The media scared me sh*tless. :(

[Savvy_Darling]

How do you not let news articles or tv commercials freak you out?
I contemplate deleting my Facebook all the time because of news articles about cancer or people dying. When I watch tv I usually change the channel if anything starts to make me feel anxious but when I'm on Facebook my curiosity kills me and I decide to click on the article and read it. It always makes me upset and I can feel the panic start to rise inside me.
Remember how I posted about being scared about melanoma?
Well this article I read was about a 29yo female newlywed who thought she had a muscle ache and doctors told her it was and then it got worse and she got tests and turned out to be Melanoma and she died! She also was very sun conscious and didn't tan and used sun block and wore sun hats... ;( if that didn't already make matters worse the comments on the article had people sharing their experiences about having melanoma and someone said "my doctor said it didn't look like anything but I still wanted it removed and it has turned out to be melanoma."
Needless to say, I'm really anxious right now and freaked out after reading all that. And I find it so odd that I see this and I was worried about melanoma not too long ago (still am honestly) so this has all made it worse .:scared15::weep:
Especially the "melanoma is the deadliest form on skin cancer among young adults" meanwhile I thought it wasn't as common? Now it is ?!
I feel so scared and now all I can think is that that's gonna be me and I'm gonna die. I'm 21... Will I even live to see 22 or 23?! :(
I don't know how to not let the media scare me so bad but at the same time maybe this is a sign? I don't know how to think I just need help calming down and not to start analyzing my skin and wanting to rip off the moles I do have for fear they're killing me and I don't even know it. Please help. :(

[katniss]

I hear you. I get super curious and start reading those kinds of articles as well. Naturally, I begin to connect the symptoms with myself and start getting anxiety. I am getting a little better at it though.

Just a thought. These things are still quite rare. If they were common they wouldn't be on the news or Facebook! The fact that there is a news article on it tells you it's an uncommon event worthy of being in the news.

[Savvy_Darling]

Katniss, at least I'm not the only one!
I also thought the whole rarity making the news but it said how it's the deadliest form of skin cancer in young adults which to me had me thinking it's common. I don't know but I'm not as anxious but I'm still freaked a lil considering it was about something I've been sort of obsessing about lately. :(
It's crazy how much you hear about shootings in the news and do I worry about that? Nope not at all and I live in a risky part of town yet not worried about getting shot but am terrified of cancer. :(

[MyNameIsTerry]

I also thought the whole rarity making the news but it said how it's the deadliest form of skin cancer in young adults which to me had me thinking it's common.(

What is the deadliest and what it the most likely of the severe illnesses & diseases are two very different things.

Something will always be the deadliest. Out of all the cancers, there will be one considered the most aggressive just as there is within a subclass of cancers. That doesn't mean they kill more people though, just that they are the worst to get.

It's very important to not make assumptions with this stuff. It's also important to consider a) how many people even get it and b) how many people is that as a proportion of a demographic. For instance, if the deadliest thing means a 1 in 20,000,000,000,000 chance, then that's not the same as something with a 1 in 20,000.000 chance by a long way.

So, without me checking, if melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer for your demographic, what does that mean? Does it mean it kills the odd person here and there? Or has a high % of mortality rate? If a lot of people get it but there is a high treatment success rate, it can still be the deadliest but you have to rationalise it and consider this.

My dad had a form of skin cancer about 5 years ago, I can't remember which if the two it was right now but it wasn't melanoma. His consultant said it was very treatable and had very high success rates. They removed it and job done. He had left it a couple of years thinking it was some form of sore that wouldn't heal and he had been picking at it hence assuming that.

There is a difference between the NMP HA board and the general public (and even the other boards on NMP) over the issue of cancer failures in GP's. It's a scary issue for you guys and so I've always observed that any medical failure is downplayed on here, even on the basic illnesses which GP's are very well known to make continual errors on, although this latter seems to have changed over time on here. Sadly, mistakes are made. The worst ones are very uncommon. We've even had our NHS public statistics on GP's failing to spot cancers and a report like that would scare people on here to death but sadly it is fact and triggered the NHS to clamp down on GP's because they viewed it as too high. There will have been an improvement since and we have new controls over GP surgery performance too since that happened a few years back.

So, if you read threads on here you will see a certain view of this. If you read non HA sites, you are going to get a non HA considerate answer. You may also get people posting in those places who are trolls or have limited information that ends up coming out worse than it should be.

