The Diary of a Ginger Hypochondriac

The reason for this blog is to show you why I am the way I am.

I do not say things or worry for attention and spite. I have a genuine disorder and i am persecuted every day if my life with this. It is a selfish disorder and my life is preoccupied with the thought of death.How ironic…..

Hypochondria is a serious condition that is often minimized.

Those who suffer from hypochondria are overly concerned or preoccupied with their health.

Although hypochondriacs think or imagine that they are ill, these individuals should not be confused with person’s who fake being ill to get attention.

Hypochondrias generally have a fear of becoming sick and dying.

When these person’s imagine sicknesses, they legitimately believe that they are falling ill or perhaps dying. In most cases, those who suffer from hypochondria also suffer from a range of anxiety conditions. Medically diagnosing hypochondria is tricky. Yet, doctors will generally consider many factors before confirming diagnosis.

It is a selfish illness. The preoccupation that comes with this disorder is absolutely Overwhelming.

Most hypochondriacs like me have had a childhood which involved family members or illnesses which caused trauma. This precipitates the illness.

I have friends and friends of friends who are really going through some serious illnesses and I feel for them. I do not act this way to be fake or get attention.

Part of the selfishness comes into play where I am unable to help my friends who are genuinely experiencing serious illness. I am unable to talk them them about there illness etc. Recently one of my friends had a close friend die and as much as I wanted to offer my support I was unable to. Why? Because the thoughts turn to my head and I begin to have the same illness.

After years of torment with this I have to protect myself from these thoughts as much as I can.
This illness can cause havoc on my family and my relationship. There comes a point where the people you love and care for dearly start to resent you and the selfishness shown.

It becomes a daily ritual of seeking reassurance, checking my symptoms, wondering if today will be the day I die.

For this I am sorry.

This is who I am and until you understand the way my mind works I will be “the Faker”, “the selfish bitch who always worries about herself” and “the office nutter”

I have recently turned 30.

I am still alive.

I feel about 90.

Decided to have a mid-life crisis. so have recently purchased a new tattoo.

This is a non-refundable item and until the other day this did not bother me. I then stumbled on a few websites and discovered tattoo’s are a health risk.

• Tattoo’s can become infected
• Tattoo’s that are infected can lead to abscess
• Tattoo’s that are abscessed can lead to septicemia
• Septicemia can lead to septic shock
• Septic shock leads to Death…………………………..

Have now purchased antiseptic creams and wipes and have a designated decontamination zone around the house…….Septic shock averted……

For some time I had realised it was probably only a matter of time before I contacted swine flu as it appeared very close.

As I write, my brain feels as if it has a timer and a small quantity of explosive C4  attached  inside the cavity of my skull. In my left ear, I can hear the faint, rhythmic rush of my pulse. My right ear is a blur of  jeremy kyle.

When I swallow, pain catches in my throat, and my glands in my neck are now the size of a small boiled egg. I begin to worry if it is quincy,but the web suggests otherwise. I search and find myself on the National Pandemic Website.I take the test….i know now my worst nightmare has come true..well one of them..

Every now and again my heart does a little, inexplicable, fillip in my chest, which makes me panic more and if I walk upstairs I become unpleasantly warm and clammy.

Like most people, when it came to the swine flu hysteria, I was not very much of the Keep Calm and Carry On sort of person. Probably will get it, but if I do, it will be, as per the press release, “mild”. At no point did I see myself struggling with the impossible dilemma, feed the child or sleep another 12 hours.

It came on very suddenly. The child had been in hospital on the weekend with fever but i never thought i would have been this.

I had gone to bed feeling weird,but this is fairly normal for me, and woke up with a sore throat. The headache that had been with me for about a week had intensified. I downed a couple of Neurofen, rang the office to say i would be dying over the next few days and not to expect me in. I felt bad, but reasonably sane. 

By teatime, as I sat watching the wotwots with the child, I realised that I couldn’t really lift my head. Shooting pains were assailing my arms and chest, and the muscles in my legs were joining in. And I was hot, really hot.  I took my tempurature, 39.7…..the next few hours were a blur.

I managed to call NHS direct,it took them nearly 30 minutes to then tell me to call my gp surgery,by which point was about to close in the next 10 minutes.After speaking with my gp and trying to pursuade her that this was a genuine call for medical attention she said those dreaded words, “i think you have swine flu”, she arranged for a prescription of tamiflu and said to send someone to collect it within the next 10 minutes. I have thought about this “flu friends” list for a while and it was still in construction,as to who i would need to rely upon during my hour of need…My father in law, now promoted to “flu friend”, collected the prescription and I took my first Tamiflu at around 6pm.

If I closed my eyes, I could definitely see chickens, pecking at my eyes with their yellow stripped beaks and hooked claws . . .

The next few hours are a blur. Getting the child ready for bed required every ounce of my willpower. Who knows what fabled delights I must have promised it in my delirium: trips to Disneyland, the entire Disney Princess collection,It eventually worked. With the child in bed, if not actually asleep (and a bit freaked out by my uncharacteristic generosity), I decided, inexplicably, to take a beechams…..1000mgs of paracetamol in two hours didnt seem unreasonable given the life threatening circumstances.

It just seemed like the right thing to do. When marc came home later he found me not quite asleep in his grey peacocks winter tracksuit, clutching a hot-water bottle and shivering under two duvets and a blanket comatosed.

Being a man of action, he brought up the laptop and logged on to the NHS Swine Flu symptom-checker again. I had every one of them. He took my temperature, using our superfast digital thermometer, and it was 39.8 degrees.

