My greatest is fear is a common one amongst my mommy friends: the fear of dying while our children are young. For me, it's specifically cancer. I wait anxiously for my Pap results and flip-flop between completely skipping self-breast exams (hey! no news is good news!) and doing them, then freaking out over every tiny possibly lumpish thing I find. Once when I had to go to the emergency room with chest pains (embarrassingly, a panic attack), I sat and wrote both of my kids a letter. You know, in case I didn't come back.
Hypochondriac, you ask? Baby, I wrote the book. It peaked tremendously during both of my pregnancies (I totally blame "ER"). I cornered my OB with lists of symptoms, names of rare diseases I was pretty sure I had, and questions to cover every possible outcome. It got so bad that at one appointment, he leaned in and asked, "Do you read a lot of medical books?" I nodded eagerly, proud that he appreciated my intelligent assessment of symptoms, my heightened awareness of atypical pregnancy maladies.
Instead, he abruptly turned from me and said to my husband, "I want you to take away ALL of her pregnancy books." To me he said, "Watch sit-coms."
And, incidentally, Mommy's Little Happy Pills (thank you, Paxil!) have taken a serious edge off of my hypochondria. Now, when I wake up nauseous, I tend to think it's a 24 hour bug rather than the bird flu or ebola.
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2 comments:
Lol that is to cute!! But have you ever noticed that if you are only sick with like a common virus that you are sicker after you go see the dr? Or if something is REALLY wrong and you feel fine then you feel like crap AFTER you leave the dr's office?? Ive noticed it!!! It's a conspiracy I tell you :)
Ahhh I can relate, really....like right now, instead of a severe muscle strain that the doctor diagnosed me with, I'm convinced it's far more serious, of course I won't type it out, it will make it real.
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