Can you pinpoint an event or time in your life when your HA started?

[artist12]

I know each person's experience is unique but I was thinking about this for myself and am very curious, if anyone else wants to share.

Do you remember the exact event or time in your life when you would first say you started with HA? Or was it more of a creeping thing over a period of time?

I feel like I know exactly when mine started. I was in 6th grade - my science teacher spent most of the school year having us study the human body and disease. We talked about all kinds of exotic diseases and we watched the movie Outbreak in class. (I'm not blaming her for any of this but I feel like that was a little much for 6th grade!) I started having panic attacks that school year as I was trying to fall asleep, and was getting night sweats, and started to believe I had malaria.

That went away after a short time but from there I began having one-sided headaches with other symptoms and anxiety. Went the whole brain tumor route with a doctor including getting sent to the ER by a nurse because one of my pupils was dilated more than the other.

Many years later I was diagnosed with cluster headaches but at the time I was absolutely convinced of a brain tumor. I remember going on a vacation with my grandparents the summer before 7th grade and having extreme feelings of depersonalization, although at the time I didn't know what it was that I felt, or how to describe or identify any of my feelings...so to me it just reinforced the fact that something was physically wrong with me, like cancer.

It took almost a year to get out of that hole of thinking I had a brain tumor, and ever since then, off and on, I have had some sort of malady. Mostly various cancers. I've had good stretches of maybe months or a year or so of feeling pretty minimal HA but it always comes back suddenly with a punch to the gut.

How about you guys, do you remember exactly when all of this started for you?

[NervUs]

Yes, I was 39 and found a lump in my breast, LOng story short, it got referred for excisional biopsy, the whole process from finding the lump to finding out it was benign took 6 weeks. But, that 6 weeks was enough to trigger hypochondria, something I had never experienced.

[darkside4k]

Yes, mine came on basically in an instant and has not left since. I literally never worried about my health at all until I was maybe like 25. I read an article about a simple skin itch could indicate cancer (dumb article). Anyways, it was like something snapped in my brain and I became a hypochondriac in that instant. I have never recovered.

[MJunderway]

I was four. I had an unnecessary operation and was also raised by a mother whose philosophy in life is "prepare for the worst, for it is coming". The combo of those two things, plus being an anxious type has left me with HA for 40 years. Recent health scare (real, not imagined) has made want to conquer this for good. I've gotten past GAD and social anxiety, I believe I can conquer this one as well!

[jordanbdailey]

I was about five or six. I found a lump on my shoulder and constantly worried it was cancer. I’m not even sure how I knew about cancer at that age.

[unsure_about_this]

Apart from HA when it comes to dentist years ago. The pinpoint my Dad got his letter to do his poop test late 2011 because he reached the age to test for bowel cancer, I got the abdominal pains in 2012. He tests have always come back clear.

[Blonde123]

Yes working nights as a district nurse. Seeing people at their worst at the worst time of the day. T felt like everyone was dying of cancer. Then a friends friend had breast cancer. It got into my head that I had it, long story short I found a lump, had a mammogram and ultrasound and was diagnosed with fibroadenosis. It petrified me and since then I've bounced from one thought of cancer to another

[Nikolai]

Yes, I can pinpoint it exactly. I was finishing graduate school and was driving home for the summer. Had no money and no job and was breaking up with my girlfriend so it was a hard time anyway. I noticed that one of my hands was numb at the little finger side, and wondered -- what the heck? And then (driving) a couple hours later the same thing *on the other side*. Freaked me out. I could only imagine terrible things that could do that on both sides.

Got to my destination (friend's house that night) and started looking it up. That's an early symptom of MS. That was the beginning. I got the twitches, the dizziness, the pins and needles, the burning sensations, the weakness moving around, all the standard scary MS stuff in the next months, and became absolutely convinced I had MS. To the point I started telling people. One doctor said he couldn't rule it out. Two other doctors told me I didn't have it, etc. But I've had health anxiety ever since. Many many years.

Sometimes the HA monster goes to sleep and leaves me alone for months at a time, but it always wakes up, like Godzilla to come and destroy the city again. And I build everything back up and there comes the monster again.

Good question and thank you for asking -- it's interesting how similar a lot of our stories are.
Nikolai

[fma11122345]

Im new to HA, it all started when I found a bump in my neck/sholder back in July and then another one by August, was sure I had cancer and freaked out for weeks before getting into the ent in September and was told I was OK and to go home and don't play with it, since then I've hade bone cancer lung caner and now my latest fear is brain cancer. HA is a monster and I hope one day I can shake it off.

