The First Steps

I think the first time I blew a symptom out of proportion, I actually probably had good reason to. I was about 9 or 10, and for no real reason, my hair started falling out. Not just your usual daily hair fall, but great big balls of hair in my hairbrush every time I brushed. I was so terrified, I used to take the balls of hair out of my brush and hide them behind my dog's bed in the backyard. If memory serves, mum found the balls of hair and took me to the doctor, who gave a vague explanation about a severe bout of the flu making your hair fall out.

I also remember staying up with mum as I got a bit older, having pains near my underarms, sort of on my chest, and being convinced I was having a heart attack. These fits of mild panic usually came about watching an episode of E.R. so I was probably transferring the pale, clammy symptoms of the characters passing through George Clooney's sure hands onto myself; that, or I was having growing pains.

Then, when I was around 13, I started getting headaches. Daily, throbbing, lasting headaches. My body was more full of ibuprofen and paracetamol than blood and nothing made my headaches go away. At some point someone noticed that I was in pain and also made the connected observation that I had a hump on my neck and carried my backpack badly, and I suppose I started seeing some sort of physiotherapist or massage therapist. The headaches have never fully abated, but today they aren't as constant.

What ties all these minor ailments together is that I was experiencing normal, albeit resultative symptoms, but I was totally unable to see that they were minor, let alone normal. With my hair, I was convinced I had cancer, because all I knew about cancer was that it made your hair fall out. Small pains in my upper body meant a heart attack, every week. My headaches were surely the result of a brain tumour.

Now I suppose that hypochondria is not really harmful - it probably makes you more attentive to your health. What is harmful is the invisible bonds it ties around your mind, your ability to reason and your ability to live a healthy life motivated by ambitious and educated decisions. When I thought I was living with a brain tumour, I actually thought I was going to die. There was an all or nothing pattern to my thinking. I had a brain tumour; it was malignant, and fatal. I honestly believed that I was not going to live much more than a couple of years at most and so I didn't plan. I held no ambitions, did not dare think of the future or contemplate what I might be able to do, because there was no chance that I would ever be able to do it.

Even though these irrational thoughts still dominate my daily digest, when I look back now all I can think is: what a waste. A sad waste.