I Am A Hypochondriac

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Woke up this morning at 5.30 with stomach pains. Within 5 minutes I was mostly convinced I was a half hour away from a ruptured appendix and an agonising and lonely death from blood poisoning. While fretting about this my body took over and I went back to sleep. And here I am with a slightly tender tum but free of both big-time pain and peritonitis.

We know about what diseases you've had - but what diseases have you THOUGHT you've had? (With due apologies to any actual sufferers...

― Tom, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I am a terrible hypochondriac. I don't really want to write a list of the things I've thought I had, so as not to jinx myself. The worst thing about being one to me, is that I never go to the doctor for the fear that if I did I would be there all the time for reassurannce, I'd be like the boy who cried wolf!

― jel, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Everytime i used to go to a doctor she said it was in my head. I am th king of repressing emotions until i vomit and collapse though

― anthony, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think I'm mentally retarded

― dave q, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I saw a doctor a couple of months ago because I've been getting sharp pains in my heart area several times a day for the last six months. He diagnosed heartburn without performing even a rudimentary physical examination. I think I've got heart disease but I may be being hypochondiacal.

― scott, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hypochondria = product of secular humanist society, corollary of elevation of 'self' is extreme fear of disease (and by extension, death)

― dave q, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Shortly after Dennis Potter was interviewed by Melvyn Bragg when he was in the latter stages of psoriasis I discovered that my skin was going a bit flaky. That freaked me out quite a bit with visions of lying on a hospital bed while Joanne Whalley washed my flaking skin while I suffered a slow and painful death.
Fortunately I was just allergic to a certain kind of soap powder and my skin soon returned to it's baby soft smoothness. (Still quite like the idea of a bed bath from Joanne Whalley though....)

― Billy Dods, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

stomach cancer, thraot cancer, lymph/armpit cancer...normally it's jsut my glands are playing up.

― Geoff, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Since my mother successfully battled cancer three times, I search for lumps all the time. So if you see me frotting myself... you know why.

― nathalie, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

At age eight I had the misfortune to read one of those 'Madeline' stories, the one where she has a burst appendix and has to be taken to the hospital in the middle of the night. After reading that story (and subsuquently watching a friend get appendicitis) Every minor childood stomach pain was inflated to life thretening proportions. I even developed a theory that by sleeping on the left side (the appendix being on the right) I could lessen the risk.

― turner, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I'm afraid I'll die before admitting any sort of ailment.

― Kris, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Dave: Surely it's more easily explainable by the progress of medicine. People now (a) have common knowledge of thousands more ailments than ever before, and (b) are constantly told that the best way to prevent them is to recognize the symptoms as early as possible.

― Nitsuh, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And if you want advanced hypochondria, just type in your potential ailment into the INTERWEB and away...you...go. I should worry about cancer, having had it when I was little, but I really do not. Actually I don't get much of anything, even colds. I just tell people it's my nuclear force field.

― suzy, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Hypochondria is so weird, because when I'm depressed I think I'm dying every day from cancer or choking or something, but when I'm happy I could have much worse 'symptoms' and completely ignore them. I think that's why I drink so much more when I'm happy, because illness is more tolerable then.

― maryann, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also, I have wondered a lot about what Dave Q said, ie is the new hypochondria due to individualism. Cause Nitsuh, I can't believe it's so simple as knowing symptoms. I mean you could look at it the other way round, that when people knew hardly anything about what caused death it would have been even more terrifying. And if you look at what happened during plagues etc, maybe that's true. I am just rambling oops. Somebody please tell me what to think, Dave Q can you develope your thought more cause I am a lazy ho if you didn't know.

― maryann, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Well, I don't think I was too bad until just now when I read what Billy Dodds wrote about DYING from Psoriasis, since I have it on my right hand. I've thought of it as just an ugly inconvenience, and not cool at all. Now I'm probably going out tomorrow to buy about ten litres of Curel lotion. Sheesh.

― Kim, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I actually honestly think I have skin cancer, I have these weird ass moles on my right arm that just popped up one day and they fit the description - irregular border and surface, off color, just showed up out of the blue. I just can't be arsed to have it checked out. Other than that I'm not a hypochondriac at all, i'm the exact reverse: even though I'm ALWAYS sick I'm convinced it's nothing and I'm not really that bad off.

― Ally, Sunday, 12 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Like Ally I tend to underestimate things - when my lung collapsed I was convinced I just had muscle pains from sleeping badly.

― Tim, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ally, you really, really should get them checked. I actually know someone in chemo (again) for that right now. It's not at all something to mess with.

― Kim, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Maryann - what I meant was, back in the day life was cheap, everyone had 31 kids as most of them would die by age 6, no big thing as there was an afterlife for everybody, so when you inevitably perished you were going somewhere better, now everybody is their own god and their own solipsistic universe is all there is, so when people think of their own mortality it's like the end of the universe, complete lack of perspective on how we're all worm food. Scientific materialism = the creed that life is a series of 'problems' to which there automatically are 'solutions' (notice the phrase 'natural causes' has fallen into oblivion) - if 'solution' to death is eliminating every possible disease in its warning stages then that's what people do. Even though they will always fail.

― dave q, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I had a couple of small 5p sized patches of dry skin on my arm once and decided it was ringworm. Yuck. Other than this I am not a hypochondriac. One of my mates met me in the pub once and was complaining of an aching lung and said he was going to the doctor's to get it checked out. 'I think I have lung cancer' he says. 'So why are you still smoking then?' I say. 'Oh, I am only smoking with the right lung, it is the left one that hurts'. I despair.