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[smoothie]

23rd May, 2017

It was the day of my biology exam and my last ever high school exam before I went to uni. I had, tmi, really bad anxiety diarrhoea and vomiting, which i'd never had before this year. Then i was ill for a week. I got better but still had lingering symptoms, mostly to do with the bathroom. :blush: I went to the doc because hyperthyroidism runs in my family but I was fine. I kept experiencing symptoms and, with my stupid brain refusing to accept it as anxiety, it fledged into full blown severe hypochondria. :shrug:

[wilky44]

June 2017 -so a newbie. Tick bite, swollen lymph node in groin. Dr Google said lymphoma, doc said otherwise - reaction to infection. However, during the initial consultation, found a lump in right groin, so sent for urgent ultrasound. Turned out I had an undiagnosed inguinal hernia. Made an appointment with surgeon (thank you BUPA). Checked right and said "may as well check left side too " (Google inguinal ring palpitation "shudder"). Yup, had one on the left too, which was bigger.

Spent 3 awful weeks in Germany working and my mind went crazy saying "what else have you got undiagnosed?"

Stupidly, after my hernia operation, went a googling, and that was it. Never occured to me that my stomach pains could have been related to my op. By then though, the damage was done

[Buster70]

Mine was very simple and quick and some find it funny it wasn't at the time , it started with a pork scratching ( not sure if you have them in the USA ) crispy pork snack , I sat with my granddaughter and laughed as I ate one , it lodged in my throat and I started choking I stopped breathing briefly and thought this is it , a trip in an ambulance and night in hospital and from then on I was very aware of my mortality and hyper aware of every function in my body , things that were previously automatic like breathing swallowing became manual and the mental list of things that would kill me started , it's been a long running list .

[wilky44]

I should have added to mine that my stepdad also started dialysis and my MIL had serious abdominal surgery sue to FAP.

Regrading my stepdad, his story is truly incredible. If anybody wants to know how much the human body can take, I can post it. 12 years post colorectal cancer survival

[nononono]

I think mine was more of a process than a particular event that triggered it. i'd say there were t least 5 key events

I've always been a really anxious type along with some severe inattentive ADHD which makes me jittery and prone to anxiety, along with some adhd symptoms such as fatigue which are really damn ambiguous and could point to anything from restless sleep (a hallmark of adhd and anxiety) to full blown cancer.

i'd say the first big event was when i was 4 when i first saw someone puking in school during time. that really marked me and triggered some intense emetophobia which lasted until i was 18 or something.... not full blown health anxiety yet but i think the former did play a big part in me developing it.

the second one was 2 trips to the ER (with a 2 month separation) when i was 11 due to some really bad gastritis which triggered real bad anxiety about leaving my house and made me fearful of going to school lest i get sick at it. i ended up not going to school due to that extreme fear for about a month or so because everytime i was about to get to school in the morning i would start feeling violently ill and forced my dad to take me back home. i kept getting some bad gastritis flareups during my teenage years but i learned how to manage them eventually and thought nothing of it.

the third one was when i contracted salmonella typhi after a drunken stop at some grimy taco stand in the street. at first i thought it was just some run of the mill food poisoning and that i would recover from in no more than a week. turns out i was sick for a month and lost 10 pounds due to extreme diarrhea and my then fear of eating due to the nausea and pain it caused. also, my mom wasn't of much help because during the time i didn't know i had salmonella she would cry and tell me i likely had developed a tumor already. when the dr. finally found the cause of my ailment i was already emaciated and my colon in ruins so i developed post infectious IBS-d after that.

I'd say the IBS was the beginning of my hypochondria. after that i started getting symptoms i've never had before, such as recurrent diarrhea which also alternated with bouts of constipation, a perianal abscess (which i think caused a fistula because it has happened more than once in the same place, and i think i'm slowly developing another one as of this moment), intermittent rectal bleeding after bowel movements, and hemorrhoids (this has yet to be confirmed by a physician, but i did check and i have two lumps in the area, which has triggered several panic attacks, and on top of the probably soon to be perianal abscess, i'm currently in the middle of a flareup) which made me go into really obssesive checking behaviors which made my anxiety worse and probably made me develop this but i hadn't yet developed a fear for a specific illness.

the fourth one was that time i once had unprotected sex with some greasy dude who coerced me into doing it even if i expressed several times i wasn't into it (yay sexual assault) and triggered some severe HIV anxiety which peaked for about 4 months (severe, obssesive googling and checking behaviors, physical anxiety symptoms, such as rashes and whatnot, and to my dismay, this coincided with my perianal abscess which made it 23098213908219012x worse), but that lasted about a year or so. i'd say after this, the nonstop googling and 24/7 worrying did actually begin

also, my mom was recently Dx'ed with stage IV stomach cancer so ever since the Dx, my hypochondria is through the roof. actually i'm going through a very bad relapse due to this and the anxiety more than likely has made me get some really bad physical symptoms and i'm also hypervigilant for any discomfort or pain in my body.

