Anyone feel you can't get away from your disease du jour??

[ejmommy]

I mean, why must I be confronted with MS everywhere! It doesn't make it easy to let this fear go.

Over the last few days for example, Sunday night I had a terrible dream in which I was told I had MS. Not totally unusual I guess for how much I think about it, so I tried to let it go. Then Monday at work, a patient was telling me how they were getting ready to go visit his sister-in-law. He then proceeds to tell me she has MS and all things going on with her. (I won't get into it for the sake of the people on this board!) Then, as if that wasn't enough, goes on to talk about his son's mother in law who also had that, and more detail there. Of course I'm at work and this is a patient of mine so I can't say ok stop talking about that, I have huge HA over that! Which is what I wanted to do.

So that conversation ends (finally!) and I literally walk out to sit down at my desk, where a coworker out of nowhere (couldn't possibly have heard the previous conversation) brings up an actress who has MS (won't say who again, for the sake of the people here) and how she saw her in a magazine lately and starts talking about some things there that I again, didn't need to hear.

Got through that day, took my kids to an appointment on yesterday, sat down with a magazine in the waiting room, only to come to a huge 3 page ad about the latest MS medication!

Ugh! Why does it seem like it's everywhere all of a sudden?? I know I'm hyper vigilant to it but geez. Every time I even hear it I feel like I'm taking a punch to the gut, let alone hearing all the details about it. I try not to take it  all as a sign, but it has just been coming up so much lately that I start thinking that way!

I don't know where this post was going lol. Just wondering if anyone else feels constantly confronted by their fear and how to deal with it? I guess I just feel like for MS being such a supposedly "rare" disorder, it sure seems to be always around 

[lofwyr]

Yeah, I hear you. Late last year I was listening to a radio talk show while I was driving, and Danica Patrick was talking about COPD (she is a spokeswoman for the disease) and she mentioned the risk factors. Inside 20 minutes, I was freaking out...which is ludicrous. I had no symptoms, save for those that show up when I have anxiety, which then fed a spiral. I managed to dodge that bullet after a couple of weeks, but then I see that damn ad on tv for a COPD med with an elephant, and it brings it back.

Then, I see an elephant, and it makes me think of that ad, which then spirals to COPD. It doesn't last, but no person without HA could look at a picture of an elephant and then think they have COPD lol. When I write it out, it sounds a heck of a lot more ridiculous than it feels.

[Samgirl31]

I know how you feel.  I've always been anxious and as a child I went though a period of about a year (aged 7/8 I think) where after watching an episode of 999 true stories where someone choked in a restaurant, I became absolutely paranoid about choking.  I would chew my food to pieces, not finish it, hide it in my cheek and spit it out in the loo. I was quite a skinny kid anyway but my parents took me to a ton of drs who couldn't explain what was wrong with me. Dinner ladies at school were told to watche me an make sure I finished my meals, I wasn't allowed to leave the hall until I had finished everything. I saw choking as a hazard everywhere. There was some ad campaign about first aid and heimlich manouvre at the time, but eventually I just snapped out of it and never thought of it again.

Then in my early teens I heard how my Grandad's brother had motor neurone/ALS and his other brother had had something weird they thought might have been CJD but never really got to the bottom of but they had both died - this was in the sixties and seventies, way before I was born. Then a dinner lady at school was diagnosed with MS. I didn't know much about these diseases but was terrified, they were my new thing. It's gone on ever since and gets worse for periods and then goes away, only to come back with a vengeance.  Every little sensation or pain or when I get pms and feel fuzzy headed I think it must be one of these diseases coming for me. I have developed this overwhelming fear that they have to affect someone and I'm single and childless with no dependents and no one else in my family has them so I would be the most obvious person, like, if karma was going to give it to anyone, it would have to pick me. I know that sounds mad but it's a thought that's gripped me.

I see MS everywhere, a friend's Mum has it and I can't bear it when she mentions her Mum. When Jack Osborne was in the papers I was convinced it was another sign. I think that the more I hear about it the more it's a sign I have it and should get it diagnosed. I feel sick to my stomach when I hear about anyone being diagnosed with it, or anyone who has it. I no longer watch Neighbours because one of the characters in the soap has it.

Ack. I hate this!!!!