Hello, as the title says, I’m a newly health anxiety sufferer for the past year. I’ve been lurking (almost daily) and finally have decided to join and speak on what’s bothering me, personally.

A bit about me!

I’ve always had some form of anxiety in my life starting at 15 (30 years old now), but it was purely around everyday stressors from school, work, presentations, what not. Easily manageable just a nuisance. Until, last year when my grandmother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer at 73, completely out of the blue for our family, and luckily was caught in stage 1 and low grade (currently in a one year remission). It was after dealing with taking care of her for a couple months post surgery, that I became a bit more stressed than usual. Not a big deal for me, it was expected. Anyway, I noticed my bowel issues were mere prevalent to me. One morning, after my morning movement, I noticed a small amount of blood when wiping. I was somewhat concerned and decided to google what it could be (as we all know this is a big mistake). Of course, I was finding some very scary results so I immediately scheduled a visit with my practitioner, telling her my concerns about colon cancer and how google was telling me I’m dying (LOL). She looks at me and goes “yeah umm don’t do that” and gave me a little laugh. She did a quick external rectal exam, saw a small hemorrhoid, and said it was what she expected. Gave me a handout of resources on how to treat it. Sent me home, and I was fine, everything stopped with the bleeding. BUT the health anxiety started lurking, it lingered, it stayed. And I started to become very hyper vigilant about my bowel movements (and have since then). This was the start of my full blown health anxiety.

I am planning on posting in the gastro section of this forum for more specific insight and advice. But this is my quick little story of how I got here. Hope to hear from many of you in my journey to overcoming health anxiety!