The day you realized you are probably never going to be fine

[Hypo84]

Yesterday, my mother returned from her regular checkup with surgeon since she was diagnosed with breast cancer Stage I 2.5 years ago.

She enters a house and asks me, do you see swelling next to armpit above breast...I say yes and then she goes...you see, I told doctor it is swelling and he keeps insisting I just gained weight and it is fat, and he didnt even touch that, he was touching only under armpit.

I tried to calm her down by saying that she was just in a room with surgeon, if he can't recognize that smth is wrong than who can...and she finally calmed down when today, our electrician came to house and she mentioned it and that guy said, oh...my wife had smth similar and she was diagnosed with lymphoma...Can you imagine full blown panic it produced? No matter how much I was trying to reassure her that freaking surgeon looked it (he didn't look it well according to her words), even though that swelling is soft, she can feel lumps below it...and today was disaster of a day.

And then it occurred to me...I have her genes, I grew up with that type of behavior, no wonder I am ****ed up and petrified of illnesses and will I ever be fine? I mean, she is like this her entire life, and she even took antidepressants, so am I bound to live life in fear every single day for the rest of my life?

I wish that answer could be no, but I am not sure...

[JustJoe25]

Hello Hypo84, I also have health anxiety that I think came from both my mom and grandma as my mom to this day is very anxious and my grandma always was too. My mom is a breast cancer survivor of 17 years she was diagnosed at age 34 and now is 51. the cancer did spread to her lymph nodes where she had surgery. Hang in there I'm sure your mom will pull through this!

[Hypo84]

I just saw an article today that if you have at least two family members with breast cancer in my case my mom and her aunt it's a risk factor for pancreatic cancer which drove me into a panic.

You just didn't have to share that information...

[JustJoe25]

You are right I've since deleted that part of the post. Sorry about that I wrote it out of my own worry and you are right it was wrong of me to share it.

[rsanchez]

She can get a second/third/etc opinion.

[Hypo84]

I guess no one got the point of my post...I mentioned my mother illness just to show how irrational her thinking is and how I probably learned to think like that when I was young and she didn't manage to overcome her hypochondria so will I be able to? Not sure...

[ker92ri]

Hypochondria is a learned behaviour and its hard to 'unlearn'. Like riding a bike, you never forget. I know how hard my condition is on my family but to have to deal with it yourself and to support someone else, must be really difficult.