Hypercondriac

I am definitely not but Boyo is.

On an almost daily basis he has some gripe or other about his health / body- I feel sorry for him because I can see how much it worries him.

He has been to the doctors a few times, tried some anti anxiety tablets but they gave him side effects (in his opinion...) so hasn't gone back.

He is terrible for 'finding' things that could be wrong with him- a slight lump or bump for example.

I don't know how to help him because he is on the whole a healthy young man!

I am terrible at diagnosing myself with illnesses- but I never actually do anything about them. BuzzFeed "21 British people problems" highlighted how U feel about this;

I try to stay away from google as i always think the worst.For some reason the last few months have not been great in anxiety terms and this can escalate hugely when i have any aches and pains...which i currently do with my head/face.

I don't think I am with respect to myself but I over-think things with my H or other family members. H had a mole that went a bit crusty over Christmas and in the week it took to see a doctor I had planned out in my head what I would do if he had to take time off work for treatment. It turned out to just be a case of dry skin. I was the same when I noticed my wee brother was bruising very easily, I hardly slept until his blood tests came back all clear. This all just goes on in my head though, I don't ever want to panic the other person involved.

THIS!

this too! I never was but since I got ill last year I started googling and stopped at brain tumour! It was ridiculous. Although since the doctors have stopped doing tests, I've been researching to try and find out what's wrong with me. I'm only looking at small things as I'm convinced its something stupid and tiny and they didn't look for it/missed it. It's frustrating as the doctor did the usual "what do you thinks wrong" *which I hate by the way!!* and I asked if it could be related to something else and he just said no. No other questions or anything.

No, but maybe that's because I'm a nurse. I get annoyed with people going to the GP for a cold, turning up at A&E inappropriately etc.

Although if something is genuinely wrong I do worry and google stuff. And I know I shouldn't.

I think as I'm lucky that I've never had any serious illnesses/accidents (nor has anyone close to me), I can easily google my symptoms but will just take the most likely/common diagnosis.

On that basis ill then decide if I need to see the doctor but 98% of the time it isn't required. So I guess that means I'm not a hypochondriac!

Google is a nightmare. So far I have diagnosed myself with bowel cancer, cervical cancer and breast cancer.

Actually it was Crohn's (obviously not ideal but there we go), a Bartholin's Cyst, and shingles.

I don't do things by halves...I rarely get a cold!

Wrong diagnosis is a good website. Normally one of the suggestions is syphilis or dengue fever or other wild and fanciful illness. All that from saying you have a rash and headache!

I am dreadful, but then i do have health anxiety. When i have palpitations i think im going to have a heart attack and when i have a headache i think its a stroke. I annoy myself stupid and yes i google everything ?

I can be terrible. I have 'had' every disease out there, including some extremely rare and/or tropical diseases where the sensible me knows that it is actually 100% unlikely that I have it. When I am not busy I have more time to think. If I have more time to think my imagine has more time to work itself up. I used to Google ALL the time which is so unhealthy. I knew/know that it is all in my head but when I am in one of my moods or during an anxiety attack, there is sometimes no telling me. I thought I had managed to get rid of the hypochondria but I haven't managed to. It 'flared up' again recently as a former colleague and friend of mine died just before Christmas of ovarian cancer and was my age (I'm 32). I didn't go looking for symptoms of ovarian cancer like I used to do in the past for brain tumours but it made me so very very aware of things that could potentially go wrong with the body. I'm trying to shake it off. I hate it. Every other twinge I get is noticed and my brain, quick as a flash, links it to an illness. Never the common cold, mind you - always something sinister. I wish I didn't have it, I truly do. It isn't as easy as to just snap out it. I wish it were because it can be debilitating. It's worse at night when I can't sleep - sometimes I feel myself drifting off and I wake myself up, 'just in case'. Stupid, eh. I feel like an idiot as I know that I should be grateful that something isn't wrong with me.

Saying all that, I am trying to get better at handling it. I don't want to say I'm a long way from shaking it off because if I say that then I will be a long way from shaking it off ... but if I get a thought that pops into my head in the morning, I am getting loads better at telling said thought to get out of my head. Sometimes I need to say it out loud for it to go and then replace it with a pleasant thought. I am SO aware I must sound crazy and I apologise ... but I have to admit it's been good to get this out.

Sorry for rambling on your thread, enterflora. I didn't mean to use it as my own personal therapy!

EJ- it is good to put it down like that. I wish boyo could- it might help him get some perspective- no amount of me telling him is okay and healthy has any effect on him and I try really hard to not get frustrated with him- I just wish he could relax sometimes.

BTW no need to apologise!!

