Trusting the Doctor

[Mdeasha]

Hello!
I posted yesterday about small hard lumps in my neck that I was convinced were lymph nodes. (I was very worried about Lymphoma) I saw my GP today who said they were a deep form of acne and that the lumps were not even in the correct places to be nodes. He even had another doctor come in to verify this diagnosis.

Despite this I still have a nagging voice in my head. "What if they're wrong and you've got majorly abnormal nodes?" It goes something like that. It got me thinking...

Why do we think in this way? "I must be in the one percent of misdiagnosed serious illnesses."

I think most of these feelings come from the media. Scare stories like "Joe Average had a headache and two days later he dropped down dead". These stories always seem to say "he/she was never ill". Basically "IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU." Despite the fact that most people with debilitating and serious illnesses are usually chronically ill.

This scaremongering really causes an inherent distrust of professionals. They don't print the thousands of cases like "Joe Average had a headache, it turned out to be nothing sinister and everything is now fine."

But dispite this rationality the feeling of distrust persists. It creeps up on me most of the time, can be hard to shake too. But think of it this way, the odds of a doctor missing a terrible illness are very small. Yet every single one of us will feel as if their doctor doesn't know, isn't listening and is making a massive mistake. Now if this did happen to all of us, the odds wouldn't be so small would they?

Sorry if this seems like an utter ramble, was having a bout with one of these thoughts and just needed to get my rationality down on paper, so to speak! Anyway, thanks for reading!

[Dolphin8808]

That is part of the health anxiety, we do not TRUST the docs. Even when they tell us we are ok, we question it and tend to push until we've had test after test after test to prove them right. I've spent so much money in testing for this very reason.

This is the mental part of HA, its about learning to accept what they say and not second guess. Hard to do but you can do it.