txmom
04-15-2007, 12:38 PM
If anyone else here has GAD with health anxiety (especially the cyberchondria type, where you read about diseases on the internet and then become convinced you have them and begin to manifest symptoms), do you ever find it comforting to look at numbers- like the statistical likelihood of actually having the disease?
I get a little obsessed with math (even though i suck at it) when i'm in my "cyberchondria" mode.
Like, about eleven years ago, I thought I had AIDS. Waiting for the test results was very hard; that was probably my first bout of full-blown health anxiety, with panic attacks and everything.
So, I started reading about the number of cases diagnosed each year, the number of women diagnosed with HIV in the US, the number of white women, the number of women diagnosed in my state alone, etc.
I got obsessed with trying to determine my statistical likelihood of actually having the disease. It was as if I thought that if I could just determine the right number, that would solve the whole problem and then I'd be safe and I wouldn't have AIDS.
I worked with the numbers constantly. I got very obsessed with it. I found it somehow comforting to do this, to work on it like it was some kind of math problem, really, instead of a health problem or a mental problem I was having.
I narrowed it down to 40,000 new cases diagnosed per year in the US, 25% of those female, so that makes 10,000 females diagnosed with it each year. It said half of those were black women, which I;m not, so that narrowed it down to 5,000.
Fifty states in the US, so that meant that only 100 women per year would be diagnosed per state, on average (I know, that doesn't make sense; some states have more people in them than others, but still. Those were my calculations).
I realized this was irrational, but nevertheless, I found it comforting. it was a coping mechanism; every time I started to panic, I'd do all this math again, and convince myself that the odds of me having HIV were astronomically low.
I got through that dreadful wait somehow, and my result was negative.
But when the doctor gave me the result, the "good news", she suggested that I might now also want to think about being tested for Hep-C.
That set me off on another tangent of worry so severe that I never went back and never did get tested for it. And never plan to.
With my recent "cancer" scare (which, now that I think about it, very much mirrors my HIV scare of a decade ago, with the exception of the fact that this time I have actual physical symptoms), I find myself again turning to numbers- statistics- for comfort.
Such-and-such number of women diagnosed with cervical cancer, such-and-such number of women in my age and race demographic, blah-blah number of women per state, etc.
Anyway, has anyone else ever found themselves using such an irrational coping mechanism?
I realize it's a stupid, pointless waste of time.
I realize it's just wishful thinking (as there are many risk factors that predispose one to illness, which I am doubtlessly not taking into account in my calculations; disease is not just a matter of random chance).
Anyway. Does this math obsession/craziness sound familiar to anyone?
I get a little obsessed with math (even though i suck at it) when i'm in my "cyberchondria" mode.
Like, about eleven years ago, I thought I had AIDS. Waiting for the test results was very hard; that was probably my first bout of full-blown health anxiety, with panic attacks and everything.
So, I started reading about the number of cases diagnosed each year, the number of women diagnosed with HIV in the US, the number of white women, the number of women diagnosed in my state alone, etc.
I got obsessed with trying to determine my statistical likelihood of actually having the disease. It was as if I thought that if I could just determine the right number, that would solve the whole problem and then I'd be safe and I wouldn't have AIDS.
I worked with the numbers constantly. I got very obsessed with it. I found it somehow comforting to do this, to work on it like it was some kind of math problem, really, instead of a health problem or a mental problem I was having.
I narrowed it down to 40,000 new cases diagnosed per year in the US, 25% of those female, so that makes 10,000 females diagnosed with it each year. It said half of those were black women, which I;m not, so that narrowed it down to 5,000.
Fifty states in the US, so that meant that only 100 women per year would be diagnosed per state, on average (I know, that doesn't make sense; some states have more people in them than others, but still. Those were my calculations).
I realized this was irrational, but nevertheless, I found it comforting. it was a coping mechanism; every time I started to panic, I'd do all this math again, and convince myself that the odds of me having HIV were astronomically low.
I got through that dreadful wait somehow, and my result was negative.
But when the doctor gave me the result, the "good news", she suggested that I might now also want to think about being tested for Hep-C.
That set me off on another tangent of worry so severe that I never went back and never did get tested for it. And never plan to.
With my recent "cancer" scare (which, now that I think about it, very much mirrors my HIV scare of a decade ago, with the exception of the fact that this time I have actual physical symptoms), I find myself again turning to numbers- statistics- for comfort.
Such-and-such number of women diagnosed with cervical cancer, such-and-such number of women in my age and race demographic, blah-blah number of women per state, etc.
Anyway, has anyone else ever found themselves using such an irrational coping mechanism?
I realize it's a stupid, pointless waste of time.
I realize it's just wishful thinking (as there are many risk factors that predispose one to illness, which I am doubtlessly not taking into account in my calculations; disease is not just a matter of random chance).
Anyway. Does this math obsession/craziness sound familiar to anyone?