mikis3
26-04-21, 19:49
Hello all, I've recently found this website and been perusing some of the threads and finally felt enough courage to post for myself.
The first time I ever had a rabies panic was in 2019 when there was a mouse in the house. I managed to calm myself from it and been free of the anxiety until December of 2020. It skyrocketed in January of this year and has only progressively gotten worse. I think this has been caused by two traumatic events that occurred in my life within a week period but it now gotten completely out of hand. I thankfully do have a therapist and access to decent healthcare so I decided to go back on medication. The side effects of the medication only worsened my HA to a point where I was non functional for the majority of a month and a half.
I finally got back to work in late March and was feeling pretty ok. I work in film and the show I was on involved a lot of outdoor work in provincial parks. One of those days I looked down at my thumb and saw what I initially assumed was a bug bite, but about 1.5in over was a freckle. My mind went into hardcore overdrive as a pinched and prodded at the freckle until it became red and raised. Which of course, now I have two red and raised bumps on my hand. It's been 4 weeks and my brain cannot seem to let it go despite the fact that they have healed and gone away.
I'm engaging in obsessive compulsive behaviour, I'm watching it happen and I feel so powerless at times. My fiance, bless him, has been very comforting. He has looked up progression/symptoms/etc so I can fight the compulsion to consult Dr. Google and just have him tell me "no, you're fine" but I can see he's getting frustrated and tired.
The frustrating thing is my rational brain knows I wasn't bitten. It know there was no ninja animal that jumped out of a bush and bit me on my thumb without my noticing. Hell, the thing that I thought was a bite was too large for it to have been anything plausible. We adopted a cat around the same time and the interviewer told me that "Canada is basically a rabies free zone". But my irrational brain feels like a constant scream that after a while, gets so hard to ignore. It likes to tell me mean things and make me question my own memory at times. Was I bitten and just don't remember it? I've read countless threads here and said to myself "wow this is totally irrational, I feel for this person" before realizing that I too am doing just that!
My hand has felt weird for 6-11 days at this point and my brain cannot let it go. I know it's not rational, I know it's not plausible. I was surrounded by over a hundred crew members that day and no one else is this worried, so why should I be? I'm at a loss as to how to combat this though. I do have therapy tomorrow but I was wondering if any others had any strategies to combat this that has worked for them. I'm at a point where the facts don't comfort me much because as HA does, it tells me that I'm the exception. I'm the special one who is going to make a headline. So if anyone has any advice, I would really appreciate it. My rational brain is trying to listen <3
The first time I ever had a rabies panic was in 2019 when there was a mouse in the house. I managed to calm myself from it and been free of the anxiety until December of 2020. It skyrocketed in January of this year and has only progressively gotten worse. I think this has been caused by two traumatic events that occurred in my life within a week period but it now gotten completely out of hand. I thankfully do have a therapist and access to decent healthcare so I decided to go back on medication. The side effects of the medication only worsened my HA to a point where I was non functional for the majority of a month and a half.
I finally got back to work in late March and was feeling pretty ok. I work in film and the show I was on involved a lot of outdoor work in provincial parks. One of those days I looked down at my thumb and saw what I initially assumed was a bug bite, but about 1.5in over was a freckle. My mind went into hardcore overdrive as a pinched and prodded at the freckle until it became red and raised. Which of course, now I have two red and raised bumps on my hand. It's been 4 weeks and my brain cannot seem to let it go despite the fact that they have healed and gone away.
I'm engaging in obsessive compulsive behaviour, I'm watching it happen and I feel so powerless at times. My fiance, bless him, has been very comforting. He has looked up progression/symptoms/etc so I can fight the compulsion to consult Dr. Google and just have him tell me "no, you're fine" but I can see he's getting frustrated and tired.
The frustrating thing is my rational brain knows I wasn't bitten. It know there was no ninja animal that jumped out of a bush and bit me on my thumb without my noticing. Hell, the thing that I thought was a bite was too large for it to have been anything plausible. We adopted a cat around the same time and the interviewer told me that "Canada is basically a rabies free zone". But my irrational brain feels like a constant scream that after a while, gets so hard to ignore. It likes to tell me mean things and make me question my own memory at times. Was I bitten and just don't remember it? I've read countless threads here and said to myself "wow this is totally irrational, I feel for this person" before realizing that I too am doing just that!
My hand has felt weird for 6-11 days at this point and my brain cannot let it go. I know it's not rational, I know it's not plausible. I was surrounded by over a hundred crew members that day and no one else is this worried, so why should I be? I'm at a loss as to how to combat this though. I do have therapy tomorrow but I was wondering if any others had any strategies to combat this that has worked for them. I'm at a point where the facts don't comfort me much because as HA does, it tells me that I'm the exception. I'm the special one who is going to make a headline. So if anyone has any advice, I would really appreciate it. My rational brain is trying to listen <3