The reality of health anxiety: no joke

Lana - Mamamia Wednesday 6 July 2011 9:26am

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Fran is my really good friend. She is sometimes my doctor and often my therapist. We  speak on the phone most days but unlike my other friends Fran is the one who will always ask me how I am with a little more meaning.  She is the one who will understand when I say genuinely and without humour “I’m okay but I’m really worried that the pain in my stomach is something sinister, what if I really have bowel cancer this time?”  I add “this time” because Fran is used to me having bowel cancer, or brain tumours, even breast cancer, measles and through one really dark time she nursed me through the times I was convinced I had Aids.

It turns out that, touch wood, spit three times or whatever you need to protect my health, I don’t have any form of cancer, I don’t have measles or Aids or chicken pox or dysentery or MS or Motor Neuron disease but I do have health anxiety, also known as hypochondria.

The Greek word “hypochondria”  translates as “below the ribcage”. It was first used to explain indigestion, then melancholia, then neurosis and finally, “a misplaced fear of illness based on misinterpretation of bodily symptoms” and while almost no one will own up to it publicly up to one in 10  people suffer from anxiety problems and doctors are seeing more cases in which this shows up as health anxiety or hypochondria.

I spend a lot of time  online “researching” my various ailments and I am the first to admit the danger inherent in those searches .  But I’m not alone,   “health” is the second-most popular internet search topic after pornography.  And sometimes the time spent on the internet is worth its weight in the relief you find when you find yourself  mirrored in someone else’s writing

Louise Carpenter recently wrote about her health anxiety in The Observer

Over the past five years, since the birth of my three children, I estimate that I have been to the doctor’s more times than in the preceding two decades. Unlike some hypochondriacs, there is some part of me that recognises the neurosis, but I find myself in a loop; that talking myself out of a surgery visit might be seen as an act of hubris for which I’ll be punished. It’s a lose-lose situation. There is no logic here.

In 2004, soon after the birth of my first baby, I went to the GP with a large bump on the back of my skull. I was convinced I had cancer of the skull (I don’t even know if this condition exists. I was probably too tired with a newborn to check it out on the internet). She acknowledged that its size was unusual and sent me for X-rays. I was fine. It was the shape of my head. I suspect it might be the legacy of falling down the stairs when I was 21 and drunk at a party.

A couple of years ago I got an infection in my knee. A swelling also came up in my groin. I jumped to the obvious conclusion – melanoma. My mother had a melanoma removed from her leg caused by too much sunbathing, and when we were children in the sun-worshipping 70s she would roast us to a crisp. It was my turn. I saw an out-of-hours GP who gave me antibiotics, but described it as “an unusual lesion”. Hours were lost on the internet after hearing that phrase. I did correctly diagnosis myself as having cellulitis, a bacterial infection probably from a dodgy leg wax, but it also took a lot of work from my current GP to convince me I was fine.

Following this, there was a lump on my waist. That took two visits, during which I had prepared myself to hop up onto the couch to hear the worst. (I did later wonder if the innocent lump had been caused by the fact that I refused to admit my 7 for All Mankind jeans were now painfully too small for me.)

Recently, back from a holiday in the south of France, the first holiday where my children were old enough to let me sit in the sun for about 15 minutes flat, I once again became convinced I had a melanoma. A black spot appeared on the back of my leg. It looked a bit inflamed. Back I went to my old friend the internet, where I pored over pictures of melanomas. It was a black dot. “It’s a bite,” said my husband. It was not a bite. Fuelled by stories of lives shortened by missed moles (often on the back of the leg), I rushed to the GP, who provided instant reassurance. “Are you quite sure?” I asked. I look at it now and it’s a nice little freckle. It is shameful. There is no other word for it.

Okay so I could have written every word. Especially about the logic.  I know there is no logic.  I know that I have hypochondria not some other disease.  But I still worry.  And I worry more so now that I have a child.

According to Louise’s article and specifically a book called Anxiety – A Self-Help Guide,

“There are many reasons why someone worries too much about their health,” says Lorna Cameron, one of its authors. “You may be going through a particularly stressful period of your life. There may have been illness or death in your family, or a family member may have worried a lot about your health when you were young.

“Also, a lot of anxiety can relate to a sense of increased responsibility. If it is your belief that you have an absolute duty and responsibility to care for somebody, then you get anxious that you will not be able to do that. Every case is different, but there are underlying themes. Witnessing a misdiagnosis in the past is one. What we try to do is work out how the patient reached where they are, what their underlying beliefs about illness are.”

I understand my worries about responsibility,  I understand my fear is irrational and I am probably trying to mask a thousand different things but I think I need a lot more therapy before I can let Dr Google (or Fran) go.  But at least I know I am in good company.

Do you use Google as a symptom checker? Do you suffer from hypochondria? Is there anything that makes your “symptoms” feel better or worse?

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