[cyberchondriac.]

I think my subconsciously started in 2013 when my first daughter was born prematurely. Then escalated in 2015 when my second daughter was also premature. Then in 2015 I also had cosmetic surgery which I was convinced I wouldn't wake from the anaesthetic. Then at the end of 2016 I suddenly developed a numb tongue, within a week the left side of my face dropped. 4 days in hospital, countless blood tests and an MRI showed I have a chiari malformation, scoliosis and reduced flexibility of my neck. The rest was put down to a second dose of Bell's palsy.

But while I was there a nurse spoke out of turn and told me they were checking my motor neurones.. whatever the hell that means!

My reflexes were also tested and my knee reflexes are 'brisk' (seemed normal for me) and so an innocent Google of the above diagnosed me with ALS at 23 years and 7 days old! :shrug:

Fast forward nearly a year and I'm out of the rabbit hole. It was hell. I don't advise it!

To add - Before all of this I had some blood tests that showed my liver function tests were really high. A scan showed my liver is fine, so it was put down to a virus, but obviously google told me it was cancer!

[Worrywart1234]

It’s happening to me this week! Over the last 6 weeks my husband and mother in law have both separately told me I should get a mole on my arm checked. AND i’ve seen a news story about a lady who was misdiagnosed and died of melanoma....bingo! Something new to worry about.... I keep telling myself the mole has been the same for 15 years and my husband has had heaps cut off him so him and his mum are sensitive...the odds of doctors being wrong are not good...but you know HA goes

[GingerFish]

Seeing my mum and gran take panic attacks and hearing just how bad they sounded. How sure they were of dying during them really freaked me out. Also seeing my papa be housebound from RA was scary as he had worked every day of life pretty much and never complained about anything so to see him like that, it reminded me anyone can get seriously ill

[WiredIncorrectly]

I believe I can yes.

I was around 6 or 7 and I remember my diabetic uncle would often get cysts on his leg. They were huge and required home treatment from nurses every day. My uncle and the nurse used to let me watch them clean out these wounds. The images haunt me to this day. Huge chunks of his leg missing like a shark bite.

They also used to let me watch surgery programmes on TV. Apparently I loved to watch surgeons cut people open.

At around 10 I remember I had a splinter in my leg. I freaked out and thought it would turn into a cyst like my uncles leg. I sat there for days touching this wound where the splinter was. I would focus on it all day convinced it would turn into a huge wound.

It didn't. But after that I became focused on becoming diabetic. My parents told me eating too many sweets can make you diabetic. I constantly feared becoming diabetic because I thought it meant I would get these wounds on my leg.

I was also told people with diabetes will go blind, and suffer heart problems. I focused on these things too. I was convinced for over 2 years I was going blind.

This was a common pattern as a child and teenager. I was constantly aware and worried for my health.

Other events happened in life, and I developed an obsession over my heart. I found out my family has a history of ectopic heartbeats. They're harmless, but it makes your heart feel like its skipping beats. I still have that fixation on my heart to this day over 15 years after it started.

It's ruined my life. 90% of my life I have had an anxious mind. Coupled with all the life experiences I've had myself. There is no cure for me, I am 110% certain of that. I am so used to living in an anxious mind I don't know what it feels like to live any different.

[swgrl09]

I don't think one specific incident in my life caused it. I had a tendency for OCD on both sides of my family. My mom was very vocal about her own health anxiety so I probably picked up on it growing up.

The first time I remember actually being scared was when I was about 10 years old and a student in my class had a brain tumor. The health teacher came in and told us to tell our parents if we had headaches because it might be a brain tumor. I went home in tears. My mom called the school and complained about her! After that it would come and go until my mom died of cancer when I was 22. It got a lot worse after that.

[elysemarie123]

I absolutely have a particular incident. My one friend died from meningitis 10 years ago -- I will spare you the details since it could be a trigger for others but the kind he had was VERY rare and odds are 1 in a million.

Ever since then I couldn't recover. I never saw someone die that fast (so young from something other than a car accident) from an illness. I remember my boyfriend was around him during the exposure time frame and had to take an antibiotic and that was it. I was done for. I thought "if he had to take an antibiotic, why shouldn't I -- I've been kissing him after all". It just spiraled from there.

Here I am, 10 years later, wiser about my HA -- but it sure does come back now and again.

