cosystripypinksocks
20-02-23, 22:00
I've had health anxiety all of my adult life, but when my little girl was born it seemed to magically vanish. I'm wondering whether it was a hormonal change - therapy had helped me a lot before but birth just made it go away. In the 4 years since, I've been in a really good place with my mental health, even during the pandemic. I've never worried excessively about my daughter's health. I pretty much thought I was over it. If I have a slight relapse I might have a panic for a day, and I go back to normal the next day. I felt really in control of it.
Last summer, my friend's child who is the same age as my daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He has been having chemo and other gruelling treatments ever since. I'm devastated for the family and I wish for nothing more than for this sweet little boy to get better. He has an Instagram page for his journey which I follow. He is one of the few accounts I follow though, because I don't use Instagram much, which means the algorithm thinks I'm really interested in sick children. I try to ignore it but every time I see my landing page which is just a wall of horrible pictures I sometimes find myself clicking through to one and reading back through the entire cancer story of the child. It's a horrific time sink and I've had a lot of exposure to children's cancer stories as a result which I'd rather not have had.
Recently, this boy's parents set up a fundraising page for him, which included his story of how he was diagnosed. I hadn't heard the story before. It is now stuck in my head and almost memorised. He started with just a few different infections in a row, not really getting over one before the next one, and eventually ended up in A&E with stomach pain and pain in his sides. At the same time, over the last month my daughter has had a new illness with a fever every week. This is pretty unusual for her, she often catches bugs from nursery but fevers are not usually more often than every few months. She had a bad cold with a fever, then a week later a longer lasting fever that the doctor guessed was an ear infection and it cleared up with antibiotics. Then one week later a brief vomiting bug, with fever. Then as soon as that was over she came out in a rash all over that the doctor said looked mild and viral, I was really panicking by then though. Then as soon as the rash cleared up, she had a new fever that was just a fever on its own and no other symptoms except for complaining occasionally of tummy pain or pain in her hips. The fever has only just gone down now, two days later.
Throughout this whole month but especially in the last week my health anxiety has resurfaced and gone into absolute overdrive, but focused on my daughter's body rather than my own. I've got my friend's child's cancer journey mapped out in my head and it's like I'm trying to map my own experiences onto it, finding out which parts fit and using that to prove my daughter has cancer too. When she had the rash, I was testing it so many times a day to make sure it was blanching. Purposeful checks when she changed her clothes of course but also during the day, if she bent over and her top rode up I would take the opportunity to press her spots to make sure they still went away. When I realised two days ago that she had a new fever the fear made me feel sick. I've been taking her temperature a lot. Not just with a thermometer every few hours but also when I'm sat with her, I just take every chance I get to touch her back or her head and see whether she seems hot still. Or when we're sat together with our bodies in contact I'm constantly assessing whether this is TOO hot and should I take her temperature again? I'm inspecting every little blemish I see on her skin. She complains of random aches and pains and every time she starts a sentence with 'my' my heart skips a beat in case she's about to say she has a new pain. She was home from nursery today and my husband took the time off work to look after her, which was fortunate because right now it feels like it benefits me to be apart from her, to avoid this incessant testing. I'm used to performing this type of testing behaviour on my own body, it was a habit for years, but doing it to someone else is a new experience and it feels so damaging. Not just because it's horrible for me and intrusive for her, but also because I'm thinking the whole time, this is how you pass on health anxiety to a child.
So this is where I'm at now and I don't know what will happen next. I think my daughter has leukaemia, neuroblastoma and bone cancer all at once. There was a time when I could have convinced myself that these things are so rare, of course she doesn't have any of those. But now I know it can happen to people extremely close to me, people just the same as me, that fiction is shattered. So how can I know when it's health anxiety and when it's a reasonable fear? I'm not sure what kind of response I'm hoping for, but it's helped me a little just to write it all down. Thank you to anybody who has read this far.
Last summer, my friend's child who is the same age as my daughter was diagnosed with cancer. He has been having chemo and other gruelling treatments ever since. I'm devastated for the family and I wish for nothing more than for this sweet little boy to get better. He has an Instagram page for his journey which I follow. He is one of the few accounts I follow though, because I don't use Instagram much, which means the algorithm thinks I'm really interested in sick children. I try to ignore it but every time I see my landing page which is just a wall of horrible pictures I sometimes find myself clicking through to one and reading back through the entire cancer story of the child. It's a horrific time sink and I've had a lot of exposure to children's cancer stories as a result which I'd rather not have had.
Recently, this boy's parents set up a fundraising page for him, which included his story of how he was diagnosed. I hadn't heard the story before. It is now stuck in my head and almost memorised. He started with just a few different infections in a row, not really getting over one before the next one, and eventually ended up in A&E with stomach pain and pain in his sides. At the same time, over the last month my daughter has had a new illness with a fever every week. This is pretty unusual for her, she often catches bugs from nursery but fevers are not usually more often than every few months. She had a bad cold with a fever, then a week later a longer lasting fever that the doctor guessed was an ear infection and it cleared up with antibiotics. Then one week later a brief vomiting bug, with fever. Then as soon as that was over she came out in a rash all over that the doctor said looked mild and viral, I was really panicking by then though. Then as soon as the rash cleared up, she had a new fever that was just a fever on its own and no other symptoms except for complaining occasionally of tummy pain or pain in her hips. The fever has only just gone down now, two days later.
Throughout this whole month but especially in the last week my health anxiety has resurfaced and gone into absolute overdrive, but focused on my daughter's body rather than my own. I've got my friend's child's cancer journey mapped out in my head and it's like I'm trying to map my own experiences onto it, finding out which parts fit and using that to prove my daughter has cancer too. When she had the rash, I was testing it so many times a day to make sure it was blanching. Purposeful checks when she changed her clothes of course but also during the day, if she bent over and her top rode up I would take the opportunity to press her spots to make sure they still went away. When I realised two days ago that she had a new fever the fear made me feel sick. I've been taking her temperature a lot. Not just with a thermometer every few hours but also when I'm sat with her, I just take every chance I get to touch her back or her head and see whether she seems hot still. Or when we're sat together with our bodies in contact I'm constantly assessing whether this is TOO hot and should I take her temperature again? I'm inspecting every little blemish I see on her skin. She complains of random aches and pains and every time she starts a sentence with 'my' my heart skips a beat in case she's about to say she has a new pain. She was home from nursery today and my husband took the time off work to look after her, which was fortunate because right now it feels like it benefits me to be apart from her, to avoid this incessant testing. I'm used to performing this type of testing behaviour on my own body, it was a habit for years, but doing it to someone else is a new experience and it feels so damaging. Not just because it's horrible for me and intrusive for her, but also because I'm thinking the whole time, this is how you pass on health anxiety to a child.
So this is where I'm at now and I don't know what will happen next. I think my daughter has leukaemia, neuroblastoma and bone cancer all at once. There was a time when I could have convinced myself that these things are so rare, of course she doesn't have any of those. But now I know it can happen to people extremely close to me, people just the same as me, that fiction is shattered. So how can I know when it's health anxiety and when it's a reasonable fear? I'm not sure what kind of response I'm hoping for, but it's helped me a little just to write it all down. Thank you to anybody who has read this far.