Thelegend27
01-12-18, 09:41
This will likely be a long post so I apologies if you find it not to be worth your time, I just felt the need to post this so people can see what can happen when you let hypochondria take over your life.
My hypochondria story began roughly 8 years ago, I had been feeling these skipped heartbeats for a few months and never thought much about it, that is until one day I was watching TV and a commercial came on talking about PVC's and after seeing that commercial I googled PVC's and came to the conclusion that's what I had, and from that day forward my hypochondria got worse, I would lay in bed and wonder when my heart would stop beating, I stopped talking to friends and stayed in my room for about 2 years with barely any contact with the outside world aside from talking to people on Xbox, I was about 21 or 22 when I finally decided that I was not going to do that anymore and so I got a job and finally started feeling better because I had a lot of people reassure me that PVC's were harmless, well in December of 2014 I went out with some friends and drank alcohol which is something I never would do because I do not drink, about 2 hours into the night I had drank way too much and vomitted and immediately my heart started racing and flipping, I said take me to the ER, once I got into the ER I found out I was in afib, they lowered my heart rate and after about 11 hours my heart went back into normal rhythm, I stayed 3 days in the hospital for test's and monitoring and everything came back normal and I was told my heart was healthy, that set me back because now I was worried again, but I pushed forward and eventually put it out of my mind although I was still anxious all the time it was bearable, then 2 years later I got sick again I believe from heartburn and I once again went into afib and repeated the same process and got the same results, but this time I really lost control, I got a bad cholesterol reading from the ER and freaked out, I stopped eating carbs, fats, sodium, and was taking less than 1500 calories per day, most days I'd eat an apple, a sandwhich made of whole wheat bread with one slice of meat only, no sodas or any sugary drinks, and within 2 months my diet was so bad I lost roughly 30 pounds and looked sickly, pale, skinny, and just overall sick, I went back to get my cholesterol checked and it actually turned out to be normal so I started eating like normal and put weight back on, next I found a small lymph node in my neck above the left collar bone about 3 fingers width up my neck so I became crazy about that node and started prodding my neck every few minutes until I found 3 more nodes and I lost it, I thought I had cancer and that soon i'd be dead, I went to at least 5 doctor appointments about the same nodes over and over, but that fear lasted about 1 and a half years and I finally got over it its been a little over 2 years since I found that node and I rarely pay it any mind, but during all this anxiety depression and stress my mom was battling cirrhosis and that was also weighing on my mind a lot and I stayed by her for 4 years while she was sick until she passed back in feb, then a few months after her passing we found out my brother had cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure, they believe PVC's are to blame because he was having 43,000 per day on a monitor but they did an ablation and mostly corrected his PVC's and so now we are just waiting to see if his heart will heal back up, his doctors say that he has a very high chance that it will revert to normal, so yeah this also put a lot of stress on me because my brother and me are very close, he feels good though he doesn't find it difficult to do everyday activities and he says physically he feels nothing wrong, I also get PVC's but I don't have them frequently at all on a bad day I may get 50-100 at most because I can feel every single PVC, our family has an electrical issue within the heart that much is obvious, all my siblings have palpitations it's just that my brother was having way too many his pulse even felt weird just from the amount he was having. I cannot express the amount of stress I have dealt with in the past 8 years its beyond belief, I'll be honest I have imagined my own suicide but i've never considered doing it but the fact that I was imagining it so often I knew something was very wrong and that I needed to take some action and get my mind right, and I did mostly. I got so bad that I was checking my skin for melanoma, checking my stools for a list of things, feeling my legs for swelling pressing my fingers into my skin to check for edema, I was questioning every headache, I have seriously worried about nearly 100 different diseases, still to this day I have anxiety but I am far better off now than I used to be you can read through my previous threads and see I was a mess. I was a happy teen, hung out with a lot of people, met new people all the time, the girls liked me a lot apparently I was a good looking guy, I had so much fun and one day it all stopped in just an instant and my entire life was flipped upside down and for what? my imagination? this is the point I want to make, I wanted to drag you through my story and hope that you will see that after all i've been though I am still hear writing to you, meaning none of those fears ever came true, and I just hope you can take this and not make the same mistake I made by worrying yourself sick for so many years, trust me when I say that if I could go back 8 years ago I wouldn't ever go down this path again. please take control of your mind, if your doctor says you're fine let it go maybe a second opinion is ok but after that let it go or you will carry the same regret I do every single day.
by the way I got sick with the stomach bug earlier this year and did not go into afib so that's a good sign maybe it was just a run of bad luck and it'll never happen again, that's positive thinking and we should all get used to thinking positively.