[MarkyMark88]

First time ever was when I was in 3rd or 4th grade after my grandma died of a heart attack. I felt a pain in my chest and thought I was having one. After making my parents take me to different heart specialists for a year and being told I was ok my HA pretty much went a way until about a few years ago when I was 26.

I was working for a home health care company and one of the things I had to do was read patient's chart notes to make sure that they would qualify for our services through their health insurance. So I'm reading about people with heart failure, cancer, ALS, COPD, you name it. A lot of hospice patients as well. I would read notes for some people as far back as the first time they saw the doctor when they were first symptomatic with their disease. You read about their symptoms and say,

"I too have had a pain in that area for a while, just like this patient"

or "I've had a cough for a while just like this guy."

"You know I think the glands in my neck might feel a bit swollen."

"Why is my left bicep twitching so much lately?"

Ever since then and since the first time I went to WebMD for something I have been a wreck for the last three or four years.

Then it got worse back in August when I had my first panic attack. It happened when I was working out so I immediately thought it was heart related. Went to the doctor and had a slew of tests done and he and another doc told me that it's anxiety and to seek therapy, which I plan on doing the first of the year. But I still get bouts of extreme fear and worry that I just cannot shake, no matter how many times I see the doctor. Any little heart palpitation or slight pain somewhere on my body, a small bruise I don't remember getting. It's very discouraging. I'm hoping a therapist can put me on the right path to dealing with these emotions.

[Capercrohnj]

I guess it started when i became seriously ill with Crohn's (and very recently gastroparesis). I ignored the crohn's symptoms for a very long time and i was deathly ill when diagnosed (i won't give details so not to trigger). Now i am hypervigilant about symptoms. I have been having really odd things going on with my stomach lately which no one believed me and actually have been in the hospital 2 weeks today because of crohn's flare/stomach issues and luckily had a gastric emptying study that showed severe gastric delay so severe gastroparesis. I'm usually right about GI symptoms but not so much other things.

[CHELLEB1017]

OMG Yes I can! If I could just go back! It was in March of 2016 I was 7 months pregnant and my chin lost feeling. Went to my dentist for a normal cleaning and a shadow showed up on my xray. He referred me to an oral surgeon but in the meantime I googled and yep low and behold jaw cancer came up. Literally could not find anything else for numbness of the chin. I had a biopsy and while waiting my Grandmas melanoma had came back and spread to her brain as well as my Aunts breast cancer coming back and also spreading to her brain. Got the results from my biopsy and I had an odontegentic keratocyst which is a rare benign tumor that grows from remnants of wisdom teeth removal etc. I could not have it removed while pregnant so we put a tube in my mouth to shrink it over the course of several months. My Grandma and Aunt both never made it out of the hospital from their cancers. I ended up having my cyst removed in the hospital under ga. I literally have had since then a ton of different cancers, blood clots, and everything else under the damn sun! I can say I am doing so much better as I have weeks and even months where I am 100 percent fine! I can now tell myself to give something atleast 1-2 weeks before I freak out and call my doctor which is a huge improvement for me! So I honestly blame it on pregnancy hormones and google lol

[Angelica Schuyler]

I think I know why I have health anxiety, but the timing of my first HA "attack" is strange.

I was a young teenager when I was diagnosed with stage IV Hodgkin's lymphoma. It was scary as hell, but Hodge has an excellent cure rate for young adults, even at higher stages. I blew through chemo and radiation and was home free after seven months.

For the first year or so of remission, I was worried about recurrence and about developing other cancers - I thought I had a brain tumor at one point - but never reached the level that I did during year four of remission.

That year, I came home from university excited about the direction my life was taking, actually dating someone for the first time, things could not have been better.

Then I felt (what I thought was) a lymph node.

And I thought the cancer was back.

So the trips to the doctor begin. Oncology for the lymph node. ER for back pain. Again for head pain. An MRI for a lump on the back of my neck that I swore was a tumor. Nothing consoled me. Every time one symptom resolved, another would take its place. I always thought it was cancer, again.

After two months of panicking and attempting to use faith to guide me out of my anxiety, I gave up and asked my GP for an antidepressant, which he partnered with a benzodiazepine to get me through the two weeks it would take for the SSRI to build up in my body.

I tried to come off the pills twice, and ended up in the same HA cycle both times.

For the most part, SSRIs have kept my health anxiety at bay. I usually have one small crisis a year, something easily resolved by a trip to the doctor.

However, I lost my mom this year rather suddenly to COPD and a lung cancer diagnosis she only received three weeks before she died. My HA is now back in full force, along with an overwhelming fear of nuclear war, and my medications aren't helping.