Hypochondria

A friend of mine who had her children young and long before I had my daughter once said to me,
"If you ever were afraid to die, wait till you have kids, you'll be petrified of it." My thoughts on that are "Thanks for sharing." But I never forgot she said it and she was right. It made a big impact on me especially coming from her. She was raised in a very religious household where
her father was even a deacon of their "born again Christian" church. She had a firm belief that
you died when your number was up and she seemed at ease with it even mocking me whenever
I put my seatbelt on when we were riding in her 1974 Volkswagon bug. She used to tell me with
a laugh, "that's just one more thing they'll have to pull off your charred body if we crash in this thing." My apologies to any bug owners. Anyway, when Tim was diagnosed with MM, I began to
have nightmares that I was also diagnosed with cancer and noticed a bit of a spike in an already
present but mild hypochondria. I guess this is pretty common especially when you have a young child and not any real good option for anyone else in the family to raise her. So last night as Tim and I are going to bed, I notice a pain in my groin and it turns out I seem to have a swollen lymph node there. I broke out into a sweat immediately. I went back downstairs as I felt on the verge of losing it and did not want to do that in front of Tim. Ya see, he was always the healthy one and having him get sick freeked me out in many ways but I always felt that if I checked out,
he'd do a pretty good job of raising Olivia. He is a great dad. I never thought he would get sick. After all the research I have done on MM, which is considered like a lymphoma as well as
all the people I have met and some who were just diagnosed with it, that was my first thought
when I felt this painful lump last night. I have not been a very lucky person when it comes to health problems. Though I always follow that with, many have had things much worse. But when
you feel like you've had nothing but bad luck, you think you are so vulnerable to anything. I am trying to keep myself calm about this. I have a lot of bug bites and a cut up toe from a stubbing
a few days ago. I have had a lymph node in my chin blow up on several occasions from having
skin breakouts in that area. Of course I went on the internet this morning and it is common to have lymph nodes blow up from any kind of infection or wound and one site even metioned a
stubbed toe but Hodgkins disease also came up when searching swollen lymph node. Do I give it
a day to see if it goes down or run righ to the doctor? I hate going to doctors. I could go on all day
about the major medical screwups that have happened to me all caused by doctors. The visions
that ran through my head last night were unspeakable. So scary. When I was 27, I thought I had
gall stones and a doctor told me after a sonagram, "you have a swollen pancreas and it could be cancer." The diagnostic test for this is a bit like an endoscopy but they search for a little hole in your stomach that they shoot die into to take x-rays of your pancreas and gall bladder. I darn
near bought it having the test as I had a bad allergic reaction to the demerol they used to "try" to put me out. The doctor then used just versad and I woke up several time during the procedure as they were shoving a tube down my throat. Not one of my better days. He wound up having a hard time doing
the test. I don't think he could find the hole to shoot the die and it was somewhat inconclusive.
I woke up to. "Well, we don't think it's cancer, come back in three months for another cat scan
and we'll see then." Translated, if you're alive in 3 months, that's a good sign. This is just one time out of several that I was told I might have a life-threatening disease and was then told,
probably not. I know the fear of this both not having a child and having one. It freezes the blood in your veins either way. So today, I do the hypochondria dance with myself all day. With the
exception of some real fatigue problems which I've had forever, and this stupid lymph node,
I have no other symptoms of lymphoma. I think I will give it a day and put some antibiotic ointment on all my cuts and bites and see what tomorrow brings. As always, my prayers go out
every night to anyone who has had a cancer or other serious diagnosis. And I sure hope that this
turns out to be nothing. We are full up with tragedy around here.