Here’s one for all the hypochondriacs out there. With the internet making information so accessible, it’s really easy to look up symptoms for particularly bad or obscure diseases. Things that in reality are exceedingly rare. But still, sometimes the symptoms just seems to match up with what you had.
For instance, last summer I managed to fall in some gravel while I was running. Got some nice stuff stuck in my hand. (Ick.) In the next few days, I pretty much managed to convince myself I had tetanus, including lockjaw symptoms. Called the doctor, he said it was rather unlikely considering my recent enough vaccination, and miraculously all the symptoms cleared up in the next few days.
So what illnesses have you been certain you had, and then the symptoms just went away, or the doctor told you that it was impossible?
When I was about 10 years old, I thought I had leukemia. Due to various symptoms, and having a hypochondriac for a mother, I went to the doctor for tests. Apparently the test results were kind of sketchy, so they really thought I had leukemia. I went around for a couple of months thinking I was going to die before they finally got their asses in gear and got everything straight.
To this day, I am wary of any kind of test results.
Jesus, I’m going to sound like a bozo. But at one point, I thought I had leprosy.
I was 17 and going through a lot of stress. My father was overseas, my mother and I were ready to kill each other, I was applying to colleges and a teacher of mine …well, that’s another story but suffice to say that it added to the stress.
On New Year’s Day, I took flowers over to my friend’s place. Her father has/had leprosy - not the kind where limbs fall off, etc - but some form of it. Well, I saw him and shook his hand blah blah and in a few days, I started getting a rash on my hands and up my arms. The weird thing was that it showed up in the evening and was gone in the morning. I was freaked and convinced I had leprosy. My mother took me to the doctor and the doc said it was stress. He gave me a strong anti-histamine and the rash disappeared and I mellowed out. End of story. What a dork.
Thanks to some paranoid doctors, I was convinced I had brain cancer for about four hours while I waited for a CAT scan. Not fun.
I was also sure I had scabies about two months ago. It was really poison sumac, but I’ve never been allergic to any of those poison things before (I could roll in poison ivy and not have a problem). I had a rash all over my legs that refused to respond to Calamine lotion, so I was sure it was scabies (until I went to the doctor and got a proper diagnosis).
I’m not really a hypchondriac, but I do have moments. I don’t get sick often, so when I come down with the flu I’m sure I’m dying. I rarely get headaches, so when I get one I’m convinced it’s an aneurism.
Well, I was convinced I had ONE thing when I actually had something else that was more serious.
From the time I was 18, I would get these terrible ‘headaches’ in the evening, coming on around 7 pm and lasting for anything up to about 4 or 5 hours. They originally were only on one side of my head, and affected my vision, causing temporary blindness and haloes around lights. And pain. OH, THE PAIN. I thought I was having migraines, (I’ve never actually had one to know what they feel like) but never managed to get to a doctor about it because they always gone by the following morning, and I didn’t want to roll up to the quack without any symptoms!!
This went on for about 10 years, and the ‘headaches’ increased in their frequency until I was getting them every effing night, and they were affecting both sides of my head. Checking out a med. book one day, I discovered I had all the symptoms of the attacks of acute glaucoma, but still didn’t believe it because I didn’t fit the demographic. Too young, no family history etc.
Finally got to an opthamologist one day, they took one look at me and organised surgery for the following week. I was VERY lucky that none of my vision had been lost, considering the pressure levels they had measured in my eyes after testing. I was chastened though because they could not believe I could have been so stoopid as to not see a doctor before this. :wally