squiddy
12-01-19, 06:56
When it comes to breast cancer, I know the standard advice for doing a self examination is every month, but I just can't bring myself to do it. For a long time I'd constantly be checking myself for all kinds of symptoms for all kinds of illness... It was ruining my life. Constantly fearing I was dying, most commonly from BC.
Then I swung around to the more 'head in the sand' approach. Just don't check anything. Try not to think about it at all. Assume anything that happens is nothing. Not a great coping mechanism, since self examinations SHOULD be done one in a while, and my absence of checking is still fuelled by fear, but it at least lets me have control of my life again.
I do worry that this is going to be what does me in. My paranoia tells me my constant checking is what was going to keep me alive. That going a few months without examining myself, maybe a year, I'll finally check and there'll be something awful and it was too late. I have no idea how long BC actually takes to go from 'the start of a problem' to 'a deadly problem' either, which doesn't help. Feels like I might be doomed within no time at all, for all I know. I'm 29 so I know I'm not in a high risk area yet or anything, but things can happen... It's irrational of me, but the feeling persists.
Sorry, this kind of ended up just being a rant. I felt like I needed to write this somewhere.
Then I swung around to the more 'head in the sand' approach. Just don't check anything. Try not to think about it at all. Assume anything that happens is nothing. Not a great coping mechanism, since self examinations SHOULD be done one in a while, and my absence of checking is still fuelled by fear, but it at least lets me have control of my life again.
I do worry that this is going to be what does me in. My paranoia tells me my constant checking is what was going to keep me alive. That going a few months without examining myself, maybe a year, I'll finally check and there'll be something awful and it was too late. I have no idea how long BC actually takes to go from 'the start of a problem' to 'a deadly problem' either, which doesn't help. Feels like I might be doomed within no time at all, for all I know. I'm 29 so I know I'm not in a high risk area yet or anything, but things can happen... It's irrational of me, but the feeling persists.
Sorry, this kind of ended up just being a rant. I felt like I needed to write this somewhere.