Fakey.

First I would like to set the record straight that hypochondria (health anxiety) sucks. Often the target of humor and satire, this constant panicky obsession with your own health only produces functionally damaging effects with social life and sometimes the quality of a personal life. When targeted with the jest of a misunderstanding third party, one in the hypochondria-laden mindset can only hope to wonder what it is about people who don't understand and mock us for it. In this blog, I hope to detail the feelings that I have, what makes me have them, and hopefully to look over my past experiences and help myself calm down in the near future. I've been through every disease, ailment, condition and impairment imaginable. In about four years of having this stuff, this is what I can remember affecting my psyche:

DEATH SENTENCE: Floaters (white flashes in eyes). Heart attacks during panic attacks. When I was first diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, I was having severe panic attacks and it seemed that every time I caught myself going to sleep I would wake up in sheer terror.
REAL CAUSE: I was having panic attacks which seemed like heart attacks and caused floaters.

DEATH SENTENCE: Heart attacks from . . . nothing.
REAL CAUSE: I didn't like the idea of having heart attacks. So I thought I was having them.

DEATH SENTENCE: West Nile Virus. Encephalitis.
REAL CAUSE: Unfounded worry about mosquito bites and a three-day head cold.

DEATH SENTENCE: Multiple Sclerosis
REAL CAUSE: My thumb was twitching from my nerves. It has since stopped.

DEATH SENTENCE: Cancer of the brain and testicles, respectively.
REAL CAUSE: Tension headaches (anxiety) and WebMD.

DEATH SENTENCE: Diabetes.
REAL CAUSE: I was drinking a lot, so I urinated a lot.

DEATH SENTENCE: High blood pressure.
REAL CAUSE: My anxiety made me feel dizzy. This was before I found out high blood pressure doesn't present any physical symptoms.

DEATH SENTENCE: Rabies.
REAL CAUSE: I got bitten by a vaccinated, domesticated house cat with a collar that escaped one day after I found it inside my kitchen frightened to death. Actually, this incident took me a couple of months to get over because I read online (big mistake) that rabies' symptoms can take a long time to show up -- and that when they do, the disease is usually always fatal. That made me depressed because I just knew I was going to die. This was also in 2007, so I'm pretty sure the rabies isn't lurking after two years.

DEATH SENTENCE: Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS)
REAL CAUSE: My legs were temporarily weak after exercising, therefore my muscles were deteriorating and I would be a crippled teenager from a disease that can only affect people over 60 years of age. Although it must have been the 24 hour kind because my legs are as strong as ever.

DEATH SENTENCE: Thunderstorms, tornadoes, storms in general. Even rain, because everyone knows a shower or two comes before the natural disasters.
REAL CAUSE: I was prepared for the worst from mother nature. She has spared me hitherto.

DEATH SENTENCE: Staph infection (MRSA).
REAL CAUSE: Pimple.

DEATH SENTENCE: Spider bites and spiders in general.
REAL CAUSE: Recollecting a close encounter with a brown recluse. Mosquito bites aligned to vaguely resemble fang marks (albeit from a gigantic spider I wouldn't have possibly missed.)

DEATH SENTENCE: The Black Plague.
REAL CAUSE: Benign flea bites.

DEATH SENTENCE: Ingrown toenail causing massive infection.
REAL CAUSE: Annoying ingrown toenail which was properly treated and eventually healed.

DEATH SENTENCE: My "Dim Mak" (death touch) point being struck.
REAL CAUSE: I got poked in random places in my head and thought I was dying. Although getting randomly poked in the head is to Dim Mak what getting haphazardly poked in your extremities with needles is to therapeutic acupuncture.

DEATH SENTENCE: Some hidden disease that never lets me go to sleep and slowly affects my body in such a way that I'm so weak that it's as if I'm paralyzed and live as a vegetable.
REAL CAUSE: Insomnia from thinking about undesirable alternatives.

DEATH SENTENCE: Everything I consumed would make me asphyxiate.
REAL CAUSE: Pointless obsession.

DEATH SENTENCE: A pill would lodge into my windpipe.
REAL CAUSE: I didn't take it with enough water and it got hung up.

DEATH SENTENCE: Blood clots anywhere.
REAL CAUSE: House M.D.

DEATH SENTENCE: Aneurysm.
REAL CAUSE: Headache, or a vague pain in my head somewhere.

DEATH SENTENCE: HIV/AIDS.
REAL CAUSE: I was just afraid of getting it so I was inevitably going to develop symptoms of it.

DEATH SENTENCE: Breathlessness.
REAL CAUSE: I was breathing heavier because I was so panicked. Since my brain is supposed to experience every single mysterious quirk and focus on it unwaveringly, my breathing being unnoticed sparked my interest in and of itself and I reached the conclusion that either I was experiencing the symptoms of a heart attack or I was going to pass out from not being able to expel the evil carbon dioxide from my lungs sufficiently.

DEATH SENTENCE: Future symptoms that would unfailingly appear.
REAL CAUSE: Being apprehensive about past experiences and obsessing about them.

DEATH SENTENCE: Any of the above happening while alone (current).
REAL CAUSE: I guess I think the likelihood of something happening rises when I'm by myself, and there's also that added support of someone being to help me should I be writhing in paralyzing pain or unconscious.

DEATH SENTENCE: Even more heart troubles (current).
REAL CAUSE: Tightness in my chest from a few surges of adrenaline . . . from being anxious about tightness in my chest from receiving adrenaline from being anxious, etc. Along with this comes a dizzying effect which makes me breathe heavier from being under such mental stress.

As you can see, I've been through a lot -- and I'm sure there remains some stuff I'm leaving out. You would think after all of my exotic diseases, afflictions, heart attacks, blood clots, fatal conditions, and sheer trauma that I'd be dead by now, and, by virtue of this, learn how to cope and overcome present and future 'symptoms.'

Unfortunately, in the mind of the hypochondriac, such is not the case. Going against the grain of a mental handicap such as hypochondria is like a lone surfer trying to fight back high tide and getting sucked into the trenches of the ocean in doing so. It truly is like a form of mental retardation; as you know, some people have trouble storing learned information as memories -- but as hypochondriacs, we have trouble in the same fashion convincing ourselves that we're not going to die.

People with such disabilities can overcome their own minds and learn something, but the process takes longer than normal people. The same can be said of hypochondriacs, who take long periods convincing themselves that their symptoms aren't life-threatening only to be placed in the proverbial 'advanced class' or the next grade in their 'schools' where learning is equally as difficult and you have to continue overcoming your own mental dilemmas.

Just as a cognitively deficient person learns new aspects of a new grade, a hypochondriac has to get over what new symptoms they have.

I know that because I've gotten over symptoms multiple times. Only my 'curriculum' is never-ending, and I have to keep teaching myself just as someone with mental retardation has to keep learning. It's not easy, but most importantly it's not impossible. As far as a permanent end without the use of drugs or other means, I'm not certain, but the leeway to get better and 'learn' more is very much there, even if me and people like me do have trouble 'learning' along the way.