Originally Posted by
NervUs
Great insight, Scotty!
---------- Post added at 10:23 ---------- Previous post was at 09:47 ----------
Medical procedures are definitely hard when you have HA. You will get through it.
Interesting about OCD being like ADHD. It is DEFINITELY hard to shift your thoughts when you have OCD. I experience that, as well as the hyperawareness of myself and my body. I think part of the struggle is teaching yourself not to react when your mind is screaming for you to react (as in obsess and panic) to something like a kink in the neck or a headache. One thing you can do is immediately substitute a thought for a panic thought, just do whatever you can- when your brain says your neck hurts- to adjust to thinking about something different, ideally something creative. I find that having a long term project that requires planning and thinking through can compete with health worry, esp if it engages you. Are you in college? Even thinking about papers you have to write or books you are reading can do the same.
My bat situation was a bit of a strange one in that the bat had been dead for some time once I found it so we could not have it tested. I am going to spare you all the terrible details, but we ended up giving my daughter the RPEP (the bat had been in her room), but my two sons, my husband, and I did not take the PEP. My daughter, husband, and I fell under the CDC guidelines as we all sleep in the room. My husband and I decided against doing it because the cost is astronomical (we paid about $5K out of pocket for our daughter, and it would have cost more out of pocket for us) and we figured we most likely would have woken up. I read every case study I could find about bat rabies, and most of the victims actually DID wake up. The only known case of someone sleeping through a bat encounter was a 4 year old girl (my daughter was 4 when I found the carcass). Plus, it had been a long time (as I said, the bat had to have been there at least 6 months. I was emailing everyone in town, including a forensic anthropologist and the former head of the rabies program at the CDC. They both felt like the true period of risk had passed already, given the state of the carcass.
I can also say, I have seen a bat skull very up close and personal. In fact, I still have the skull in a box out in my flowerbox because I don't want that nasty thing in my house, lol, but I can't bring myself to dispose of it. Anyway, you would be amazed at how small these things area. The teeth are tiny, so tiny I am not convinced they could even penetrate through a sweater. Even though I don't believe there was a bat involved in this incident you are fearing, even if it was a bat, clothing would be like armor to these teeth. They are really really tiny.
How did I stop seeing bats everywhere? I am not entirely sure. I know, for a while, I was checking my house for bats nightly, since one had gotten into my house undetected. It is actually impossible to do that because they are small and, as I learned, can wind up anywhere, and the typical house has so much material in it that I think I finally just accepted that we are part of nature and, if this happens to us, we will have no choice but to accept it. I stopped checking and, now, I don't see or think much about bats. I said "much" because they do still cross my mind at times. But, the thought is fleeting and doesn't consume me like it used to. Finding that bat (I was actually a rabies worrier BEFORE this incident, given that we had a bunch of raccoons all up in our grill for a little while) was the BIGGEST FREAKOUT I have ever experienced in my 6 year career as a hypochondriac. I was too afraid even to write about it in an anxiety forum, I was so convinced my daughter was going to die, or one of my sons since I didn't know where the bat had been, or even myself or husband. But, I think knowing that a lot of time had passed since the bat would have been alive in the house-- and also seeing that each time we got sick was actually NOT rabies-- let me get the emotional distance I needed to come to acceptance that there is a small risk in life of being taken out by "nature" and that is just the way it is. I don't know if that comforts you at all, but I guess I found comfort in it somehow.