View Full Version : Severe cancer phobia- I think I have cancer all the time?
I am a 16 year old female. I am very healthy (generally speaking). I hardly ever get sick, the worst thing ive ever had is strep throat, and i never seem to catch things that are "going around". All in all, i know i have a pretty strong immune system.
However, i am ridicuously scared of cancer. I am a hypochondriac, but all of my health anxiety stems back to my cancer phobia. It keeps getting worse and worse and i DONT want to live like this!!! Im 16!!
In the past 3-4 years, ive *thought* ive had atleast 5+ tumors, and 8+ different forms of cancer.
Right now, im struggling with melanoma and lymphoma.
I found a new mole on my scalp, and of course started googling right away. While my mole is new, it has NONE of the "abcde" criteria that would cause concern for melanoma. However, ive read horror stories of people who had perfectly normal moles turn out to be stage 4 melanoma, so thats freaking me out. Im also fully convinced that i have lymphoma. I honestly couldnt tell you if/how many nodes are swollen because im scared to feel them, for if i do feel one, it will give me a panic attack. Also, about a month ago i had a HUGE panic attack that caused me to lose my appetite for about 10 days. During those 10 days i couldnt eat, so i maybe got down 500 calories a day, which is not enough for a 170lb girl. During that period of time, i started to notice my hair was falling out way more than usual. Which im sure was caused by either the anxiety or starvation, or maybe both! But NOW, im still having some bad hair loss, which was surely caused by that, but im convincing myself its caused by anemia...
SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME. IM BEGGING. My anxiety is rapidly progressing and i want to stop it! I KNOW IM RIDICULOUS BUT PLEASE HELP.
Hi Ashlee,
I know how you feel - for the past month I have been CONVINCED I have bowel cancer because I had stomach pains and googled loads of blogs/news stories about young people with the disease.
I went to the hospital and missed work cause I thought I found a lump under my arm - the doctor said it was just a gland and my bloods all came back fine :).
I spoke to a really helpful woman at a helpline who said that it's not a phobia of the disease itself if it anxiety attaching itself onto anything it can.. is something going on in your life that's worrying you??
I'm 24 and have just moved cities and jobs.
If it makes you feel any better my brother suffered from terrible health anxiety a few years back and he did recover.. is there anyway you could see your GP and ask for some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Hope it gets better.
FJ xox
Firstly, nice to meet you Ashlee and welcome to the site, I am sure you will find loads of help and support here.
Secondly - you are not ridiculous, almost everyone who posts on this website could at one time, or still could write a post exactly the same as you have written.
Thirdly - you have made the first and most important step in my view, acknowledging that on the balance of likelihood that this is related to anxiety. Acknowledging this means that you are tackling the right thing, rather than chasing diagnosis for something that isnt there. Many people struggle massively with this, and you are already there so give yourself a pat on the back :)
Right, what to do now. Well, I can only talk from my own experience, but this is what I did.
1) Went to the GP and asked for a number of things. Firstly I wanted to know I could trust her not to trivialise physical concerns on the basis of me being anxious, secondly I wanted her, under no circumstances to refer me for tests, unless in her objective opinion it was necessary. Finally I asked whether I could visit every six weeks to channel all of my symptoms and also force me to wait, rather than running there every two minutes. At my worst I would have been there all the time.
2) I discussed meds and on balance decided not to take them. For me that ended up being absoluteley the right decision as it didnt mask my anxiety, and now I feel much better without the help of meds. I have taken meds in the past and they were great, but I found my mood decline rapidly when I came off them.
3) I found myself a therapist that understood health anxiety and who i gelled with. I visited three before I settled on one. I also didnt set myself artificial targets in terms of number of sessions etc. I think that therapy helped me to think differently and understand what it is could alter and how the rest of my anxiety would follow.
Now to give you further context, in August last year, I was useless, depressed, could barely leave my bed, work etc. I was utterly miserable. Now, I am working harder than ever, just been on a fab holiday and am delighted to say I am a decent husband and father again. I am not cured, I still have blips, but I respond to them better and touch wood have prevented any complete declines for nearly five months.
