Reliefedguy
15-05-17, 19:32
Hello everyone. I wanna share a little (but probably relatively long) story with you. I hope that everyone who experience or in the future experience health anxiety in any way can find some comfort in this story.
From happy and self-confident to a nerve wreck in 6 months
First let me give you som important background information. Im an athlete (professionel soccer player) and a law student in my start twenties. For 21 years i had experienced a lot of regular health symptoms, but never paid any attention to them. They never made me afraid no matter how bad they were. Until approximately 6 months ago, where everything started to take place. I went from never ever having paid any attention to any healths symptoms to within 6 months having feared 4 more og loss deadly diseases, almost quitting football, missing classes on my university and loosing my girlfriend.
MS
Start december 2016 i started to experience buzzing, tingling and a lot of other parasthesias. I went to the doctor, who told me he suspected MS, but the only way to know for sure, was by putting me up for a MR-scan. I had never heard of it before, but as soon as i started to do some research i freaked out and panicked. I started to comparing symptoms and in my opinion they all matched. I had to wait one month before the mr-scan, and those 30 days was torture. I woke up in the morning and the first thing i did was to google my symptoms. I became so sure that i had MS, that i practically started to prepare my self on how to tell my family and friends. I was a train wreck. I spend at least 10 hours a day googling my symptoms, and i couldn't think straight. It started to affect my personal life; Girlfriend, friends, social acticity, sport etc. The MR-scan was being made, and the message was clear. NO MS! I could'nt believe it, but i was relieved and thought that this panickmode would now disappear. But even though the of having MS went away a new one entered my life.
HIV
Suddenly i found my self checking everything everywhere on my ****ing body... And then i noticed what appeared to be trush on my tongue - what did i do next - i googled it. Then google was so kind to tell me that is might be HIV? Instead of thinking like a sane and rational person my mind played with me and convinced me that i had HIV even though i had never ever in my life put my self in a situation where it would be possible to acquire HIV. The whole cycle with googling, constant worrying, finding new matching symptoms and finally acting as a actually had HIV started all over again. Until i few weeks later, when i finally god an HIV test that cleared me. Again i though to my self now everything can turn back to normal, but no.
Pancreatic cancer
Then i started getting some serious stomach pain. I googled it and Pancreas Cancer came up and this time it really ****ed me up. I started to gather all the symptoms and then tried to see if they fit. The first few days i only had the stomach pain so i thought nothing of it. But (in this is where it gets creepy and proves how powerful the mind can be) within af few days i started getting stabbing back pain, very dark orange urine, fatty foul smelling yellow stool. By that time i seriously thought this would be the end. I ran back and forth from the doctors trying to convince them that i was dying and they just weren't able to pick it up from their blood tests. I spend all ****ing day and night not getting any sleep at all, in bed for four weeks worrying, googling symptoms and stories from people with pancreatic cancer, not doing the schoolwork i was supposed to, treating my girlfriends like crap and quitting my football. Things were very dark. After two months in pain i had an ultrasound that showed absolutely nothing. Everything was fine. And the scary thing was that the stomach pain, the yellow stools and the dark urine dissapeared within a few days after the clean ultrasound.
ALS
During this dark period of time i had noticed that my muscles with jump or twitch. I didn't put a lot of thought in to it as i was busy worrying about all the other nasty diseases, but after the clean ultrasound i had nothing else to freak out about. So i started noticing them more often and the more i thought about it the more often did they appear until they were constant present somewhere on my body. I went to the doctor who said bfs and i then tried to put my mind to rest. But suddenly after a few weeks with nonstop twitching i looked at my hand and saw a few dents and it looked skinnier then usual. And the whole cycle started over again. At this moment i wasn't able to take my exams, because i hadn't paid attention in class, my girlfriend was on the edge of leaving me (I can't blame her) and my football coach didn't have much faith in me any more. Now exactly six month after all this started i got an EMG today, that showed nothing wrong.
The morale of the story
I went from a happy guy with everything i could ask for to a angry, afraid boy ready to the psyche ward in six months. I wasted uncountable hours on being scared, constantly worrying about nasty diseases and literally i was that i had all of the them. I almost lost every good thing in my life for what? But this is the end for my 'dark passenger'. I will not let him ruin any more of my life with irrationel and ridiculously thoughts.
