Check please

So I am not allowing myself to check today. This means no Internet searching–I will not be able to spend hours looking at moles and melanoma on the Internet, or afternoons spent reading the posts in discussion groups where doctors frightened of liability counsel patients on their medical complaints. Usually for each post there are another 10 posts saying that happens to me to. I will not be able to read first hand accounts about been diagnosed with HIV or cancer, after reading them usually I get this feeling on dread in my stomach. Does my leg tingle?

No checking also means staying out of the mirror. No contourting and stretching to see my whole body. I will not touch my belly button over and over untill my partner tells me to stop.

Tomorrow, I will allow myself these shameful compulsive pleasures. One day soon I will be finished with them. The Internet will no longer be a mine field for anxiety. A trip to the bathroom one day will be just to go to the bathroom, not to inspect my moles, poke at my stool and spit into the sink and check the colour.

One day at a time.

Sarah Teasdale

Sarah Teasdale: (August 8, 1884 – January 29, 1933), was an American lyrical poet. She was born Sarah Trevor Teasdale in St. Louis, Missouri.Throughout her life, Teasdale suffered poor health and it was only at age 9 that she was well enough to begin school. In 1898 she went to Mary Institute and to Hosmer Hall in 1899 where she finished in 1903.

In 1913 Teasdale fell in love with poet Vachel Lindsay. He wrote her daily love letters, but nevertheless she married Ernst Filsinger in 1914 when she was 30. Teasdale and Lindsay remained friends throughout their lives. In 1918, her poetry collection Love Songs won three awards: the Columbia University Poetry Society prize, the 1918 Pulitzer Prize for poetry and the annual prize of the Poetry Society of America.

Teasdale was a hypochondriac whose preoccupation with death often appeared in her poetry. On January 29, 1933, a blood vessel in her hand ruptured. Sure that she was about to die, she took some sleeping pills, got into the bathtub, and died of an overdose.

Famous Hypochondriacs: Florence Nightangale

Florence Nightingale: Florence Nightingale’s tireless battle against death and disease during the Crimean War rendered her one of history’s most famous hypochondriacs. In 1857, the year after she returned from the Crimea, she took to her bed convinced that her life was hanging by a thread which could snap at any moment. It eventually did – in 1910 when the founder of modern nursing was ninety years old.

Are we undergoing too many medical tests?

For many hypochondriacs including myself the diagnostic test is a mainstay in my treatment. I have had so many blood tests I just watch the needle go in now. I  worry about endless numbers of x-rays. When I really had a stroke four years ago the dignositic tests took over my hospital life for a few days. It began with a CT scan pretty comfortable all in all looks very sci-fi a big arch passing over your body. Then an MRI loud sonar sounding beeps surrounding you well stuck in a claustrophobic tunnel. Click on this link to view a photo of a couple having sex in an MRI. I don’t know how they pulled it off. Be warned it is a picture of full on sex but it is pretty hard to figure out what’s going on in the picture anyways. Where was I the MRI followed by the spinal tap a suprisingly ok expereicne with the exception crunching sound and the doctor uttering damn I missed it. Then the vials and vials of blood were taken.

Tests are so tempting I read about a priviate clinic in Vancouver BC that offers full body CT scans. What a reassurance. After that you would no that there was no small tumour growing in your lungs or your bones. The relief when I get a good result on a diagnostic test is liberating and wonderful. But there are several huge issues with diagnostic tests.

1. The tests themselves are not always safe. The chart below shows some of the levels of radiation that you are exposed to undergoing different kinds of tests. Note the difference in radiation exposure between CT scans and x-ray. CT scans expose patients to nearly 50 times more radiation.

Why does this matter?

The radiation people are exposed to in CTs increases their risk of getting cancer. This excerpt from an article in the New Scientist describes some of the associated risks.

“….according to some estimates, the radiation exposure a patient receives from a full-body CT scan is often 500 times that of a conventional X-ray and about the same as that received by people living 2.4 kilometres away from the centres of the World War II atomic blasts in Japan.”

