For the past few days, I have been suffering an odd pain on my left side…on the bone. Really hurts and doing internet searches, I was prepared for bone cancer and godknowswhat.
Then I had a minute to think.
Three days ago at work, I accidentally slammed against a bathroom door entryway really hard that hurt like hell. I was in a rush and forgot about it.
Guess where that recent pain is?
Sadly, this is not the first time this is happened. I once convinced myself I had throat cancer as I has a lump in my throat for almost a week.
Then, suddenly I coughed up a half peanut that had stuck to the side of my throat for the entire week. Suddenly, that cancer was cured as well.
Oh, I have the best hypochondriac story ever. About 6 or 7 years ago, I lost 50 pounds. Took me a year to do it, but I did (and I’ve kept it off, thanks, and I didn’t do Atkins). One day shortly after I had hit my goal weight (the weight I lied and told them I was on my drivers’ license), I notice this bump right between my breasts. After a few days, it hadn’t gone away, so I went to my internist, with visions of malignacies dancing in my head. He looked at it, tapped on it a couple of times, looked at my chart, and said, “you’ve lost a lot of weight since you were here last”. “50 pounds”, I said proudly.
"So," sez he, "how long had it been since you've seen your breastbone?"
Last night while playing a game on the computer, my neice (8 years old) walks up to me. “Uncle Bear, sometimes it hurts my stomach when I breath. And it’s really, really hard to breath sometimes”.
“Is it hard to breath now?”
“Uh huh. It’s hard to breath and my stomach hurts when I breath”
“Where does it hurt?”
“All over here”, she says as she rubs pretty much her entire abdomen!
She wasn’t using any accessory muscles to breath. No weasing, no sign of obstruction or any problem whatsoever… “Ok. Let me go get my stethascope out of the car. I’ll be right back” I was already pretty convinced there was no problem, but I’m not sure where this came from all of a sudden at 10:30pm on a Thursday.
Wait a minute… 10:30pm on a Thursday?!? Oh crap. I bet she’s watching ER all by herself!
Sure enough! I get back in from my car and ER is on in the living room. I listen to her clear breath sounds and tell her to not think so hard about breathing. “Stop concentrating so hard on breathing!!”
“But sometimes it’s hard to breath and I feel like Im going to die or something”
“No. You’re fine. Trust me. You’re just thinking too hard about it. Calm down and let your body breath on its own.”
“Maybe if I eat something, Ill get better?”
“It’s 10:30 at night. But whatever… I’ll make you some Fruity Pebbles so you’ll breath better… :sigh:”
I made sure to watch the rest of ER with her and tried to answer all her questions that popped up.
Poor kid!