I want to talk to you about something that’s been affecting me for a year now.
I’ve always had some form of anxiety in my life. I think we all do in our lives at certain points. Anxiety and stress are perfectly normal experiences. I used to experience mostly work related stress… and also stress about living up to expectations. And I have a real problem with the idea that I might be letting someone down. I still struggle with this. But I viewed that as stress and anxiety that I could deal with in a healthy way. A weekend in, a long catch up phone call with someone close to me, a good round at the gym. This was my manageable anxiety. I’m sure you’ve been there too.
But last year my anxiety morphed in another direction.
A misdiagnosis would change the course of my life forever. Once a fairly carefree person…. it would inherently morph how I react and who I am. I was misdiagnosed with a health related problem when I was stateside on holiday last summer. Keeping a long story short (as I have mentioned this before on here)… I was told that I had contracted a strain of Ecoli – a potentially life threatening harmful disease.
For a week of this news, I was petrified. I had to take a call from the Center for Disease Control in New York. How was I handling it? Truthfully? Not well at all. I was scared that I was going to die. Which meant that I was living life in a constant state of heightened anxiety, not getting sleep and crying all the time.
This would end up as a misdiagnosis. Someone at the lab had accidentally entered in information incorrectly. However, this news wasn’t available to me immediately. I was told that there had been a mistake and the lab wasn’t sure what I have… or don’t have. But of course, I’d be taking some pretty strong antibiotics at this point. So I spent another few days in fear of news of what was coming. Would it be worse? Better? I felt panic in a way I’d never experienced before.
When the “good news” I didn’t realize that it would be too late. I couldn’t cope or trust any news about my own body. I’d spent a few weeks agonizing over what was happening. My brain had rewired itself for constant fight or flight. The only problem was even though I was “in the clear”… I would now be constantly be at battle.
The misdiagnosis led me to a prolonged year of severe health anxiety. Health anxiety is a weird phenomenon. It’s one of those where you are worrying about an actual physical symptom or problem that you legitimately have… or it could be 100% be all in your head.
I’ll try to explain.
If I feel a twinge or unusual pain in my body, I start to spiral into a panic attack. For months, I was completely convinced that I was either going to have a stroke or a heart attack. A brain aneurysm. Is that mole on my arm harmful? I wasn’t sleeping well at all either.
My nights were spent obsessing about whether I’ll wake up the next day or not. I wish I was kidding. Although, it isn’t particularly funny is it?
It’s upsetting, it’s horrifying.
Talking about mental health and your welfare is so incredibly important for this reason. I made a decision that I needed to get help. So I spent some time in CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). While this did help to a degree – and I do think that talking about how you feel WILL help – it certainly hasn’t cured the problem.
And that makes me feel scared. Scared that this feeling will never go away. A year ago, I was a perfectly happy woman strolling about through life without fear of dying each day. I felt levels of stress that I felt capable of managing.
Now? I don’t know each day how I’m going to feel. Am I going to spend the day crying to Joe hoping that the feeling will pass?
A few months ago… maybe around March time, I started to feel better. Infinitely better. Like I’d gotten my old spark back. I was feeling great, sleeping well and honestly hoping that I was on the upward path from this hell-like existence.
This week however, I took a u-turn back to the start. I had some leg pain – real pain, not imagined (because when you have health anxiety this is something that you need to clarify to your loved ones – is it serious? Hospital worthy? Am I just having another panic attack?). Sometimes I can’t tell the difference. And if you have health anxiety or anxiety that causes panic attacks – you’ll understnad the feeling.
Your chest starts beating out of control, your brain goes a bit hazy, your breathing is shallow. You feel convinced that you’ll pass out soon. Or fall over or something worse is on the way. Can you still breathe? You’re not sure. You have to ride it out, curl up in a ball and plead with yourself to calm down.
This time, it was a very real physical pain. The leg and muscle pain was real. But then there’s that nasty health anxiety creeping in, which led me to thinking that I was suffering from deep vein thrombosis. I fit the symptoms, muscle cramping, we’d be traveling long haul flights, I’m on a birth control pill.
Truth be told, when you start getting anxious feelings about your health, it’s scary. You feel out of control. So on our lovely trip up to York we made a pit-stop at the York Centre Hospital. I will say one thing, the NHS is very good at dealing with anxiety problems. I’ve always found a good level of support from doctors and nurses. They didn’t make me feel bad for wanting the blood test to confirm I wasn’t experiencing a clot.
They made me feel secure and heard. Because that’s really all we want in life anyways right? Being heard.
Unsurprisingly, my results came back perfectly fine and healthy. Also unsurprisingly, I still find myself doubting the validity. Who’s to say it won’t happen today? How do I know I’m really OK?
My incident a year ago has done a number on my psyche. I’m not afraid to talk about my health anxiety or general anxiety. My cousin and I were texting with my cousin and she said I was brave for always speaking so publicly about it. But that’s what I want to keep doing. I want to keep talking. Because the more people who talk, the better we can all hopefully cope with these things together.
In conclusion, there’s no real conclusion in sight. This looks like it’s set to be how I live my life for awhile now. And I need to accept that and do my best to help myself.
So this blog post might resonate with you, it might not. But as everyone experiences some form of anxiety in their lives, I’d love to know in the comments how you approach anxiety and deal with it. What are your coping mechanisms? I want to know and be able to continue to help others too.
Kelly xx