Fear Of Going To The Doctor and Don't Know Why

[mnaha]

For the last 8 months I have been going to my doctor every month. I was hospitalized about 8 months ago for tachycardia and spent a week in the hospital being monitored and they found that I had an infection and my wbc was 19000 but as soon as I was hospitalized it started going down.

I also was dehydrated and my electrolytes were out of balance and they said that is what caused the tachycardia. My heart was beating at 150 and would not go down. They stopped my heart twice and on the third attempt it slowed somewhat.

While in the hospital they found that I was prediabetic and they gave me a blood sugar meter and told me to loose weight and eat right and it might help and they put my on metformin.

Well every month I go ,I get a little nervous before the day actually gets here but then when I get to the office the moment I walk through the door my heart starts pounding and my blood pressure goes up.

When I first started going it would be something like 109 or 114 or 120 and last time I went it shot up to 133. I freaked out and thought it would not slow down but they all know that im anxious and did not pay much attention to it. I always freak out when they take my blood pressure . My blood pressure was 120 over 73 and pulse 133.

What is crazy is that I really like my doctor and all the nurses and the environment is really nice there and comfortable. I just don't understand that after going month after month why my nervousness is getting worse instead of better. I have tried really hard and it does no good no matter how hard I try . I don't want to go every month but have to , to get a refil of my meds. What can I do? I have tried everything to relax also this month I have an appointment with an eye doctor to do a good exam to see if I have any damage to my eyes from high sugar and stuff and also I have been having issues with my eyes for quite sometime but am older now so its to be expected. I am really scared to go to the eye doctor for fear he might find something bad wrong with my eyes or brain or something. How can I get over this. I hate being scared all the time. It makes me sick and nervous and just don't know why. What can I do?

[MyNameIsTerry]

Hi,

Where do you feel it coming on? Is it anticipation, as you start getting closer, as you go in or at specific points during being in there like seeing your name being called or them doing something or taking you somewhere? Or a combination of any of that?

Its clear that this is an event which is out of your control - you have to go to it. So, there might be a clue in that as having to do something means lack of control and additional pressure on you. Being able to choose to do something is very different, although anxiety can still be a factor, it depends on manner things.

So, I'm wondering whether to desensitise, you could decide to go there, do the journey and be in there but because you want to be and not because you have an appointment? I wonder whether you would still be as anxious? If not, it might mean that you can try to desensitise yourself this way through repetition and see if your anxiety at the appointments reduces.

You could possibly try a method that allows you to practice trying to calm yourself in these situations. Do they have Applied Relaxation in the US? That does train you to bring a relaxed state of mind & body. Its an advancement on the earlier Progressive Muscle Relaxation (PMR).

Its just a possibility. I think from speaking to you in the past, there are other issues that underpin this about your health so I don't know if the above will reduce your anxiety on the days but its a thought. The rest then needs to be about not worrying about your health, which is a difficult one as its a big player in this.

[Old 68]

My fear isn't Doctors,but Dentists.
I had a Stroke because of high Blood Pressure.I am on Medication now.
But every time I have a Dental app' my B/P goes up.Shouldn't be nervous now,as my Dentist and Staff are lovely.But I still dread my next appointment,and can't get it off my mind .Worse as I get older.

[mnaha]

Terry it seems some visits I am relaxed and calm before I go and even on the way but when I walk through the doors my heart starts to pound and doesn't slow down much while im there. The fastest it gets is during blood pressure test and then seems to slow but never gets to slow until im back home. This time I set an appointment and even a week before I was to go I started panicking and getting nervous like I could not relax.

I cancelled the appointment but have to go soon and I have the appointment with the eye doctor coming up and it is at the hospital I was in when I was sick. I am freaking out about all of this and feel that something bad is going to happen at any moment.

I am 60 now and frightened that any moment I could bite the dust from some ailment or heart attack or stroke although the last time I was at the doctor he told me I was pretty healthy . My blood pressure was good 120/70 but my pulse was 133 which he never said anything about and my blood sugar has been being within a normal range since I lost over 40 pounds and am maintaining it and eating right.

