It's weird things like this...

[cofo]

That really get my anxiety going.
Do things like this happen to you?
So last week, I threw away some raw beef in the garbage. It's in a garbage bag in my trash can outside. My trash can is in my carport right next to my car! The trash men did not empty the can fully and left that bag in there. So now, it really stinks. I went to out to put something in the trash and got a huge whiff of it. So, now I'm sitting here wondering if I can get some deadly disease from that. It's like a rotting dead animal now. And I'm wondering if I need to go to my garbage can and double bag that bag, which probably has maggots now. Which really makes me scared. So instead I am sitting here typing this knowing that my anxiety sux!

So does this kind of thing happen to you? Does this kind of thing happen to people without HA?

[somehelp2121]

I think it'd be rare to get sick just from smelling it. Garbage collectors would be getting sick a lot.

Get some gloves and if you have a facial mask or just wrap an old shirt around your nose and mouth. Double bag the meat but I'd bleach the can out too. Just spray a bunch of bleach cleaner or Lysol in it.

[nomorepanic]

Hi

This is just a courtesy reply to let you know that your post was moved from its original place to a sub-forum that is more relevant to your issue.

This is nothing personal - it just enables us to keep posts about the same problems in the relevant forums so other members with any experience with the issues can find them more easily.

Please also read this post:

http://www.nomorepanic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=213239

[Carys]

Its just a smell, you can't catch deadly illnesses from smells. You'd have to pop your head in there and eat some or lick it to make yourself ill.


Get some gloves and if you have a facial mask or just wrap an old shirt around your nose and mouth. Double bag the meat but I'd bleach the can out too. Just spray a bunch of bleach cleaner or Lysol in it. Sorry but I'm going to disagree with you here. She doesn't need a facial mask or something wrapped round her nose and mouth, its a smell, she's not inhaling something that can harm her. The meat is already bagged, right, its not touching anything, but some smell is escaping that's all. Therefore I wouldn't bleach the bin (unless I was planning on eating out of it lol) The previous poster is right though....you don't see bin men dying in the streets because of the thousands of rancid bags of things they are exposed to.


It's like a rotting dead animal now

Well, it isn't 'like' a rotting dead animal, it IS part of a rotting dead animal. If the smell is that bad, then yeah, stick that bag into another bag and seal the top tightly to stop the smell. However, this is just for purposes of 'nasal comfort' and not because it can harm you.

---------- Post added at 14:54 ---------- Previous post was at 14:21 ----------


Does this kind of thing happen to people without HA?

I don't think it does, they would presume a horrible smell of rotting meat and disregard it as not harmful to them.

[somehelp2121]

I was saying bleach the can because it'd stink haha. I've got two small children with diapers. We bag the poo diapers separate but man can the can stink.

[Carys]

Oh yeah, to get rid of them smell.....fair enough :D

yeah, if it's that bad then peg your nose so you can't smell it......

[cofo]

Yeah I'll probably have my husband do it �� This kind of thing occurs to me a lot. And when I tak to my sisters about stuff like this, they are always like, um that would never occur to me. Then once I explain my train of thought they will sometimesnsay something like well, I mean I guess it could happen(not in this particular case but in others). And it got me wondering, why does my brain "go there" and theirs doesn't. I've discussed this in therapy before and she likened it to rivers of thoughts making pathways, but I just wondered what others on here thought about things like this.

[Carys]

Well, I think you are in a constant state of feeling 'under threat' as if anything or everything around you 'could cause' something health-wise.

In theory I guess it could, but to live like that would be distressing, emotionally painful and isn't good for the human psychi. Lets look at it from a non-HA perspective - I could have got up this morning and been scared of tripping on my way to the bathroom, choking whilst brushing my teeth, being poisoned from some germs on the mug, falling down the stairs and breaking my neck, being hit in the car on my way to the supermarket....you get the idea. You probably look at this list, which could go on and on and think well that's REALLY unlikely isn't it, hugely unlikely.

However, with HA you currently aren't able to apply the same logic, because you have allowed your fear of health matters to be given space and time in your thoughts and re-enforced that those fears are valid. As time goes on, its more easily triggered; a smell in the bin, a scratch from the dog, a spoon that rested on a surface that might have been dirty. Actually, I don't think I'm making much sense. Whereas I might go to the bin and go 'yuck horrible smell', you go and think 'germs can get into my nose via a smell, it could be something serious'. The perceived threat is out of proportion with reality, to the same level as worrying about tripping on the way to the toilet.

Who knows what sets people's brains off in this direction to start with, some people say a health crisis could precipitate it, some say a fear of dying or a fear of illness, a person around you who has been seriously ill.....I guess for each and every person there is a specific and individual thing that has caused it. In my case, as a young teenager it was my grandmother having a sudden and fatal heart attack at a fairly young age, followed by a traumatic event at school very closely (something that needed medical attention that the school didn't respond to and left me in distress all day).