But remember, look at the statistics. There was an excellent thread on here by a new member recently talking statistics. Otherwise you will read about cancers and see how some are often not even able to be diagnosed until it's too late. We can't deny that, it's medical fact coming from our doctors and health services. In these cases what we can do is live a healthy life to protect ourselves from it and work on the anxiety so that we don't live a life of fear...remember we could get run over a bus any day of the week. :shades:

[Savvy_Darling]

Honestly Terry, I don't wanna Google anything.. Even if it is just for statistics, I feel like it would be like offering just a shot to an alcoholic. I wouldn't know when to stop and I would end up scaring myself even more. Google has a way of dragging me into a black hole of terrifying stories & information.
What really freaks me out even more about all this is that you remember how I was just posting about how worked up I was over certain moles and was very scared about melanoma so seeing this article almost feels too much of coincidence for me to handle.
And now even if I went to get them looked at after seeing people say they were misdiagnosed and the young woman that died was its like what's the point.. If you can't even trust your doctor with your life.
I have been concerned with melanoma off and on for awhile. The last time I was, I ended up removing the mole with food grade hydrogen peroxide (something i found out from a natural cure page and people had luck with removing moles) that mole did get removed that way and you would really never even know I had a mole. that was back in December and if that was melanoma I feel like I would be displaying symptoms now and dying and not being able to do my 45mins a day on the treadmill either.
I wish I wasn't so terrified of cancer.. And it doesn't help with all the media hype like commercials and news stories.
It's funny that I'm not scared of getting hit by anything because honestly if that happens I wouldn't know it and with cancer it's like you know you could die and u can take all the treatment and still die.. It's like a slow death like torture honestly and that's horrifying. :(

[Elen]

You have to remember that FB shows you things based on what you search for and click on.

I never get these stories on my time line because it is not something I look at, mind you I do get a lot of adverts for flights and hotels due to searches I do for my work.

On fb you can click to stop posts and adverts of a certain nature appearing on your timeline. It might be worth doing this thus reducing your exposure.

[unsure_about_this]

Media scares me, television programmes, was eating breakfast a few weeks ago when Good morning Britian/Lorriane did the check your chaps for testes/prostate/penile cancer awareness. Soaps also do some storylines yearly about characters getting written out because of cancer/disease etc

[chatty girl]

Me too I really try hard not to click on the links and usually hide them from my news feed but some times one catches my eye and I have to click on it! Usually a baby or child dying which then sets in panic about my 4yr!!!!!

Xx

[Fishmanpa]

You have to remember that FB shows you things based on what you search for and click on.

I never get these stories on my time line because it is not something I look at, mind you I do get a lot of adverts for flights and hotels due to searches I do for my work.

On fb you can click to stop posts and adverts of a certain nature appearing on your timeline. It might be worth doing this thus reducing your exposure.

Great advice. And, depending on the browser you use, you can also get an ad block app. I use Chrome and use AdBlock. Works great and I don't see annoying ads, even on FB.

Positive thoughts

[MyNameIsTerry]

Media scares me, television programmes, was eating breakfast a few weeks ago when Good morning Britian/Lorriane did the check your chaps for testes/prostate/penile cancer awareness. Soaps also do some storylines yearly about characters getting written out because of cancer/disease etc

That's the thing and why any decent therapist knows that avoidance has to be challenged with exposure because you simply CANNOT escape these triggers. They can be in advert breaks, newspapers & mags or just an advert in a non health mag you wouldn't suspect had them, on bus shelters or billboards, discussed in your presence or even overheard from a passer-by.

The triggers are everywhere. Avoidance is a short term strategy but long term they have to be changed to adaptive behaviours.

---------- Post added at 06:58 ---------- Previous post was at 06:49 ----------


Honestly Terry, I don't wanna Google anything.. Even if it is just for statistics, I feel like it would be like offering just a shot to an alcoholic. I wouldn't know when to stop and I would end up scaring myself even more. Google has a way of dragging me into a black hole of terrifying stories & information.
What really freaks me out even more about all this is that you remember how I was just posting about how worked up I was over certain moles and was very scared about melanoma so seeing this article almost feels too much of coincidence for me to handle.
And now even if I went to get them looked at after seeing people say they were misdiagnosed and the young woman that died was its like what's the point.. If you can't even trust your doctor with your life.
I have been concerned with melanoma off and on for awhile. The last time I was, I ended up removing the mole with food grade hydrogen peroxide (something i found out from a natural cure page and people had luck with removing moles) that mole did get removed that way and you would really never even know I had a mole. that was back in December and if that was melanoma I feel like I would be displaying symptoms now and dying and not being able to do my 45mins a day on the treadmill either.
I wish I wasn't so terrified of cancer.. And it doesn't help with all the media hype like commercials and news stories.
It's funny that I'm not scared of getting hit by anything because honestly if that happens I wouldn't know it and with cancer it's like you know you could die and u can take all the treatment and still die.. It's like a slow death like torture honestly and that's horrifying. :(

There is the Cognitive Distortions in play again, just a different way - you can be killed by many things and suffer terrible pain or years of it, it's not just disease & illness. It's not an a control issue in anxiety because it can only be a perceived control issue since you can't prevent many ways of dying in life, they will just happen and no amount of prevention can avoid everything.

