Hypochondriac Nurses

angelcharm · Nov 6, 2006

when i was a student, i once experience being hypochondriac...hehe...

that was that time when i didnt know about the pathophysiology of my patient's serious communicable disease condition...

i wanted to see a doctor then because i felt like having fever.. stuffy nose, cough..

MIA-RN1, RN · Nov 6, 2006

I am way less of a hypochondriac than I used to be. Nursing school gave me a sense of power over it.

I used to worry about my kids a LOT, but then...they always had the weird stuff. My son had seizures, sleep apnea, and any weird illness of the day. My daughter was in the PICU...they thought she may have had Hodgkin's which of course is what I had thought....she didn't. My husband's fever and malaise really DID turn out to be cancer. So now I think that I am a little more realistic in my worries because I know that things really can happen...sounds convoluted, I know.

Plus, once I finally had a doctor to believe me and diagnose me with fibromyalgia, a lot of worries about my own health went away, because again, knowledge is power.

I work on a maternity unit---I know for a FACT I will not 'catch' what brings my patients in lol.

angelcharm · Nov 6, 2006

right. knowledge is power! :)

nerdtonurse?, BSN, RN · Nov 6, 2006

When my sister was in med school, her Christmas presents often consisted of textbooks, scopes, whatever she needed for the next semester. So, I'm standing in a long line at a medical book store in Atlanta, holding my sister's infectious disease textbook, thumbing thru it.... It's December, it's cold, everyone (including me) is sick with sore throat, runny nose, fever, etc. I happened to flip into one disease, and the more I read it, the more I was sure I had this, and I was a goner. I got to the cash register, and announced to the checker, "according to this book,

I have DISTEMPER!":smackingf

Needless to say, I just had a cold, and the urge to chase cars did eventually lessen.....

MS._Jen_RN, ASN, RN · Nov 6, 2006

I used to be a horrid hypochondriac, though i believe a more proper term is suffering from "health anxiety". Really, i thought i had everything. One red spot on my arm-it was some weird infectious rash, skin cancer, Kaposi's sarcoma (though i don't have AIDS, nor have I ever even seen KS), etc. A toothache was suddenly either a MI waiting to happen or a tooth abscess that was going to become a brain abscess and i would die. If i coughed too long from a cold-i was afraid of pneumonia. I used to be afraid of losing weight-i must be sick if i was losing weight. I was so convinced i had hypertension, i would have anxiety attacks thinking about taking my blood pressure. i was afraid I'd pass out-for no reason-and have anxiety attacks in grocery stores, or in places i thought i couldn't escape. if my hands tingled-it was MS or ALS.
I really, really beleived I had these illnesses. or i'd project it to my kids-hydrocephalus, if they got sick i'd still be convinced it was something horrible, etc
Becoming a nurse made it better. I think about "if my patient told me they had these symptoms, would i be worried?" and often the answer was no, which slowly has helped. One year after becoming a nurse, the problem has 95% gotten better. the tendencies are still there.

I was so much like you just described when I was in Nursing School it's weird. I know about the whole "med student disease" but it was more than that. I got treated for anxiety and depression and it's MUCH better. When I get anxious or depressed it creeps back a little bit. I wonder if these RNs are in the same boat? Also, we see such weird stuff with our patients that often ends horribly I think it hard not to play the "what if. . ." game.

~Jen

all4schwa · Nov 6, 2006

it's unit specific too. a coupla weeks ago i had neck spasms that just wouldn't quit. I work Neuro, so you know I was convinced it was going to turn out to be menengitis. then, my mom fell in a parking lot the next day and i was reaching for my penlight (i didn't have it, of course)!

Valanda · Nov 8, 2006

Sometimes i worry that the nurses I work with will think I'm a hypochondriac. I have this problem that everytime I go to the doctor they tell me I have some strange thing I've never heard of before! 15 years ago the doctors said I had fybromyalgia -- I had no clue what that was then. I fell and dislocated a hip and they diagnosed me with Marfan's syndrome. My arms were full of pins and needles and swollen after they got cold outside and they told me I had Raynaud's syndrome.

Last month, it was an enterocele. I've had to keep reading up on diseases because everytime I turn around they are saying I have some other weird thing.

I think I'm just not going back anymore -- who knows what they will say next?!?

dyan_gorgeous RN · Nov 8, 2006

it's funny because sometimes when we are feeling that something is wrong or something in our body is not doing fine we tend to gather all the things that we know and about this specific part or pain and ending up diagnosing ourselves sometimes when i'm having migraine i have come to a point over reacting telling myself that i am suffering from brain aneurysm. it's just sad sometimes because we know this different kind of diseases and can't help ourselves from thinking what could this be that's been going on with my body...

LDJRN · Nov 8, 2006

i'm that nurse!! lol. i've had a dvt, breast cancer and a psychotic break. but they were all explainable!

dvt- i had horrible shin-splints for a month; but i do smoke and take bcp's (yeah, yeah- it's not good)

breast ca- i had a benign cyst removed from my right breast when i was 14; i had recently lost weight and was not used to feeling a rib right there. lol

psychotic break- first experience with ambien; fell asleep watching american werewolf in paris and had awful hallucinations that a werewolf was breaking into my house.

looking back on all of these is pretty funny, and i poke fun at myself, but at the time they were scary. my doc just shakes his head at me, now. lol.

luv2shopp85 · Nov 29, 2006

I just finished up my psych rotation in school and I diagnosed myself with pretty much every psych disorder there was. I do actually have ADD and i was convinced that this was just a precursor to my schizophrenia i was going to develop. Then I was getting anxiety because I thought i had some kind of personality disorder that we learned about. Then I was depressed because everything described me. Then i assumed i must be getting alzheimers because i can't rememver a damn thing come testing time! (i'm 21 years old keep that in mind lol) I did end up getting on an antidepepressant and things are better now!!!

MarySunshine · Nov 29, 2006

I'm the antihypochondriac. If I have a symptom I pretend I don't. And if I finally admit that I have a symptom I certainly won't admit anything negative it could be associated with. I just think of it as a random annoyance.

This attitude could certainly backfire one day. I've been healthy so far (or so I tell myself...heh).

clee1 · Nov 29, 2006

Anyone work with any of these? In both hospitals I have worked I have seen nurses of all ages hooking themselves up to monitors-telemetry, EKGs, pulse-ox, BPs, worried over the smallest things. How common of a practice is this?
One nurse I work with now always has a "problem of the month." One month she'll think she's diabetic, the next is CHF. It's absolutely crazy. Wondering if anyone else had these same experiences with nurses?

I work with two of them: one DOES seem to have a few nagging (but minor) health problems that she dramatizes over; the other is just a lazy good-for-nothing witch that has phantom complaints appear whenever she needs an excuse to not do unpleasant tasks. :uhoh3: