I’ve always suffered with health anxiety to a degree, but since my beloved Dad was diagnosed with terminal Cancer earlier this year (he died two months ago at the age of 67) my health anxiety, particularly around Cancer, has gone into overdrive.
I’m already seeing a private therapist so I talk about this with her, but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I feel like I am going insane. Sometimes I’m absolutely fine, but the moment I experience any symptom that is slightly off, I convince myself its Cancer.
I guess it party makes sense – ya know, everyone thinks “it will never happen to me” but then, it happened to Dad. So it could happen to me. And I struggle with the acceptance that we, none of us, know if we will get Cancer or not. The fear of the unknown I guess.
I just wondered if anyone else had experienced this since losing someone?
I lost my Dad to cancer 2 years ago (still feels like yesterday) and have developed health anxiety; in fact I'm convinced that I'll ultimately die of cancer. I have built up enough courage to admit this to my GP (though they've probably guessed due to my numerous requests for blood tests, a breast check and a request for a hospital referral in the past 6 months) and have been advised to look at these workbooks:
I've just come across this post as my Dad passed away last year, very shortly after being diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. I stumbled across this post as I was googling something along the lines of :concerned everything is cancer after Dad passed away" or close to it. I'd like to say that firstly, this is a terrible place to be in, but also I'm so grateful to know I'm not alone. Even though I know its a reaction to everything with my Dad it has been very hard to break this cycle of thinking. To further comlpicate things for me I've had a mammogram come back as abnormal this year as well as a skin biopsy. Fortunately on both cases, I've been cancer free although I do have to go back for an additional mammogram at the 6 month mark just to make sure the area that caused the alert hasn't changed.
Basically, everytime I get the all clear from one thing, some other area of concern has popped up which has made it near to impossible to not have this knee jerk reaction. I'm currently concerned about something else, but I don't even want to bring it up for fear of coming across as crazy. To be fair, there are things that I put off dealing with for a couple years as my Dad had some other issues going on before we found out about the cancer. After he passed away, I wanted to to all the appointments I had mised to get the all clear so I could feel like I can start planning things in the future again, but it hasn't really worked out the way I hoped! While I'm beyond grateful to be cancer free these near misses are not helping with my state of mind!
I do have a therapist I work with, but am still struggling with it. I hate it because I feel like I can't make plans too far in the future because who knows what might happen. I think for some people that is a very freeing feeling, of I might as well live now, because no one knows what the future holds, but it has the opposite reaction for me.
I know this has been a long rambling post, but it feels so much better to know that I am not the only one!
Hi I know this post is 4 years old but I seen your post and can relate. My father died at 51 5 months ago with lung cancer and for the pay few months I have been experiencing strange pains in one area of my body, the doctors have said I am healthy and it is stress/grief/anxiety. I was just wondering how you are now and any other help you have for me.