My hypochondria story began roughly 8 years ago, I had been feeling these skipped heartbeats for a few months and never thought much about it, that is until one day I was watching TV and a commercial came on talking about PVC's and after seeing that commercial I googled PVC's and came to the conclusion that's what I had, and from that day forward my hypochondria got worse, I would lay in bed and wonder when my heart would stop beating, I stopped talking to friends and stayed in my room for about 2 years with barely any contact with the outside world aside from talking to people on Xbox, I was about 21 or 22 when I finally decided that I was not going to do that anymore and so I got a job and finally started feeling better because I had a lot of people reassure me that PVC's were harmless, well in December of 2014 I went out with some friends and drank alcohol which is something I never would do because I do not drink, about 2 hours into the night I had drank way too much and vomitted and immediately my heart started racing and flipping, I said take me to the ER, once I got into the ER I found out I was in afib, they lowered my heart rate and after about 11 hours my heart went back into normal rhythm, I stayed 3 days in the hospital for test's and monitoring and everything came back normal and I was told my heart was healthy, that set me back because now I was worried again, but I pushed forward and eventually put it out of my mind although I was still anxious all the time it was bearable, then 2 years later I got sick again I believe from heartburn and I once again went into afib and repeated the same process and got the same results, but this time I really lost control, I got a bad cholesterol reading from the ER and freaked out, I stopped eating carbs, fats, sodium, and was taking less than 1500 calories per day, most days I'd eat an apple, a sandwhich made of whole wheat bread with one slice of meat only, no sodas or any sugary drinks, and within 2 months my diet was so bad I lost roughly 30 pounds and looked sickly, pale, skinny, and just overall sick, I went back to get my cholesterol checked and it actually turned out to be normal so I started eating like normal and put weight back on, next I found a small lymph node in my neck above the left collar bone about 3 fingers width up my neck so I became crazy about that node and started prodding my neck every few minutes until I found 3 more nodes and I lost it, I thought I had cancer and that soon i'd be dead, I went to at least 5 doctor appointments about the same nodes over and over, but that fear lasted about 1 and a half years and I finally got over it its been a little over 2 years since I found that node and I rarely pay it any mind, but during all this anxiety depression and stress my mom was battling cirrhosis and that was also weighing on my mind a lot and I stayed by her for 4 years while she was sick until she passed back in feb, then a few months after her passing we found out my brother had cardiomyopathy and congestive heart failure, they believe PVC's are to blame because he was having 43,000 per day on a monitor but they did an ablation and mostly corrected his PVC's and so now we are just waiting to see if his heart will heal back up, his doctors say that he has a very high chance that it will revert to normal, so yeah this also put a lot of stress on me because my brother and me are very close, he feels good though he doesn't find it difficult to do everyday activities and he says physically he feels nothing wrong, I also get PVC's but I don't have them frequently at all on a bad day I may get 50-100 at most because I can feel every single PVC, our family has an electrical issue within the heart that much is obvious, all my siblings have palpitations it's just that my brother was having way too many his pulse even felt weird just from the amount he was having. I cannot express the amount of stress I have dealt with in the past 8 years its beyond belief, I'll be honest I have imagined my own suicide but i've never considered doing it but the fact that I was imagining it so often I knew something was very wrong and that I needed to take some action and get my mind right, and I did mostly. I got so bad that I was checking my skin for melanoma, checking my stools for a list of things, feeling my legs for swelling pressing my fingers into my skin to check for edema, I was questioning every headache, I have seriously worried about nearly 100 different diseases, still to this day I have anxiety but I am far better off now than I used to be you can read through my previous threads and see I was a mess. I was a happy teen, hung out with a lot of people, met new people all the time, the girls liked me a lot apparently I was a good looking guy, I had so much fun and one day it all stopped in just an instant and my entire life was flipped upside down and for what? my imagination? this is the point I want to make, I wanted to drag you through my story and hope that you will see that after all i've been though I am still hear writing to you, meaning none of those fears ever came true, and I just hope you can take this and not make the same mistake I made by worrying yourself sick for so many years, trust me when I say that if I could go back 8 years ago I wouldn't ever go down this path again. please take control of your mind, if your doctor says you're fine let it go maybe a second opinion is ok but after that let it go or you will carry the same regret I do every single day.
by the way I got sick with the stomach bug earlier this year and did not go into afib so that's a good sign maybe it was just a run of bad luck and it'll never happen again, that's positive thinking and we should all get used to thinking positively.