Of course it does! I'm talking about the ones that go with a splinter, or the teenager I heard about with a broken fingernail. Or the children that come in at 3am constipated for three weeks and they haven't been taken to the GP. Or a bad back for six weeks. What's an accident or emergency about any of those? I understand that GP appointments are hard to get, but still.

Yes I'm not sure about nhs direct. They do seem to suggest sending an ambulance for everything.

I've given up calling NHS direct. They just tell me to go to a&e no matter what's wrong with you.

I have the opposite problem. Any time I feel ill, I bury my head in the sand about it and pretend I'm fine. I spent 3 years in agony with my hips before telling my GP and finally being sent for tests and diagnosed with arthritis! I've only just now gone back to 'fess up about the rest of my grumbles, and that's only because my mother practically frogmarched me there after she was diagnosed with Behcet's (we have the same symptoms so she's freaking out while I put my fingers in my ears and pretend nothing is wrong).

We call it NHS redirect. In other words, they send an ambulance for crap. Someone put in all the details for someone with period pain, and it suggested 999. Utterly pointless. Then again, 5.30 this morning, we go to an alleged fitter. Who miraculously stops when we tell him to. Then sits up and admits he's anxious, has learning difficulties, and has had blackouts in the past. We referred to his GP despite him wanting A&E. Not an abnormal case for is, just a totally unnecessary use of resources.

Yup I love those words. We use them to tell people they haven't had an accident, and aren't an emergency, so maybe we aren't the most appropriate pathway.

I'm not but my mother is!

She's a lover of the self diagnosing via the internet. This includes making a make-shift sling when I saw her last as she had a slight pain in her shoulder and deided it was something major. The ache went went after a day.

I had a bit of a health scare almost 2 years ago now and my mum decided that she almost certainly had cancer at the same time as she hadn't been for her routine checks, she still didn't go to the doctors or anything though, she just went on and on about how she wanted to spend all her money before she was gone so booked a holiday and went out for nice meals and the theatre etc lots in a short space of time. I'm sure her reading stuff on the internet didn't help. My mum is absolutely fine by the way, she's just a huge hypercondriac but it has led to me keeping things from her when I've had to go back to hospital for tests etc.

Well a potential heart attack deserves an ambulance obviously! They told us to take N to A&E for a rash. It was an allergic rash and he was ok apart from puffy eyes so we refused.

People go to A&E with all of those things and worse. It's one of the reasons I couldn't work there, it would just irritate me.

Haha I went to A and E for a splinter once. To be fair it was an inch long and through my thumb nail. I needed half my nail carved off with a scalpel. I maintain to this day the injections he gave me in my thumb was the sorest thing I have ever been through. In fact I still feel where it was when my thumb is cold!! *bad memories*

my experience with NHS 24 has both times been an appointment at OOHs. I find the times other people have calle an ambulance for me (up to 4 or 5 now) I don't like. No one ever believed I'd had a seizure, no one ever believed I was ill and once the paramedics refused to take me and told H he should take me himself if he felt he needed to because it wasn't worth their drive.

Sorry that was a bit of a rant!!

I think I've normally had the opposite situation. I have several times gone to my GP, only to be turned away because I needed to be in the ER getting pumped full of steroids and stimulants. I do feel like I shouldn't be going to bother the doctor to hospital with my silly old asthma attacks, but that's a very dangerous way of thinking, and I think there are probably a lot of people who hear complaints about inappropriate people turning up in hospital, and we believe that means us, when it really doesn't.

Yes, I agree that a broken nail and constipation aren't necessarily emergencies, but at least in the case of constipation for 3 weeks, there could have been severe pain involved, and that's scary for a parent, and with a broken nail, if the nail was torn off it could very well have a staph infection and require antibiotics. I think it's better for people to care and worry more about their health than to be blase about it and end up dead because they worried they might not be emergency material.

This!

We even ended up going to the hospital the other week because he thought he had appendicitis (thanks to Google) turns up it was just wind ?

Not at all. In fact I'm quite the opposite. The only times I've been to the doctors, other than for the pill, was when I had sciatica & cystitis. I'm never ill - apart from a cold. I've never had an actual illness, like flu or tonsilitis or anything like that. Not in my adult years anyway.

I'm certainly not. My mum's a nurse, so I grew up barely ever going to the GPs.

H is a complete hypochondriac, as is his father and as was his grandmother. He has recently had a persistent cough and a bad back. Persistent cough is exactly the same as I had last year, which ended up being leftover from a chest infection. A short dose of antibiotics cleared it up. He wouldn't believe me and was convinced that it was somehow related to his bad back (which was clearly caused by too much rough and tumble in panto). Now that he's had antibiotics and a chest x-ray and been to the osteopath for his back, he has realised that he's not dying!