The End
I hope that some people with health anxiety can find some comfort in my words and use my story to kill their own dark passenger and get back to a normal life without to much worrying.
From happy and self-confident to a nerve wreck in 6 months
First let me give you som important background information. Im an athlete (professionel soccer player) and a law student in my start twenties. For 21 years i had experienced a lot of regular health symptoms, but never paid any attention to them. They never made me afraid no matter how bad they were. Until approximately 6 months ago, where everything started to take place. I went from never ever having paid any attention to any healths symptoms to within 6 months having feared 4 more og loss deadly diseases, almost quitting football, missing classes on my university and loosing my girlfriend.
MS
Start december 2016 i started to experience buzzing, tingling and a lot of other parasthesias. I went to the doctor, who told me he suspected MS, but the only way to know for sure, was by putting me up for a MR-scan. I had never heard of it before, but as soon as i started to do some research i freaked out and panicked. I started to comparing symptoms and in my opinion they all matched. I had to wait one month before the mr-scan, and those 30 days was torture. I woke up in the morning and the first thing i did was to google my symptoms. I became so sure that i had MS, that i practically started to prepare my self on how to tell my family and friends. I was a train wreck. I spend at least 10 hours a day googling my symptoms, and i couldn't think straight. It started to affect my personal life; Girlfriend, friends, social acticity, sport etc. The MR-scan was being made, and the message was clear. NO MS! I could'nt believe it, but i was relieved and thought that this panickmode would now disappear. But even though the of having MS went away a new one entered my life.
HIV
Suddenly i found my self checking everything everywhere on my ****ing body... And then i noticed what appeared to be trush on my tongue - what did i do next - i googled it. Then google was so kind to tell me that is might be HIV? Instead of thinking like a sane and rational person my mind played with me and convinced me that i had HIV even though i had never ever in my life put my self in a situation where it would be possible to acquire HIV. The whole cycle with googling, constant worrying, finding new matching symptoms and finally acting as a actually had HIV started all over again. Until i few weeks later, when i finally god an HIV test that cleared me. Again i though to my self now everything can turn back to normal, but no.
Pancreatic cancer
Then i started getting some serious stomach pain. I googled it and Pancreas Cancer came up and this time it really ****ed me up. I started to gather all the symptoms and then tried to see if they fit. The first few days i only had the stomach pain so i thought nothing of it. But (in this is where it gets creepy and proves how powerful the mind can be) within af few days i started getting stabbing back pain, very dark orange urine, fatty foul smelling yellow stool. By that time i seriously thought this would be the end. I ran back and forth from the doctors trying to convince them that i was dying and they just weren't able to pick it up from their blood tests. I spend all ****ing day and night not getting any sleep at all, in bed for four weeks worrying, googling symptoms and stories from people with pancreatic cancer, not doing the schoolwork i was supposed to, treating my girlfriends like crap and quitting my football. Things were very dark. After two months in pain i had an ultrasound that showed absolutely nothing. Everything was fine. And the scary thing was that the stomach pain, the yellow stools and the dark urine dissapeared within a few days after the clean ultrasound.
ALS
During this dark period of time i had noticed that my muscles with jump or twitch. I didn't put a lot of thought in to it as i was busy worrying about all the other nasty diseases, but after the clean ultrasound i had nothing else to freak out about. So i started noticing them more often and the more i thought about it the more often did they appear until they were constant present somewhere on my body. I went to the doctor who said bfs and i then tried to put my mind to rest. But suddenly after a few weeks with nonstop twitching i looked at my hand and saw a few dents and it looked skinnier then usual. And the whole cycle started over again. At this moment i wasn't able to take my exams, because i hadn't paid attention in class, my girlfriend was on the edge of leaving me (I can't blame her) and my football coach didn't have much faith in me any more. Now exactly six month after all this started i got an EMG today, that showed nothing wrong.
The morale of the story
I went from a happy guy with everything i could ask for to a angry, afraid boy ready to the psyche ward in six months. I wasted uncountable hours on being scared, constantly worrying about nasty diseases and literally i was that i had all of the them. I almost lost every good thing in my life for what? But this is the end for my 'dark passenger'. I will not let him ruin any more of my life with irrationel and ridiculously thoughts.
The End
I hope that some people with health anxiety can find some comfort in my words and use my story to kill their own dark passenger and get back to a normal life without to much worrying.