It's a good point about doctors. For some, anything a doctor says will very quickly be doubted because that's just part of the issue for them. Part of getting past that will always be confronting it, just in the right way. These stories will always exist, the medical world can't prevent them all.

It's about acceptance and confidence with these issues. For instance, I have asthma and if I was put into the right nasty conditions I could have an asthma attack and there is the possibility that it could kill me. Do I care? Couldn't give a shit. My anxiety is mild and well controlled and I don't plan on putting myself into more extreme circumstances that could cause it, not avoidance, just sensible. Even if I did, it would probably be very uncommon to rare that I couldn't take my med and get through it or end up in hospital where they sort my breathing out.

But there could be a 0.01% chance I could die. I accept the possibility and move on. This is why acceptance can be very good for us, it's something we lack in our themes. In truth, this scenario just wouldn't be much of an issue in my anxiety but the acceptance is natural that it is a possibility and that it is such a low possibility that it doesn't matter when there are far more likely possibilities.

[furret]

That's what sent me into my current phobia. I saw a video about a girl who is a youtuber and recently got diagnosed with esophagus cancer. She can't be more than 30yo, and while she did say that she had trouble swallowing but never paid much attention to it, i am very scared now that i could have silent reflux for years, untreated, and now i could have barrets or severe damage to my esophagus.
There are lots of forums that i stopped reading because of that, my ms, als, alzheimers and dementia scares came from things i read on the internet.

In my case, i think i can agree with you. I am 24 and i am worried about not living to seeing my next birthday, mainly because i have so much to do yet so little time (AND money, i am going through a VERY rough patch economically right now). I know my anxiety stems from that. But let's repeat to ourselves that we are young, we try to take care of our health as best as we can and that living with continuous worries is making us miss things.
I know is hard, i struggle with that sometimes, but the mind is powerful, and we have to keep trying :)
hugs!

[Elen]

Again you have to take the responsibility to what you click on.

YouTube suggests videos based on your previous viewing.

Start looking for dancing cats and that is what it will suggest to you.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Start looking for dancing cats and that is what it will suggest to you.

Damn my stupid dancing cat phobia! :yesyes::winks:

And worse Elen, Google does love to keep an eye on what we look at and then starts popping ads into other websites so we can't get away from them as easily. I guess this can be blocked out, I just groan and move on...

[Elen]

lol Terry, I don't mind so much when google basis it on personal searches but get fed up seeing about flights to Dubai etc that I have looked at for my work, I am a travel administrator, but never go on hols myself.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yes, I can imagine that is frustrating. It's like working at Camelot doing the admin for the 6 ball winners. A very depressing job!

[furret]

In my case the video was suggested because it's a girl who is living abroad, and i follow many youtubers who are living in a place different than the country they were born. I try to distance myself as much as i can from disease-related discussions on the internet, as they tend to exaggerate the statistics and they tell you that you shouldn't eat sugar, fat, salt, processed anything because you will get cancer/dementia and die.
It's like that time a guy was saying that when you are 80 the probability of alzheimer approaches 50%, and i was really scared, but then again, i know A LOT of people who are over 80 and they look and act like they are at least 10 years younger.
The internet is not kind to us who have ha :P

[MyNameIsTerry]

But when you are 80, your risk levels go up for things just as they would in years before this age group. That's just life. In your eighties you have done really well just to make it that far and the next natural stage of your life could come anytime.

People in that age range tend to think about life & death in a different way. They accept it.

[Savvy_Darling]

Oh furret... You just planted a horrible seed in my brain now. :(
I experience swallowing issues now and again ever since my anxiety has been bad and right at the moment I am. Like a mucus feeling in my throat and I wanna swallow a lot and thinking about it makes it horrible.
Now I'm worried of Esophagus Cancer! :( I did look up the symptoms and of course I can't help but relate to some of them. It says this is a rare cancer but what you just said worries me because you said she was young and a female. I don't smoke cigarettes (although I may practice in the smoking of another 'herb') and don't drink often at all. No sure if I have an unknown acid reflux. But this whole swallowing thing has me really worked up now. ;( I wish I didn't go back and read this thread. I didn't know I had these new replies and I didn't think I'd get worried about something. :(

[Nicholebear]

Facebook gets me too. I have to unfollow people that share that crap all the time.