There is hope, and there is plenty of advice on this board. However, there are also a lot of people who arent in such a good place. My advice to you, if you are committed to solving anxiety is to hunt out posts that deal with this, and to leave alone the posts talking about specific symptoms for the time being.
I have made plenty, but also look up, Katesa, Tanner, Fishmanpa, Honeylove, Skippy etc. There will be many more that I have forgotten, but those were the people I leant on most when I was feeling terrible.
Good luck and any questions just shout :)
Hi Ashlee,
I know how you feel - for the past month I have been CONVINCED I have bowel cancer because I had stomach pains and googled loads of blogs/news stories about young people with the disease.
I went to the hospital and missed work cause I thought I found a lump under my arm - the doctor said it was just a gland and my bloods all came back fine :).
I spoke to a really helpful woman at a helpline who said that it's not a phobia of the disease itself if it anxiety attaching itself onto anything it can.. is something going on in your life that's worrying you??
I'm 24 and have just moved cities and jobs.
If it makes you feel any better my brother suffered from terrible health anxiety a few years back and he did recover.. is there anyway you could see your GP and ask for some Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
Hope it gets better.
FJ xox
Wow. Thank you SO much for taking the time to write that! I too have thought i had bowel cancer before (thats what actually triggered that anxiety attack that caused me to not eat for 10 days). And ive also found many 'lumps' but for me, im afraid to go to the doctor for fear that I'll be diagnosed with cancer. I also never tell my parents when this type of thing happens. I keep it bottled up inside, and it usually makes me depressed. I feel like im playing 'the little boy who cried wolf'. Because if i continue doing this, when/if something truly is wrong, i wont believe myself :(
Have you tried CBT? Im a bit skeptical about it, but yet i think it might help.
---------- Post added at 06:49 ---------- Previous post was at 06:45 ----------
Firstly, nice to meet you Ashlee and welcome to the site, I am sure you will find loads of help and support here.
Secondly - you are not ridiculous, almost everyone who posts on this website could at one time, or still could write a post exactly the same as you have written.
Thirdly - you have made the first and most important step in my view, acknowledging that on the balance of likelihood that this is related to anxiety. Acknowledging this means that you are tackling the right thing, rather than chasing diagnosis for something that isnt there. Many people struggle massively with this, and you are already there so give yourself a pat on the back :)
Right, what to do now. Well, I can only talk from my own experience, but this is what I did.
1) Went to the GP and asked for a number of things. Firstly I wanted to know I could trust her not to trivialise physical concerns on the basis of me being anxious, secondly I wanted her, under no circumstances to refer me for tests, unless in her objective opinion it was necessary. Finally I asked whether I could visit every six weeks to channel all of my symptoms and also force me to wait, rather than running there every two minutes. At my worst I would have been there all the time.
2) I discussed meds and on balance decided not to take them. For me that ended up being absoluteley the right decision as it didnt mask my anxiety, and now I feel much better without the help of meds. I have taken meds in the past and they were great, but I found my mood decline rapidly when I came off them.
3) I found myself a therapist that understood health anxiety and who i gelled with. I visited three before I settled on one. I also didnt set myself artificial targets in terms of number of sessions etc. I think that therapy helped me to think differently and understand what it is could alter and how the rest of my anxiety would follow.
Now to give you further context, in August last year, I was useless, depressed, could barely leave my bed, work etc. I was utterly miserable. Now, I am working harder than ever, just been on a fab holiday and am delighted to say I am a decent husband and father again. I am not cured, I still have blips, but I respond to them better and touch wood have prevented any complete declines for nearly five months.
There is hope, and there is plenty of advice on this board. However, there are also a lot of people who arent in such a good place. My advice to you, if you are committed to solving anxiety is to hunt out posts that deal with this, and to leave alone the posts talking about specific symptoms for the time being.
I have made plenty, but also look up, Katesa, Tanner, Fishmanpa, Honeylove, Skippy etc. There will be many more that I have forgotten, but those were the people I leant on most when I was feeling terrible.
