I Really Hope I'm a Hypochondriac

I've reached an age where the expression, As long as you have your health everything else is chopped liver, has become my mantra.  I remember listening to my parents' friends discussing their health woes and shaking my head at such boring conversations.  Now, my friends and I constantly discuss our health. Many of us have pre-existing conditions that could have left us uninsurable in the days before Obamacare.  My friends have diabetes, MS, heart issues, back pains, and cancer.  Some of my friends are no longer here because of cancer. I worry about cancer because I have growths on my thyroid that could become cancerous.  I'm regularly checked, biopsied, and ultrasounded.  So far, so good.

Maybe.

Yesterday I went to a clinic because I had all the symptoms of a urinary tract infection.  They can easily get out of control, so I wanted to nip it in the bud.  The doctor was perplexed when the urine test came back with no indication of a UTI.  Then he did a series of blood tests, concerned that the pain in my lower right abdomen was a cry for help from my appendix.  Nope.  All clear.  He gave me three days of antibiotics in case a UTI really was starting up and sent me on my merry way, suggesting I follow up with my doctor if I'm not feeling better in a few days.

Of course, I followed up with the internet and worked myself into a frenzy last night.  A sleep losing, anxiety filled frenzy.  Because, these symptoms of mine are associated with the most difficult to diagnose cancer for women, ovarian cancer.  Ovarian cancer in its earliest stages is rarely diagnosed because the symptoms are ones that women experience for many benign reasons.  But, I focused on two that made me panic immediately.  In laymen's terms, one of them is a feeling of being full before one has eaten enough to actually be full.  I've been experiencing this phenomena for months. Sometimes I am in the middle of a delicious meal that I absolutely have to stop eating because to take one more bite would cause me to vomit.  After a dinner in Baltimore, I couldn't get into my friend Nancy's car right away because I was on the verge of leaving my calamari on the parking lot macadam. I just assumed I was eating too much, the food was too rich, etc. etc. Maybe those are the reasons, but this is something I had not experienced before this past year. And it's weird. You have to admit, it's weird.  I was also chilled by the symptom described as bloating.  My abdomen has changed shape this past year.  It's hard to explain, but I have not gained any weight (in fact, the recent weigh in revealed I'd lost a few pounds), yet my gut is rounder and bigger than it used to be.  I've just blown this off figuring my old weight was settling differently on my bones.

That is exactly why the early stages of ovarian cancer are missed.  The bodies of older women betray us in so many ways that one more change is taken in stride.

In this day and age of instant internet information, we often make the mistake of diagnosing ourselves according to what WebMD says we might have.  It's a stupid thing to do, and in most cases, internet research only results in one being one's own quack doctor.  The scary thought is, what if I'm right?  I diagnosed my dog's Cushing's disease from what I read on the internet. What if I'm right again?

Why not me?  At my age, one in six women will be diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  I can think of five friends right off the bat and not one of them has ovarian cancer.  Hopefully, I don't either.  I can't stand the thought of doing this to my nieces.  I can't get sick and put them through it.  I can't.  I just can't.

I go to the gyno later this week.  I am hoping for the best.  I'm praying that my self-absorbed, drama queen, doomsday, over-reactive attitude will eventually embarrass me. In fact, I'm looking forward to being branded a hypochondriac.

I'll keep you posted.