I wish there were a way to completely filter that stuff out. Back in the day you never saw that stuff on MySpace, but old people love sharing that crap.

I can't watch local news anymore. It's literally only people getting murdered and dying of disease.

[Savvy_Darling]

And now I'm ready to make an apt with my doctor because I think I have oral cancer. I don't know but right near my tonsils on the side of my mouth it's like bumpy looking mouth tissue i don't know how to explain it but I'm scared now and i don't know if it's always been like that or if it's normal. I tried looking in my boyfriends mouth but I can't tell it's harder for him to make his tonsil areas visible. I'm so worried and convinced I'm gonna die from this. The symptoms were things like ear pain which I get occasionally and another one I have is the difficulty swallowing. There were others I don't have but I'm really freaked out. Between esophagus cancer or oral cancer I feel like I'm loosing control of any rational sense.

---------- Post added at 22:40 ---------- Previous post was at 22:37 ----------

Exactly Nichole... Thats what I'm saying like Facebook really just wants everyone to be scared they have a dieases. It's honestly so depressing. I hate seeing all that stuff. I can't go a day without seeing something that makes me feel anxious.

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think a certain H&N cancer survivor on here will be best to tell you why you don't have either of those as he will be very knowledgeable in that area.

But that's not forget about the tonsil stone issue and the retainer and the additional mouth bacteria that were involved. AND throat & swallowing issues are a major symptom in anxiety.

Mucus is just there and we need it. Remember that extra mucus also occurs due to an inflammatory reaction. I'm an asthma sufferer and that's a big one in asthma and why they have to control it but it's otherwise harmless and needed by us.

Then think about Magical Thinking. Why would reading a post mean you have cancer? If that could happen, the internet would be a very dangerous place indeed! This is more a case of having existing symptoms and associating it to something you have heard. But have you checked EVERY other possibility to rule them out? Or did you just Google those cancers and tick the boxes?

I suffer loads of fatigue with my anxiety and have done for a couple of years now. Fatigue gets a mention with cancer. Some worry about this on this board but look how common fatigue is in a range of illnesses and mental health disorders...yet they have applied the classic "tunnel vision" of the anxiety or depression sufferer - Cognitive Distortions.

Another thing to then use in your ammo against anxiety is just how many cancers you have thought about in the last few months. Wouldn't you be the most unlucky person to have ever existed to have all of those in such a short time frame? So, is it likely? And where have those worries gone now? Didn't they feel just like this one and how you were looking for matching symptoms and trying to convince yourself?

See what I mean?

[Savvy_Darling]

I totally understand what you're saying Terry.
I think the post didn't make me have cancer but it gave me ideas and then I linked symptoms. I can also definitely understand when you tell me to look back at all the other cancers I was obsessed over. You're right. I guess it's like well this is finally it though, this is real this time.
Oh I haven't been wearing my retainer by the way. I also haven't gotten a tonsil stone in a few weeks.. But maybe it hasn't worked its way to being visible.. I don't know. I actually went to check to see if I had any with my phone flashlight and that's when I noticed right under/to the side of the tonsils on the side of my mouth when I move my tounge to the other side I see like fleshy bumps. I don't know if they've been there forever or not. I'm worried it's some type of mouth cancer. That and with the trouble swallowing and occasional ear pain it really is too much of a coincidence for me to handle. I know like a month ago when I was at the doctors I asked her to check out my tonsils just to see if they look fine and she said they did. I guess if she saw anything odd she would have said something about it. The bumpy flesh like things aren't on my tonsils though they're beside/under twards the side of my mouth and I don't know if it's a normal mouth thing or not. It's not the same on the other side though. And I tried looking up mouth pictures but it was hard to find exactly what I'm looking for , but has gotten me worried about oral cancer.
But you're right about the power of the mind because all this has made me feel weird about my throat and swallowing and I almost feel pain now.
Thinking I'm gonna make an appointment but she'll probably feel annoyed with me as last time she said I should screen for cancers more probable in my she group like cervical cancer... Yet I'm not really worried about that. Of course if I thought about it enough I could work myself up to be worried.

[MyNameIsTerry]

You may not need that retainer. That's for a dentist to say but those temporary ones are usually to correct a lesser problem for a shorter period or time. I had one when I was in high school for a time. So, maybe not having that in is preventing additional bacterial build up? It's very possible if the stones stop coming.

