Okay, this is sort of one of those “am I the only one” deals, but I thought I might expand to see if anyone else has any sort of other medical phobias of any sort.
I often find myself randomly becoming acutely aware of my heart – that is to say I’ll suddenly stop and just listen to my heartbeat, feel my pulse throughout my body, as if time itself stands still while I verify that yes, indeed, all is working well. I have a subtle fear of my heart just stopping. Maybe it has to do with a heart murmur I had as a child, and sometimes I think I can still detect a slight murmur, but that’s not really what I’m afraid of. Strangely enough, it’s not that I’m really all that concerned about a heart attack either, but rather I almost think that my heart will stop beating and I won’t notice so I’ll continue on and just drop dead somewhere a few minutes later. Now logically I understand that wouldn’t happen, but I still find myself checking far too often that the old ticker is still ticking.
I’m generally phobic of the medical profession as a whole. Last time I allowed myself to be inspected medically I was 12. I’d have to be incapacitated to the point of non-resistance before I’d go to the hospital.
I tell myself I will take better care of my teeth, I make a real serious decision about every 6 months, but I get slack and then scare myself stupid when I get a pain or notice an unusual mark or spot.
I’m a habitual pulse-checker. If something doesn’t feel quite right I’ll make sure the ol’ ticker is still beating away.
I also tend to look over my glasses and look at something and then look at it again through my glasses and compare the results just to make sure my eyesight hasn’t gotten any worse.
I’m very cautious about taking medicine. I fear that the slightest overdose or taking something I don’t really need will kill me or cause more harm than good. For example, I don’t take aspirin until I have a pain that I can conform just won’t go away on its own; otherwise I’ll just wait it out. If I start having cold symptoms I wait a couple days to make sure it’s a real cold before I start taking any pills.
There’s a guy I know,not me, who’s phobic of having his blood pressure taken, because it might be high. Well, it always is ,because of his phobia. I suggested he get a home BP kit to reduce his fear. Let’s see.
Sometimes, if I think about my breathing to much, I’ll discover that I can’t find the right combination of rhythm and depth of breath to get enough oxygen. As I start trying to breathe deeper and faster, I’ll start worrying about hyperventillating, which isn’t good for you. So I’ll force myself to take slow and deep breaths, which is always good for you, right? But I still feel slightly oxygen deprived. And I keep telling myself that there’s a reasonable-sized chunk of my brain that is actually dedicated to making me breathe properly, so if I can just be normal and stop thinking about it consciously, and I’ll be fine–but how easy is it to not think about breathing???
Obviously, I eventually get distracted by something (if I’m up) or I fall asleep (if I’m in bed) and everything’s fine. Neither I nor anyone in my family has ever had any breathing problems whatsoever. It’s just a dumb thing I do to scare myself.
The human brain. I read Oliver Sacks’s books to torture myself, he’s a neurologist who writes about some of his cases, usually people with extremely rare brain diseases or injuries. In the course of reading these books, I become convinced that I have all of these extremely rare brain diseases and injuries.
It all started with a very sincere interest about how the brain works, because it’s fascinating that so many complex functions and structures and chemicals come together to create an average human being, and then came the creeping horror that any one of those many things could go wrong AT ANY MOMENT.
I pass out after they take blood.
“All done!”
“Ok” THUNK
I don’t know what causes it. I’m not especially nervous before they stick me, or while they are taking it, but as soon as they’re done, all the blood drains out of my head and out I go. I’m just pathetic. :rolleyes:
I have almost the same problem as Podkayne. Any time I think about my breathing I feel like I am not getting enough air. Sometimes even taking forcing slow steady breaths I feel like there is no oxygen getting in.
Funny thing is that I don’t really have any problems and if I can force myself to quit thinking about it then I am fine. I can be fine or weeks or even months but then I will spend the better part of an afternoon worrying that some how I am going to die from not getting enough oxygen.
Nothing now, but as a young teen I became obsessively phobic of broken bones. I would suddenly notice the shape of a finger, for example, and be certain that it was broken. I would feel really quite panicked. Nobody really understood how serious this was.
I don’t check my pulse, but I’ve habitually checked my loved ones. My DH has pointed out that I check his at least once a day (or actually put my head on his chest and listen.)
I wasn’t aware of it, until I couldn’t get to sleep one night and he said he knew what it was and presented his wrist. Soon as I checked it, I went right to sleep.
As a kid I had a fear of my ribs ripping out from my skin. I remember a few times at recess I would lay in the sand and push them in with my hands. I would imagine having to have to hold them for the rest of my life. I would think something like “what if I have to do this until I am 80 years old, my life might be like this forever”. My ribs still feel sensitive, I don’t like the floating ribs to be touched at all. That is the place that I would imagine poking threw my skin.
For awhile I had a huge fear of time. It made me sick just to think about the next day. I struggled to make plans and tried not to make plans that were any farther away than a week. I had to have a razor blade on me at all times. If I couldn’t find it I would start to panic. A lifetime is a long time, if I didn’t have a razor blade on me, then I was planning on living till the end. I convinced myself for a long time that I was going to kill myself soon. Even the wierd phobia of having my ribs rip threw me was mostly based on having to hold them in for a long time. The phobia still pops up in different forms.
