I know that it is not uncommon for health care professionals to have hypochondriac tendencies, but I'm beginning to think that I am taking it to the extreme.
Self-diagnosed ailments to date: abdominal aortic aneurysm (on the verge of rupture, of course), kaposi's sarcoma and HIV encephalopathy (I'm HIV negative), Hep B (I'm immune), various other hepatic diseases and symptoms (ascites; jaundice; abd. pain must be onset of acute Hep C), various cancers, and the list literally goes on and on.. all the way back to when I started patho... I currently think I have either an appendicitis brewing or an abd. hernia. Every little symptom is simply the onset of a life-altering disease.
It all sounds kinda funny when I think back on some of them, but they cause legitimate anxiety and stress. Each of those diseases mentioned above represents a couple months of worrying about my health, even though I have no PMH. It causes me to become a "germ-o-phobe." My wife and my primary doc are probably sick of me by now.
Can anyone relate? If so, do you have any (preferably non-pharm.) ways of dealing with it?