Not knowing whether those bumps have always been there and then making the connection to an oral form of cancer is a predictable pattern in HA. Can you imagine if you could look at everything inside all the cavities in your body how you would then start to see possibilities to link to things? These cavities can have lots of lumps & bumps inside them that are supposed to be there or just tend to be and mean nothing and this is really doctor territory as they know what to look for from their training & experience.

You could just be seeing something that has been there all your life. So, if you do ask your doctor to check it out, when she says something is fine & normal, that needs to become evidence against your anxious thinking styles for the future.

With some bodily functions you can do them consciously and they end up causing pain or ache. This can be because we are doing it too much or unnaturally. By the latter I mean more forcefully or contracting something longer. If you ever have a problem focussing on your breathing you will be surprised just how much you end up with aches because of that. It's a muscular thing because we are not doing it in the completely natural way sometimes.

So, try to think back before this and ask yourself whether you had the same issues with your throat & swallowing. If the answer is no and that this only came after reading about that cancer, then you know what the most likely answer is going to be.

[Savvy_Darling]

Yeah I can't totally see that Terry. Like I remember when I hit my head awhile back and was worried about hemorrhage and I had felt around my head so much I discovered a flat spot and I was worried it was a dent from where I hit it. I never ended up having that so that's an example of feeling something or noticing something when you're looking too hard on ur body.
It's just that it's only on one side that it makes me nervous and the fact I don't know if it's been there so like you said my anxiety is taking this and running with it. I am genuinely worried about it being oral cancer either tonsil or toungue or whatever else. I did take a pic so maybe other people can look and maybe they could tell me they have something similar if they looked. It would just make me feel a little better if even one other person had this and I would feel like mayb it is a normal mouth thing. :(
I had seen a thread on here with someone worried about similar things as I am and they described something as fleshy bumps near the tonsil and had a picture and it was still hard to tell but it might have looked the same but they never posed back saying it was checked and said normal. I might comment on that thread too since it was very related to my worries.

Yes I know mouth pictures aren't the glamorous things in the world but just wanna see if anyone can relate. Looking at the picture it's the right side that has the fleshy bumps under the tonsil area and you can see one kinda near my toungue too. Of course I know I'll go to the doctors I have to get physical so I can get my license anyways so I know I'm gonna show her my mouth yet again . /:

[furret]

I am so sorry my post made you more anxious. I wish there was a way to block those things from fb, now i am anxious about another type of cancer thanks to the humans of new york page. People might think i am a bad person for trying to dodge those posts but honestly, "awareness" stories make my anxiety worse :( help!!

[MyNameIsTerry]

I think what you need to consider is how you felt when you have been through each of these cancer, brain bleed, etc cycles. If you read back through those posts now, I bet you could pick out the same distortions and levels of worry that you have in this one, it just might be there are variances e.g. symptoms, focussing area, etc BUT I believe how you feel now is exactly how you felt then in that it's causing you a level of anxiety.

There are CBT tools for rating our levels of anxiety. I wonder if you had filled one of those in during each worry whether you would be filling in the same % now?

Whilst you are focussing on this new find and lack of symmetry, as an outsider I see the same worries.

[Dreamweaver]

I've done the melanoma thing; it was back in 2005 and it was spotted accidentally by a dermatologist while he was looking at something else. Please, please avoid consulting Dr Google - and as far as doctos are concerned, if one of them misses something that turns out to be melanoma, that doctor could be in a world of trouble. Still, it happens. If you have something you don't like the look of, consult a dermatologist you know or trust. If you want something cut off, have it cut off - but by a plastic surgeon or someone else with experience in melanoma. But it's still not all that common, remember. It's good that you're keeping an eye open for it, as everyone should be educated about melanoma. But just one last thing ... just as there are pictures of things on the Internet that look totally innocent but are not, so too are there pictures of some things that look like an absolute train wreck but turn out to be harmless. We don't have the expertise to interpret pics of lesions on other people or on ourselves. Be strong. I know what anxiety's about - my melanoma in situ was taken out in 2005, and I go for checks every six months. I've had eight cut off and biopsied in the last five months; all came back benigb, thank God. The dermatologists won't take any chances - they don't want to be struck off!

[furret]

I actually don't feel anxious because i think i might have it, it's more like "i am anxious and scared because i don't want that to happen to me and i can't do anything about that". I know and i am conscioys that i am.perfectly healthy now, but the thought of developing that at some point of my life is what has me in this state of anxiety atm :(