Good luck and any questions just shout :)
THANK YOU! Your answer was so detailed and i really appreciate you taking the time to try and help me. Your plan with the doctor is really great, i think itd work perfectly for me. How was the therapy? Did it really work? What did they teach you and how did it help? Again, thank you so much :)
Therapy was good. It isnt a silver bullet and isnt a cure, but what it taught me is the things that are at play when we feel anxious about something. Often people with anxiety try and control the things they can't. So in the case of HA, through fear of having some disease or another you might google, or visit the dr repeatedly, or seek reassurance in the hope that these things will convince you that what you fear will not happen.
The reality though is twofold. Yes sometime horrible things happen to people, but equally, they are far less frequent that the media and people with HA believe. The normal trajectory for someone in the US is to live a relatively healthy life with health declining in their 70s and 80s. If anything else were true then average life expectancy stats would be all over the place.
What you can control is your reaction to anxious thoughts and you can do certain things to help them occurring in the first place. It sounds quite odd to write, but when someone is explaining it to you it really does make sense.
Fishmanpa has shared a link on a number of occasions to some online CBT and it may be worth taking a look at that. Also, as you are only 16, perhaps it is worth a conversation with your parents about this? Mental health is just as important as physical health and I know, as a father of two that I would want my kids to lean on me if they needed anything.
You need to know - that you will get better if you want to. It isnt easy, and takes work, but it is possible.
Final thought. Don't measure success in terms of being better or not. It isnt as simple as that. View recovery from anxiety as a journey, a journey that has ups and downs. Allow yourself set backs, be kind to yourself, but look for positive trends, not perfection.
Hope all that makes sense.
unsure_about_this
11-06-14, 15:46
Welcome to the site as well.
As a massive cancer worry as well. All started 2010 walking home from soccer/football match snowed, my legs were aching so thought it may have bone cancer.
2012 my Dad went for a bowel screening his test was fine, I had abdominal pain so I thought this could be cancer, did a naughty Google. I must have been the GP a few times but referred to the hospital for an ultrasound which shown nothing to worry about, in 2013 still in pain and did not believe it was IBS had camera up backside, CT scan, a possible small loopy pouch was spotted, so needed a MRI scan and nuclear scan but all was okay.
This year I been for a brain scan, because I have NF and not had a brain scan for 10-12 years thought it was best to get checked out, I do go for opticians test which was first indicted something was there when I was nine (no idea where it took this long to see something, as I had eye tests before I was nine at a children hospital, plus regular opticians test not serious. I think it is either a café au lait mark, bright spot, but not a tumour
Also I worry about my blood pressure, this was fine I had it done on Friday getting my results of my brain scan, plus urine test and blood test.
I have also worried about these cancers, blood, pancreatic, liver, heart, breast, penile, testicular, mouth, ear, nose, throat, head, neck, skin plus many other types of cancers.
If I could I would visit the GP every single day.
Sorry to hear you're going through the same thing :(
Welcome.
I suppose many of us here can relate to what you're going through.
The important thing to know is that you're NOT alone!
For me, it started out about 5 years ago. It took me by surprise, I was overwhelmed by every little symptom I can find on my body. It also became a bad habit for me that I would deliberately search for symptoms to worry about. I have seen countless GPs, done many tests, and generally worrying myself sick. I couldn't even function properly even in my day-to-day activities.
After a year or so, I was convinced that all I had was health anxiety. So I started reading up on this topic and found this site by chance.
My first real comfort was knowing that I was not alone.
Since then, I started to be more conscious of my thoughts, I discussed this topic more freely with my wife. She is very supportive of me although she doesn't know how to help me. Quite frankly, only a fellow hypochondriac would understand what we are going through. But she provided me a good listening ear, and that was good enough for me.
Over time, I started taking up new hobbies, activities, and concentrate on spending quality time with my family. The urge to look for new symptoms on my body gradually died down.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not "cured" of anxiety. I still get it now and then, but the feeling is no longer as intense as 5 years ago. And the frequency of episodes is a lot lesser.
I guess what I'm trying to say is.. don't be disheartened. There is hope.
Talk to someone you trust on what you're going through.
Get an online or real life "hypochondriac buddy" to discuss issues and offer each other support.
Seek professional help if necessary.
Thanks so much for responding! I already feel better from all the kindness and helpfulness of you and others. (:
I just wish i could go back to a time when i didnt have this anxiety. Like, just remember what it feels like to not be worried 24/7. :(
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