I've always been an anxious, jumpy, overly-imaginative person. As a 9-year-old, I was bitten by a dog and spent the next 3 months waiting for the inevitable symptoms of rabies to show, despite living in the UK where rabies is not an issue. So health anxiety isn't new for me.
However, my father died two years ago, fairly young and fairly unexpectedly (aggressive prostate cancer, 57) and since then my occasional health anxiety has morphed into something that is taking over my life for long stretches.
In the last 8 months, I've convinced myself that I've had:
- breast cancer (recurring breast pain in one side, ultrasound all clear)
- a BRCA mutation (family cancer pattern on my dad's side: paid for private test, all clear)
- endometrial or maybe ovarian cancer (sudden irregular and super-frequent periods, ultrasound showed a normal/small ovarian cyst)
- non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (convinced I had a swollen lymph node on neck: I did not)
- bowel cancer (thought I spotted blood in my stool, obsessively monitored motions for several days WITH A TORCH to look for blood, saw nothing further)
EDIT: forgot to add - melanoma, twice (a large freckle on my foot I've had for 20 years, and a raised pink thing on my arm which came up suddenly, and disappeared shortly after; both dermoscoped and nothing wrong)
Now, I am shaking like a jelly over the possibility of lung cancer. I brought up some flecks of blood in my spit a few days ago, and again the next day. I couldn't think of an obvious cause - no chest infection or sore throat, and no gum bleeding. Went to the GP, who wasn't overly concerned, but weighed me and I seem to have dropped about 3-4kg in the last couple of months.
I am a 34 year old woman. I've never smoked. I've more or less given up alcohol. I cycle, go to the gym and do yoga; I eat reasonably healthily, and my BMI is normal. The odds of me having cancer are minimal, and I'm an intelligent, educated person with a decent understanding of medical terminology and statistics.
And yet...
...somehow, the knowledge that it's technically *possible* for me to have cancer, outweighs the fact that it's highly unlikely. I see a therapist, and she suggested that I have a tendency to catastrophise as a means of keeping control over a situation. So if I have a symptom, I immediately jump to 'omg cancer' because at least that gives my brain a level of certainty.
If someone could reassure me that I'm probably not one of the 29 women aged 30-34 who get diagnosed with lung cancer each year (yes, I have been reading the Cancer Research incidence stats), that'd be just grand, thanks.