New here... Constant health anxiety
Hi everyone
I'm 28 years old, a mum of a beautiful three year old boy.
I came across this site today whilst yet again googling my various aches and pains trying to find out what terminal illness i may have now, and i'm hoping that knowing there are others going thru what i'm going thru will help me finally sort myself out.
Looking back I think I probably started suffering with panic attacks when I was about 22. An electrician was in my house doing some work, I was suffering from flu and I fainted in front of him. For a long while after that I was terrified of fainting and/or vomiting in public. Work suffered, I couldn't sit in meetings as I was petrified that I was going to pass out or throw up in front of everybody. It got to the point that I wouldn't eat all day if I knew I had to go into a meeting so that my stomach would be empty and I couldn't be sick, the fear made the symptoms worse, I'd feel lightheaded, hot, pins and needles in my hands, palpatations and a strange feeling of not really being there. My GP diagnosed panic attacks and gave me some information about them and techniques on dealing with them, he didn't want to start with medication until i'd tried some other methods of controlling them. Knowing what they were, I learned various relaxation and distraction techniques and this seemed to help me slowly and gradually get over them.
Then I had my son. The birth was pretty bad and I ended up having a blood transfusion and spending nearly a week in hospital. This was my first experience of being in hospital and I hated it. I know lots of women go thru the same thing and as it goes, a blood transfusion is pretty common following giving birth, but I guess to me it was really scary and maybe I thought i was going to die. Now, I have terrible health anxiety. I constantly suffer from aches and pains. I am convinced that I have some form of terminal cancer. If I see anything on TV or read about any illness, I convince myself that I have the symptoms of this illness. I constantly do "body checks" in my head, working from top to bottom and listing in my head where I ache, hurt, feel strange then google the symptoms to see what they could be. Yesterday there was an article in the paper about ovarian cancer ("the silent killer"). Today I have lower back pain and a bloated lower abdomen...the classic symptoms of very early stages of this disease and have spent an hour this morning looking at different websites. Realistically I know I probably don't have ovarian cancer. I'm not in the typical age range, I've been on the pill, I've had a child, I eat a healthy diet, all of which reduce your risk factor... God I need to get a grip!!!
Doesn't help that I work in a hospital and see medical records and information all of the time. I guess ultimately my fear is of dying and leaving my son, I can't bear the thought of him growing up without me.
Sorry to ramble...I'll shut up now, lol !!!
K xx
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