colleagues. I'll have to learn how to cope with the sad things that happen at work, and to be honest they are happening all around us anyway - it feels like not a day goes past where I don't hear of someone I know or in the news diagnosed with something horrible :-(

[Quirky]

Hi there,

I used to work as a scientist in a medical field but back then I was never anxious. I now work in a vets and although we deal with health problems all day it rarely affects my anxiety.

I am having CBT for health anxiety and have just received a book she recommended for health anxiety. It mentions gradually exposing yourself to things you fear like you would with any phobia. For example if you are scared of hospitals you start by driving past one, then walking past one, then going in one and sitting in the waiting room etc. If you are scared of cancer it mentions several things like reading an article about someone with cancer, watching a documentary on cancer, and then visiting a cancer hospital ward. For HIV fears it even suggested volunteering in a hospice for HIV patients! So basically it is saying that facing what you fear by gradual repeated exposures brings the anxiety down. If you were to avoid things that you fear or things that make you anxious then it only helps short term, long term it makes the problem much worse. On this basis I doubt changing career would be of any help and your job may actually help you conquer this long term. I don't know what you do though and there may be other reasons to change your job eg if it's stressful in other ways. Do you have a doctor or CBT counsellor you could talk this over with.

Good luck and I'm off to try and practice what I preach!

Lisa