I keep having that lymph node bother me off and on.It will swell and then go down never all the way but almost. Also I have two spots on me that the doctor has seen that looks to me like cancer but they have been there awhile. He examines me totally every time I go and checks everything and if he suspected it was cancer im sure he would have sent me to a specialist but it also looks like atenic kerratosis which is not cancerous but can become that way.

Those spots worry me a lot and guess they are just products of sun exposure when I was younger and maybe nothing but they worry me. I also have a numbness in left hand off and on and think that I have duprens concature and showed it to him but he hasn't said nothing but it probably is also I think that I have gangalon cyst in my wrist and he doesn't seem to be concerned with that either.

In recent months my hands at rest seem to tremor also I have trouble sleeping which are symptoms of parkinsons but I have not ask him about that. I worry and feel sad everyday thinking im just sitting here waiting for the hammer to fall. Basically waiting to die although he said that I was healthy I still worry.

My heart has started skipping a lot lately again although I have been told many times that it isn't . I ask my doctor last time I was there about it and he said that I was just more sensitive than other people that is why I felt it but I was in no danger and that it wasn't actually skipping.

Im really depressed because I wake everyday wondering if this is the day that something bad will happen to me. Although like I said ,he told me that I am healthy.
Also it seems that they can tell if you are ill by sugar levels and my levels have been pretty normal for the most part of months. I take on pill of metformin everyday and losing the weight and eating right seems to keep it down.

I was told that if I had a bad infection or sickness in my body not even metformin would keep my blood sugar down so I guess according to them I am in good health so I shouldn't worry but do.

The doctor thing is just weird lately just the thought of going to any doctor or dentist or anything sends me into panic. I hate that and try everything to relax. I do visualizations listen to music and try to meditate but nothing seems to work. So I just don't know what to do anymore. I hate it. I don't want to have to go to the doctors every month and don't think its fair.

---------- Post added at 16:49 ---------- Previous post was at 16:47 ----------


My fear isn't Doctors,but Dentists.
I had a Stroke because of high Blood Pressure.I am on Medication now.
But every time I have a Dental app' my B/P goes up.Shouldn't be nervous now,as my Dentist and Staff are lovely.But I still dread my next appointment,and can't get it off my mind .Worse as I get older.


I feel your pain. It is terrible. I hate knowing I have to go to a doctor all the time since I never had to growing up and don't look forward to a life of having to go all the time. Sometimes I feel like I would rather just slip away than have to do that. I feel like I will always be tethered to a doctor the rest of my life and don't want that. It is so depressing.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Its worth him checking those marks because if it is what you think it could be, your doctor will want to treat it to prevent the potential of it going further. That maybe creams or even removal, but he will refer you for an assessment by a specialist for that. Don't worry about this though, just get it checked. My dad had one on the side of his nose for several years and he had it removed after seeing his GP because with it not going & getting larger he thought it might have been an eczema problem. The specialist was very confident and told him treatments have excellent rates.

Since you are being checked so regular your doctor is getting to keep a good eye on you and sounds thorough with doing all these checks when you are there. I think you have to have confidence in this and I've said a few times that he is very experienced so you know you can trust him.

Some of the things you are saying such as sleep issues and tremors can be accounted for in anxiety but its worth your doctor knowing about it so he can take it into account when he does your health checks.

You are only 60 though, you could decades left in you. My mum & dad are mid seventies and still going strong. Some of my dad's brothers & sisters have lived into their later eighties. So, you just don't know and you need to try to motivate yourself with this because you could be wasting what time you have left by being stuck in this rut. What can you do to try and introduce more things that you enjoy into your life? This can help a lot.

You know your lymph nodes came up with infections before due to the absesses so that was a normal reaction. As long as your doctor is happy, thats all you need to know because they check those all the time in their line of work so they know what to look out for.

I think you need to see whether you can go to the doctors surgery and sit inside there on a day that is not fixed so that you can work out whether its about the place, the fact you have to go there as opposed to want to go, or both. That might help you understand what is the issue and then a strategy can be formed to tackle it.