The night passed relatively uneventfully between dizzying trips to the bathroom and sweat-soaked sheets.

On day three, I woke at 6am my tonsils were so swollen that I couldn’t open my mouth more than half an inch. Yesterday it was announced that a six-year-old girl who died after becoming infected with swine flu suffered septic shock as a result of tonsillitis — and Dr Mark Porter, The Times doctor, said that there was evidence that influenza A infection such as swine flu could increase a person’s susceptibility to other infections…

So as i write this i am unsure as to what my future holds if at all i have a future,but one thing is certain,i will make sure it is the paracetamol overdose that kills me and not the bitch called swine flu…..

Following my Heart Event Monitor being fitted, i though i would complile a few stats….

"Press the Button...Press the Button"

Button pressed: 17

Presses left: 3

heart attacks overted: 3

Angina Attacks: 2

Angina Attacks that turned out to be Anxiety: 2

Cigarettes smoked since monitor: enough to bring on heart attack

Aspirin Consumed: 120 mgs

Symptoms researched: 152

Times have almost strangled self with wires: 6

WILL KEEP YOU POSTED…..MUST GO INCASE URGENT BUTTON PRESS REQUIRED……

First of all, I must apologize to my blog, I have recently had a two week heart event monitor fitted and must press “the button” everytime i get a “twitch” or palpitation, define “twitch”..heart attack,angina??

My new obsession is pressing “the button”, but i only get 20 presses?? your talking to a servere hypochondriac and ask me only to press the button 20 times…i have a week left and have pressed it 13 times..7 left….im not sure how i will manage…

Second, I’m dying. And not that it did, but my absence was not meant to convey a period of wellness. Actually, it wasn’t meant to convey anything at all, except that I’m a lazy procrastinator. Writing hasn’t been all that appealing to me lately. In reality, nothing has been all that appealing, except for drinking, so that’s what I’ve been doing; throwing back bottles of wine amidst fits of hypochondria.. It essentially feels like being repeatedly hit in the neck with a crowbar.

Among other things, I’m wholly convinced that i have thyroid cancer, my goitre “small growth in neck” has grown, although i havent had the time to evidence this theory im sure it has, my throat feels tight and i look like the elephant man

Also, I’m suffering from what I’ve determined to be Multiple Sclerosis or Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, due to the crippling pains that have been plaguing my arms,neck and shoulders. I’m talking stabbed with an ice pick pains, that leave me in tears.

Oh, and I simultaneously have lung and spinal cancer.

So, um, yeah. Basically, I’m a basket case right now…but hey whats new?

I have quite the large assortment of fillings in my mouth. Twelve  to be precise, and all in an attractive shiny silver, instead of white composite, (because the nhs was too cheap to care that my mouth would eventually look like a scrap yard). And the fillings aren’t there because I don’t brush my teeth, I do, daily, honest, I just have a fear the dentist.

I havent been for ten years,when i was 6 i remember having a tooth out,i was knocked out with a big black mask placed over my mouth and being held down. But I digress. About three months ago, one of those lovely, shiny fillings fell out. Okay, honestly, it became “loose,” and lodged in the crevasse between my other tooth and a small piece of kebab, and I picked and pulled, with dental floss,tweezers and tooth picks and everything else I could get my hands on, until one beautiful Sunday afternoon, I pulled that little piece of scrap metal and left over kebab smooth out of my mouth and left a gaping hole in my molar.

I hate you

Now fast-forward three months. The phone book lays open on the table. Bottles of codeine, Nurofen Plus and Nightnurse are strewn across the floor. I lay wriggling in pain on the sofa as the exposed nerve in my molar feels like it is being repeatedly stabbed with an ice pick. In true procrastinator style, I still haven’t called the dentist for my filling that fell out three months ago, and I’m paying for it in pain. If I can’t make it through the weekend, which is a very real possibility, I’ll be paying for it in pounds too….

I woke up yesterday morning with severe back pain. Not fucked up liver back pain from too much drinking the night before, but spinal tumor, cold back, muscle dystrophy, I’m going to die, back pain. I figured I just slept wrong and carried about my business, drinking wine and eating salmonella  infested kebab, and assumed that if I made it through the night without gastrointestinal combustion, the back pain would be gone.

It’s not. It’s worse.

A typical day

I literally cannot move my head without sharp, crippling pain shooting through my left shoulder blade into my neck. It’s unbearable. If my attempt at self-medication with Solpadine and Nurofen doesn’t work, I’ll be forced into accident and emergency before nightfall. I can only live in such agonizing pain for so long.

The scary part, aside from the horrific stabbing sensation when I reach for my wine or turn to look at the TV, is that the area of my neck and back where I’m experiencing the pain, is not sensitive to the touch. Nor does it hurt when I move my arms.

Marc thinks the pain is stress induced. Or, a possible attempt to foil our plans to do the garden on Saturday. He could be right, or, I could be right and the tumor is about to engulf my soul….

Am in shock today having heard both through a friend and news that people are holding swine flu parties.  These parties as exciting as they may seem may not be a good idea.

The reason behind it is because if you get swine flu now, then later on in the year when it becomes more virile and stronger, you would have built up a certain amount of immunity. I however am not convinced.

I mean…. What do you wear to these so called parties: a mask,dress or Body-bag?

Are you expected to take part in any games such as pass the viral tissue or musical dead people?

Do you take a bottle or a box of tamiflu?

I for one will be RSVPing all invites with a very large NO….and a few swear words…..

Masks worn: 15

Doctors appointments: 2

Swine Flu invitations received: 1

Swine Flu invitations declined: 1