time to join the party.
Suffered really badly with anxiety all my adult life, I started obsessing that I would have a heart attack or stroke.
About 14 years ago I ended up getting something called Guillain Barre syndrome, and spent 5 or 6 weeks in intensive care, paralysed from the head down, but still able to understand what was going on. Because I was ventilated, I was unable to speak or communicate, and after the six weeks or so, I was moved to rehab to learn how to walk again.
My health anxiety took a battering because of this, and I got into a really dark place, but my fab wife helped me through it and I eventually got some treatment for PTSD.
Over the past few years I’ve been having increasingly more pain, which has been diagnosed as Complex Regional Pain Syndrome, as a result of the Guillain Barre, and the last few weeks in particular have been a bit shit.
I’ve now got flu, feel wiped out, aching like mad, and started getting really bad chest pains. Spoke to 111 and been to the hospital today, the chest pains aren’t a heart attack, but today I can’t break that cycle of, what if they’re wrong, what if I die and leave my wife and kids behind.
Deep down I know it’s pain from coughing loads and acid reflux, but I can’t help feeling like I’ve been having a heart attack for 48 hours straight.
You can’t beat a hypochondriac with a pain, can you.
That could be a great idea.