Brain tumour worry

[eye]

Hi,

I am so terrified right now that I have a brain tumour. I have a tendency towards heath anxiety, and have thought that I've had lung cancer, HIV, diabetes you name it. It's ruined holidays for me, where I'm so concerned about getting ill that I find it impossible to relax. I'm just finding it hard to differentiate the symptoms I'm experiencing from symptoms of anxiety. I find it hard to remember stuff, mix up my words like I'll say 'the bat is crown' instead of 'the cat is brown', feel 'out of it' sometimes, vision problems, and now I have headaches!

I know I'm probably just freaking out, but I don't know what to do. I'm embarrassed to go see the doctor after telling him I had lung cancer two years ago, but I can't keep it off my mind and keep on Google-ing symptoms. Really quite scared right now.

[Ljthompson10]

Hi. A lot of people have had the same symptoms and considering you are prone to health anxiety I'm sure your fine.

I have the same fear but am staying positive for once

[Jebdog]

All your symptoms sound like classic anxiety to me.

[Gary A]

Your symptoms are perfectly normal for anxiety, they are in no way suggestive of a brain tumour, especially in someone who has a history of anxiety.

Mixing up words? We all do that, but anxiety exacerbates the problem. Your head is full of thoughts, your mind is going at a million miles per hour, isn't it logical to assume that this will intrude on your words?

Feeling "out of it", is just depersonalisation. Again, it's one of the most common symptoms of anxiety.

Vision problems can be caused by an absolute multitude of things, it's very very rarely a sign of a problem within the brain. Think of the sheer amount of people who wear glasses, contacts or have had laser eye surgery. They all had vision problems, how many of them had brain tumours? Aside from that, again, anxiety causes vision problems, mostly due to increased pupil dilation from constantly high levels of adrenaline and cortisol triggering the fight or flight response.

Headaches are caused by stress, simple as that. Headaches caused by a brain tumour are progressive, severe and barely relenting. Again, headaches are one of the most common problems witnessed by GP's every day. If I recall correctly they account for roughly one third of Doctor and GP visits in any surgery. 10,000 people annually are diagnosed with brain tumours in the UK. About a quarter of those people first see their GP about headaches. Do you see that, given those numbers, that actually, headaches are practically NEVER a sign of a brain tumour?

You have anxiety. You have physical symptoms produced by your mental state. You do not have a brain tumour.

[Colicab85]

Good post Gary. Straight to the point and full of logic and facts. I liked that. Helped me and I'm sure it's helped the OP.