As the title says.. I’ve recently been diagnosed with pre-cancerous cells; and had them treated. It has triggered my health anxiety so badly, which I’ve had under control for around 7 years. Sorry if this post is a little bit long or jumbled - I’m exhausted emotionally and physically.

Around 2013 I had severe, debilitating health anxiety, mainly centring around thinking I have signs of various cancers. I had bad headaches and had to go for an MRI, I thought I had skin cancer, obsessively checked my skin, obsessively googled my symptoms and it was a really bad time for me. I had CBT and didn’t turn out to have any terrible illness (unsurprisingly in hindsight!)

BUT.. recently I have had pre cancerous cells detected from a routine smear test. The hospital were great, they did a biopsy and within two weeks I had the results back and had the surgery done to remove all the cells. The success rate is over 90% and they’ve essentially prevented me from developing cervical cancer. It’s incredibly common.

Now the worse part..
My anxiety. This has triggered my cancer phobia big time. I’m doing all the things I did back when my anxiety was at it’s worse and I feel powerless to break the cycle - it’s like this pre cancerous cell incident has validated my total panic. I’m doing the compulsive checking, googling, catastrophic thinking, all of it that I’ve been rid of for 7 years.

The pre cancerous cervical changes which I have had are caused by a HPV virus which can also cause anal cancer, mouth cancer, and several more. Now I’m worried that what I thought were piles a few months back could be anal cancer. Logically I know this is incredibly unlikely - it takes a huge length of time to develop, I don’t even know that I have a HPV in that area of my body, and not all my symptoms match up.. but my health anxiety doesn’t care about logic or reason right now! :(

I’m going back to my GP tomorrow to discuss 1) the symptoms I’ve had which I thought were piles and 2) to discuss my severe anxiety at the moment.

If anyone has been through anything similar and has any advice, I would really appreciate it. I’m really struggling.