skippy66
02-06-14, 17:39
Here's mine (from my book). Simply thinking about how bad I was makes me want the ground to open up and swallow me whole...
Look forward to reading YOUR embarrassing HA stories!
DON'T JUDGE ME TOO HARSHLY PLEASE...
I would rate this episode as the very lowest point of my health anxiety, and one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.
I had been suffering stomach problems for a few days. I believe that stomach problems and health anxiety go hand in hand. My stomach in particular is very sensitive to any kind of stress. I had been experiencing stomach pains and aches which were getting steadily worse. Every day I would wake up with stomach cramps and they would last all day. I was particularly stressed as I had just been through several heart tests due to frequent palpitations and I was still awaiting some results from those.
With the help of Google I quickly managed to diagnose my stomach cramps as bowel cancer. It seemed the only possible diagnosis in my warped thinking. I was losing weight and any search related to weight loss with pain usually points to cancer.
One of the other symptoms to look for with bowel cancer is blood in your stools. So I started checking them. This was as unpleasant as it sounds. One day I was checking my stools as usual when I saw a dark red patch. I panicked. I found more dark red patches. In this brief moment I absolutely 100% convinced myself I had bowel cancer - this blood was all the confirmation I needed. I don’t cry much but I started to weep uncontrollably. My daughter was about to be born and I wouldn’t be around to watch her grow up.
Suddenly I heard the front door open - it was my wife. She called for me, then came upstairs as she could hear me sobbing. “What’s wrong?” she asked as I walked out of the bathroom to meet here. “I have got cancer” I said “I’ve just found blood in my poo. It’s not piles because it’s not bright red blood (I had done my research on piles). It must be cancer”.
“I’m sure it’s fine” she said and tried to console me.
Then for some reason which I still can’t understand, and which makes me cringe in the extreme to this day, I said: “Can you have a look?”
I had just asked my wife to look at my poo. There it was, on a piece of toilet paper, delicately balanced on the rim. For some reason she said she would, probably taking pity on my extreme distress.
“Are you sure that’s blood?” she said doubtingly. “Yes” I replied as I picked through it with a cocktail stick to show her. All of a sudden she started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked crossly.
“Do you remember what we had for tea yesterday?”
“Erm...oh yeah, we had that chili con carne”
“That’s not blood, it’s kidney beans”
A wave of both relief and abject humiliation swept through me and I wanted the earth to swallow me up. I had mistaken partially digested kidney beans for blood in my stools. My stomach pains cleared up a couple of days later to be replaced by the next symptom. When I look back at this episode I’m amazed that my wife is still with me...
Look forward to reading YOUR embarrassing HA stories!
DON'T JUDGE ME TOO HARSHLY PLEASE...
I would rate this episode as the very lowest point of my health anxiety, and one of the most embarrassing moments in my life.
I had been suffering stomach problems for a few days. I believe that stomach problems and health anxiety go hand in hand. My stomach in particular is very sensitive to any kind of stress. I had been experiencing stomach pains and aches which were getting steadily worse. Every day I would wake up with stomach cramps and they would last all day. I was particularly stressed as I had just been through several heart tests due to frequent palpitations and I was still awaiting some results from those.
With the help of Google I quickly managed to diagnose my stomach cramps as bowel cancer. It seemed the only possible diagnosis in my warped thinking. I was losing weight and any search related to weight loss with pain usually points to cancer.
One of the other symptoms to look for with bowel cancer is blood in your stools. So I started checking them. This was as unpleasant as it sounds. One day I was checking my stools as usual when I saw a dark red patch. I panicked. I found more dark red patches. In this brief moment I absolutely 100% convinced myself I had bowel cancer - this blood was all the confirmation I needed. I don’t cry much but I started to weep uncontrollably. My daughter was about to be born and I wouldn’t be around to watch her grow up.
Suddenly I heard the front door open - it was my wife. She called for me, then came upstairs as she could hear me sobbing. “What’s wrong?” she asked as I walked out of the bathroom to meet here. “I have got cancer” I said “I’ve just found blood in my poo. It’s not piles because it’s not bright red blood (I had done my research on piles). It must be cancer”.
“I’m sure it’s fine” she said and tried to console me.
Then for some reason which I still can’t understand, and which makes me cringe in the extreme to this day, I said: “Can you have a look?”
I had just asked my wife to look at my poo. There it was, on a piece of toilet paper, delicately balanced on the rim. For some reason she said she would, probably taking pity on my extreme distress.
“Are you sure that’s blood?” she said doubtingly. “Yes” I replied as I picked through it with a cocktail stick to show her. All of a sudden she started laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked crossly.
“Do you remember what we had for tea yesterday?”
“Erm...oh yeah, we had that chili con carne”
“That’s not blood, it’s kidney beans”
A wave of both relief and abject humiliation swept through me and I wanted the earth to swallow me up. I had mistaken partially digested kidney beans for blood in my stools. My stomach pains cleared up a couple of days later to be replaced by the next symptom. When I look back at this episode I’m amazed that my wife is still with me...