2. It is only a matter of time before you receive a false postive result.

If you think you were worried before the test, examine, x-ray imagine how you will fell if you get a false positve.

3. All of the testing sends you up and down between sheer panic and redemption if the test result is ok.

**By all means if you really feel something is wrong or you have important risk factors such as family history or if you are or were a regular smoker get tested.

Is it a mole or melanoma?

I have agonized over this one. I know have had three moles removed..Each one my doctor was hesitant but I thought it had changed size or colour. Each time I wait for the biopsy results fearful that it will turn out to be a Breslow 4mm melanoma. Each time (I knock on the desk) has turned out to be an ugly mole.

One of the challenges I have with hypochondria is seperating the fear from the reality. The reality is I have red hair freckles and skin damaged from the suns from vacations in Mexico and extended trips overseas. I have to be vigilant. However I go far beyond this. Like Woody Allen in Hannah and Her Sisters I have mistaken pen marks on my legs from a leaky pen for skin cancer. How can I find a balance here?

Another day

Hello readers, I hope you are enjoying the end of your summer. I spent part of  my summer looking at mountains and shitting in an outhouse. This is actually an important part of the experience. I have had narrow stools for about three months now. I am going to see a gastrointestinal specialist in Dec. 

Not being able to see my own shit provided me a  break from worrying for 10 days. 10 days not thinking that I had colon cancer.

 Now I am back, flattened stool ruining each and every movement.

A digital story about my hypochondria and stroke: Vertigo

This is a digital story I created at a digital storytelling workshop in Berekely. I wanted to explore some of the imaginings of life and death exist within me and that the will and need to survive is somehow at the heart of my hypochondria. If you are dealing with health anxiety view this video carefully. It includes my description of how it felt to have a stroke.

Fear of HIV Continued….

In 1987 there was a different view of HIV/AIDS. There was no proven treatments and for most people and an HIV/AIDs diagnosis was always terminal. This television advertisement in from Australia and it must reflect some of the fear that people had around HIV/AIDs.

The wrong diagnosis?

I have been searching for diseases for a long time on the Internet and in the last few years the site wrong diagnosis.com has been my nemesis.

Let’s begin with the title. There is a suggestion here that you doctor is wrong and the right diagnosis must be on the Internet. Does this appear strange to anyone? Yes doctors are wrong but are you really going to piece it together on the Internet. I cannot think of anything much worse for those suffering from hypochondria than a site telling them not to trust their doctor.

And then tereis there symptom checker. Enter the symptom back pain and along with muscle fatigue and slipped disc the list includes some of the following: chronic leukemia, spinal tumor, multiple myeloma, prostate carcinoma, sickle cell crisis…..and so on. Now what is a patient supposed to do with this list. How do I know it is not leukemia. When doctors diagnose patients they often start with the most probable condition but patients are not this simple they often think the worse especially if they are anxious.

Then there are the adds: do you have breast cancer? Have you been tested for Cancer? Common eye diseases.

Here is a gem I found on the site today

“Silent diseases

Learn about common diseases with no symptoms or “vague symptoms”

What the hell is someone supposed to do to be vigilant about diseases without symptoms?

Although the have a nifty disclaimer on the bottom of the site saying that this information is not intended to replace advice from your own medical team that is exactly what this site tries to do. Your doctor must be wrong; here are the answers.

Perceiving the body

When I am suffering from a bout of hypochondria my body feels precarious. I can feel my insides, my heart beating.

For me I feel the root of my hypochondria is a fear of my lack of control over death and health. I lost my best friend when I was 18 and on a trip to Mexico. He died of a mysterious disease. I felt immortal. I remember we were late for our second class train so we ran and jumped onto the moving train immortal. Scott died and mortality hit me deeply it destroyed my new confidence. I was fragile and life was precarious.

Many years later I developed hypochondria but I know that some of the roots lie here.