Constantly checking myself for symptoms - dry throat

[Sparkle1984]

In the last 10 days or so since coronavirus officially reached my part of the country, I feel like I've been almost constantly checking my body for symptoms. This has got worse in the last 5 days.

I've been working at home since last Monday, and ever since Thursday last week I've noticed my throat seems dry and slightly tickly, but I don't really feel an urge to cough much more than I usually do, and I haven't had a fever, aches, chills, high temperature or anything like that.

So now I'm wondering whether I'm noticing the feelings in my throat because I'm hypervigilant of it. Maybe it could be because the air in my house is stale and I've hardly left the house in the last 10 days? Today, while I was working at my desk at home, I had my window open pretty much all the time to let some fresh air in, but my throat still feels the same. Maybe I'm not drinking as much water as I used to when I was in the office? When I was working in the office, I had a refillable water bottle and I'd aim to drink about a litre of water a day. However, now that I'm at home, I drink out of a normal glass so it's harder to keep track of the amount I'm drinking. The worry is often in the back of my mind that the dry throat could be a sign of coronavirus and every night when I go to bed, I fear that I'll get more symptoms when I wake up the following morning. But I've also read that in some cases, a dry throat can be a symptom of anxiety.

Please can anyone reassure me?

[glassgirlw]

I think all of us that are used to constantly scanning our bodies for symptoms (and probably even ones that aren’t used to doing it!!) are finding ourselves focusing on what we’ve heard in the media are signs of CV. Couple days last week I felt that tickle in the back of my throat. Then one day I’d swallow and wonder if it was getting sore. Or I’ll sneeze and wonder if it’s a precursor to other symptoms. I think anxiety in general is just so heightened right now and it’s so easy to manifest these symptoms in ourselves. I understand where your coming from because I find myself doing the same things. Best I can do right now is try to distract myself with other things and try hard not to hyper focus on every little feeling.

[raspberry22]

I've been the same, I feel I've had symptoms of a cold for at least two weeks, on and off, different symptoms every day. I think this is when you know it's anxiety, when the symptoms swap and change around.

This morning I googled "can anxiety cause cold like symptoms" and sure enough there is a lot of info about it.

[Sparkle1984]

Thanks. After all that worrying, I managed to work out what was causing my throat to feel strange! On the desk where I've been working from home, there was a reed diffuser. As I'd had it for so long (since before Christmas), I'd kind of forgotten it was there. So I'd been sitting at my desk for 7 hours a day breathing in the fumes from it. Once I remembered it was there, I moved it into the spare room as I read online that being close to a reed diffuser can cause irritation in some people. Since I did that, the strange feelings in my throat gradually went away. It's quite funny when I look back that all my worry was caused by something so simple!