No not at all, I just get on with things and haven't been to the doctor for years. I've been to A&E once when I had an abcess on my toncils that was giving me trouble breathing. They just presumed I'd come in an abulance, I wasn't in a good way, when actually I'd come in a taxi but don't really remember it, couldn't speak so not sure how I got them to take me there!

My friend on the other hand is the worst person ever. She goes to her doctor most weeks. They are sick of her, she also has anything she thinks that someone else has. She decided she has a nut allergy, even though she used to eat them. One day she just decided to become allergic. We know someone who is lacto-intolerant so she now is starting to decide that she is too, so I expect her to decide she is shortly. She is now pregnant (whole other story!) and her doctor has finally kicked her out!!!

My Ex and his mother made me feel like a hyperchondriac yet I turned out to be ill. It has made me always try and fix myself and at the pain clinic appt alst week the Dr got cross with em saying I had to start lettign them help me.

Arquard - my next door neighbour's daughter has recently been diagnoised with that. She said it was a releif because she felt people thought she was just making up being ill.

A few of my colleagues have asked if the patient is the "and". I have never been that brave!

People also don't understand the words "Minor Injuries Unit", and turn up with abdo pain, a cold, etc. Now I understand potentially ambiguous ones like Walk in Centre or Urgent Care Centre, but I have been known to utter the words "We are a Minor Injuries Unit, therefore we are only trained to deal with with MINOR INJURIES".* People get snotty when we say they need to be at their GP surgery, as that's where we're meant to be.

*I am now trained to deal with minor illness too, but the department isn't commissioned to deal with illness, so I'd get in trouble if I went out of our remit

There seems to be 3 types of patient:

Ones who come for anything, just to be checked out

Ones who seem to get it right

Ones who don't want to bother anyone, and turn up after they've got so bad they're half dead. We always tell these off. (in a nice way)

But I'd rather do the reassuring "cold" speech ten times on a morning than not see the poorly child who's Mum/Dad is too scared to come in as they think they're wasting our time

Defo not!!! I do have a few health 'issues' which can be limiting and Tbh causes constant pain (fibromyalgia, arthritis, t4 syndrome, vitamin D deficiency) but so what? You just have to crack on..... Put up and shut up is generally my motto. My kids accuse me of being totally insensitive and unsympathetic when they complain about things but I'm just realistic and practical. My son used to have fits and needed resuscitation, my eldest had pretty severe kidney troubles then was nearly killed in a car crash (couldn't walk for 3 months, I needed to give her daily anti dvt injections)..... So I tell them unless there's something majorly wrong don't complain! my eldest step daughter (15) is a bloody nightmare for it.... Leaks with regular tampon or pad? It's not normal to lose that much blood!!! Period pain? It's her womb tearing! Minor allergic rash? It's shingles! Now for the last week, at least twice a day, it's moans about a painful lump in her back. I've felt it annnnnd yep! It's just a knot in her muscle. But no, no matter how many times we roll our eyes and tell her YET AGAIN just to massage it we get the whole..... You'll see! It will be something really serious! Then I'll laugh at you for being wrong and thinking you know everything!!!! Yeah, OK Kate.........

Mind you, there WAS the time she was complaining again about belly ache..... I told her she needed a good s**t!! Wellllll her diet was crappy and veg rarely entered the equation. To cut a long story short, she did get to a point that concerned me so she ended up at a&e, where even the doc thought it was constipation........ I then spent the next two days sitting by her hospital bedside.... It was a ruptured appendix!!!! Oops lol!!!!

Mum wants a hat - okay there might not be anythign majorly wrong with your daughter at any stage (other than the ruptured appendix) but a bit of tea and sympathy goes a logn way in life. She may jsut want some love and reassurance. When I have soemthing wrong I'm not wanting someone to fix me btu it is nice to offload. Be told you are jsut moanign over nothing seems a bit harsh. She may be makign things seem worse than they are just to get some acknowledgement. Not that I have massively personalsied thinsg there!

I don't think I am, no. I do tend to get a few things wrong with me but tend to ignore them for a while before I'll go to the GP.

I have asthma so am always at the GP for antibiotics and steroids. Have had to go to A&E quite a few times when I was younger due to attacks. Always ended up with a hospital stay. One was an intensive care stay.

I had acute urticaria once (bad hives all over my body) and went to the GP for that and got referred to skin specialist.

I had symptoms that I was convinced meant breast cancer for ages but kept putting off going to the GP. I actually ended up mentioning my symptoms to the nurse who was doing my pill check one day after about 5 months (very stupid I know). Turns out, after a referral, blood tests and an MRI that it was only a prolactinoma. Phew. So am now a hospital out-patient for that.

I went to A&E when I had very bad food poisoning once but in my defence my hands went paralysed and I was doubled over in agony so I thought I had something really serious!

I am a right sicknote.