I used to be petrified of getting a cold sore. I’ve never gotten one in my life, then all of a sudden, I became completely afraid of getting one. I’ve had people theorize that it was because my mother got a horrible, terminal illness, and so, I became afraid of a minor health thing. On a scale of things to be afraid of, it’s totally silly, and I’m well aware of this. I’m not so afraid anymore, but when I get stressed, I feel like my lips are tingling and get nervous all over again.
Reading about the human body and all of the random things that can go wrong with it only make it worse.
Jetgirl, my ex-husband had the same problem with pulse checking that eventually worked itself into full-blown panic attacks. Not that yours will. He had some sort of anxiety disorder…he was a very nervous person. I SWEAR I didn’t make him that way!
His doctor prescribed Paxil and something else…maybe Xanax? And it really helped with the nervousness. I believe he even stopped checking his pulse.
As for myself, I’m absolutely terrified of needles. So much so that I never had my blood checked while I was pregnant. I’m a lucky girl (and so is my daughter) that everything was okay. Obviously I had a natural childbirth.
I haven’t been to a doctor in a long time, and I have a very very special dentist that babies me like you wouldn’t believe.
When I was a kid, sometimes I would envision my pencil as a syringe and panic.
I suppose I should see about getting some of that paxil/xanax…but it would involve going to a doctors office…a place with many needles.
Then you need to get yourself a truly painless dentist – one who uses lots of gas and who understands that the word ‘urngrn!’ means it’s time for another shot of novocaine. I may walk out of the dentist’s office stoned silly and looking like a stroke victim, but the visit itself is just fine.
I guess I don’t have any medical phobias.
I can never forget the night I went into the bathroom and happened to look in the mirror as I stretched backward. I was thin at the time and could see my aortal pulse right at the bottom tip of my sternum. It was such a small, subtle little movement … like a leaf fluttering in a slight breeze … but it was devastating to realize that my entire existence in this world depended on that tiny little movement of my heart beating. What kept it going?
It didn’t turn into a medical phobia, but it did provide me a profound meditation on the impermanence and fragility of life. I was stretching because I had been sitting up all night reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead. When I went back to reading, that sudden insight brought the book’s meaning vividly to life for me. I got seriously into Buddhism for the next couple years.
Ummm, stay away from Xanax. Xanax is a benzodiazepine, and they are horrendously addictive, and Xanax is the most addictive of the benzos.
There are few, if any medical or psychiatric conditions that cannot be treated better and more safely with other medications instead of Xanax. There is research ongoing into the permanent changes to personality and brainwave patterns with long-term Xanax use.
I am caretaker to an old friend (since we were 11) who has PTSD and panic attacks. She became a Xanax junkie. And the psych nurses have told me that benzodiazepine junkies are actually harder to deal with than heroin junkies. I figure that anything that will make a person lie, steal, alter prescriptions and gut punch a friend that has not yet recovered from a liver resection is a pretty foul drug.
Enough editorializing.
My medical phobias:
I am afraid of not being able to breathe. This extends to being intubated while in surgery/recovery.
I am afraid of an operative IV blowing and waking up during surgery. It happened once, and once is enough, thanks eversomuch.
I am afraid that doctors in strange hospitals will not know the protocol for someone with my weird cancer and will do something that will make a crisis worse instead of better.
I’m NOT afraid of dying. I am afraid of being kept alive for the wrong reasons.
I am afraid of the dentist. I am friends with my dentist because we have an understanding. If he hurts me, I will really hurt him. After all, his tender parts are within reach, and I have no problem with using my fingernails.
I woke up too early once too when I had my appendix out. I remember opening my eyes and groaning. The person there says, “Oh my, hello eNiGma, you’re not supposed to be awake yet, do you feel any pain?” Then slipping away again. Not nice.
sigh. My phobia is with germs. My mother was a lab tech. I saw waaaay too much. She grew a culture of my sister’s hair…needless to say, my sister never chewed her hair again. I now can not go into a public area where people walk about the floor in bare feet. I know what’s on the floor… besides the hair… I cringe just thinking about it.
Getting a shot is fine, seeing mine or someone else’s blood, cuts or gore is fine. Seeing MY blood spurting into a VIAL from a needle in my vein is definitely NOT fine.
My major one is amputations of any variety.
The thought of any part of myself having to be amputated for medical reasons (or of it happening accidentally) fills me with indescribable dread.
If a doctor were to say to me “we need to amputate your little finger to save your life”, my response would be “it’s been a nice life, now let me die”. Similarly, I would rather be left to die at the scene of an accident that caused part of me to be amputated than carted off to hospital and saved.
I have made all my relatives aware of this wish.
Relatedly, I had to have a very large dose of anti-anxiety medication after hearing about that guy in Colorado who amputated his own arm shudders
Everything else I am fine with, although I am wary of germs. When I used to drink alcohol, I feared being so drunk that my respiratory rate would be so depressed when I fell asleep that I’d become hypoxic and die, but it didn’t happen, and then I quit drinking.