― Emma, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

nathalie - one of these days we can enagage in mutual cancer frottage...though that does sound like some kind of cheese...

― Geoff, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Ha, that story about the left/right lung reminds me of me, sadly. I remember when I had bronchitis last year, the first bout, I busted my rib coughing. It hurt viciously to smoke because you take these big inhales and the expansion made me want to die. So I'd stand out on the patio at work and inhale, "Ow!", inhale, "Ow!" Everyone would be like, would you stop doing that? I'd be like, nah, it's only a flesh wound.

― Ally, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Geoff, since it was so hummid today, I feel like stinky cheese today. Let's do a role play: you mustard, me cheese. haha I am kidding of course.

― nathalie (nathalie), Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Heh. Lymphoma, heart disease, diabetes, brain cancer, appendicitis, bone cancer... There must be more.

For the past year I've had plenty of mysterious pains that dissapear after a couple of worrysome weeks. Chest pain, severe headaches, bone pain... While in Paris during vacation, I've had sharp stomach pains and was convinced that I would double over in front of the Notre Dame, whimpering in my wretched French, "Mal! Stomach! Tres mal! "

Incidently, I now have sharp pains in the elbow. I've already checked many bone cancer websites.

― Julia, Monday, 13 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

In need of appendectomy, ovarian cysts, leukemia, breast cancer.

― Lyra, Tuesday, 14 August 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

three years pass...

I'm CONVINCED there is a blood clot slowly working it's way to my brain (or my heart). I had pains in my thigh on friday night, just short of a cramp, a total mystery pain - out of nowhere! I rolled up my trouser leg to check for swelling, but there was none, but I left my trouser leg up anyway, like a mason, in order to keep an eye on it.

As suddenly as it had came, it went again, no pain. I deduce from this that the clot has dislodged itself from there and is now on it's way (slowly) to another more FATAL place.

― Rumpsy Pumpsy (Rumpie), Monday, 4 April 2005 11:29 (twenty-one years ago)

If this is the case (which it undoubtedly is) how long do I have left?

― Rumpsy Pumpsy (Rumpie), Monday, 4 April 2005 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm wearing flight socks RIGHT NOW

― Rumpsy Pumpsy (Rumpie), Monday, 4 April 2005 11:30 (twenty-one years ago)

your feet are safe then.

― Ed (dali), Monday, 4 April 2005 11:34 (twenty-one years ago)

What good are my feet without my warm generous heart?

― Rumpsy Pumpsy (Rumpie), Monday, 4 April 2005 11:37 (twenty-one years ago)

aw, that's sad. the person who was fighting skin cancer that i mentioned up there (so long ago) has been dead for some time now. =(

― Kim (Kim), Tuesday, 5 April 2005 01:20 (twenty-one years ago)

one month passes...

Okay, please humor me here. What are the chances that a 23-year-old person who has been smoking on and off since the age of 18 could have lung cancer? I imagine I am one of the biggest hypochondriacs EVER and a few months ago I found out that one of the early symptoms of lung cancer is pain in the hands, and since then, my hands have been hurting all the time. I think it's just because I'm thinking about it and then I focus tension in my hands and give myself knots...but YIKES. I have seriously cut back on smoking (from roughly half a pack a day to one or two cigarettes a day, or none) but I still worry about this all the time. Should I really go out of my way to get health insurance and see a doctor, or am I being crazy? (I realize that I am not going to get answers from medical professionals or anything. I just want to know if other smokers ever feel this way, or if...something. Or if my mind is playing tricks on me. Or if I am dying.)

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 30 May 2005 18:37 (twenty years ago)

I have also, in recent months, convinced myself that I have had arthritis, pregnancy, the gout, appendicitis, a tapeworm, a heart attack, and thumb cancer. All of which have proven false. Well, except the arthritis. I think I really might have that. Which might also explain the pain in the hands. But please, someone! Tell me I probably do not have lung cancer!

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 30 May 2005 18:45 (twenty years ago)

You probably do not have lung cancer.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 30 May 2005 18:57 (twenty years ago)

Do you mean it?

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:02 (twenty years ago)

you probably don't have lung cancer. it could very well be arthritis, or tension, or cranky joints.

but it's good to cut back on smoking anyway, if you worry about your health...

― JuliaA (j_bdules), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:07 (twenty years ago)

I mean it 100%.

― Rock Hardy (Rock Hardy), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:07 (twenty years ago)

Yes, I think it'd be best for me to just quit completely. I'm too big a worrywart to be a smoker, I guess.

― kirsten (kirsten), Monday, 30 May 2005 19:18 (twenty years ago)

Heh, I worry about lung cancer all the time too - there was an antismoking ad on tv some time back where the woman said she had a painful shoulder, thought it needed physio, and it turned out to be a tumour that'd spread and it was too late.

Ive had a painful shoulder for months, nothing's helped like itusually does. Also, I get chest pains sometimes. I dunno, its just being unfit and having a pinched nerve I'm sure, but I've had a dread end of my life feeling for a few years now, and I cant bloody shake it.

― Trayce (trayce), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 03:30 (twenty years ago)

i prob. shouldn't read this thread.

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 03:38 (twenty years ago)

(or should i? i can never tell if being in the company of other hypochondriacs is good, since you realize you are all being silly, or if it makes you worry even more.)

― jaymc (jaymc), Tuesday, 31 May 2005 03:39 (twenty years ago)

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