To think it's impossible to escape cancer reminders

[Worridoncemore]

I have health anxiety, for which I'm receiving treatment, and one of the biggest triggers for me is the constant reminders of cancer in day to day life. On a daily basis there are tragic stories and "don't ignore these symptoms" type articles on my newsfeed. Then I switch on the TV and it's all the Macmillan ads and the like. I assumed the stuff on my newsfeed was caused by my googling, but now I've stopped, cleared history, cookies etc they still appear!

While it's a good thing there is so much more awareness, potentially saving lives, I feel much of this is bordering on scaremongering.

Finally, I realise there may be people reading this who do have cancer, or have a loved one who does, and escaping reminders of the disease is not an option. Huge sympathies to you.

Does anyone else feel than cancer seems to be everywhere??

I also have health anxiety so understand where you are coming from. I try to explain it to my DH that the awareness and messages to check yourself or go to GP if symptoms last X amount of time are difficult for someone with heath anxiety to digest.

The literal message/advert/video itself is triggering and then you have to try and not let the health anxiety spiral and actually just do a self check or be aware as a normal rational person would. It's so hard.

I do think the awareness and the amount it's put out there is good it's just hard for people with health anxiety to absorb. But I do also think there should be more education on the range of other things 'cancer symptoms' could be. For example to me finding a lump used to be a death sentence, until I knew there are so many other benign things lumps can be! (Obviously get them checked regardless) but that's almost where I can see you think the scaremongering comes in because we aren't often told about the alternatives of what things can be!

I've kind of learnt when I now see campaigns etc to raise cancer awareness I acknowledge for a second, note it in my brain and then consciously move on and think about something else. Something that someone without health anxiety would do automatically but I just have to do that consciously to not let the health anxiety take over!

Before DH was diagnosed in May, the Macmillan Ads were on the TV '1 in 2 people will get cancer'
I used to try and block that ad out
But I agree that recognising symptoms early is key but also realising that you might not have the more common symptoms either

As much as I sympathise with how crippling health anxiety is, I’m afraid that burying our head about things just doesn’t help. We must be educated to give ourselves the best shot and good health, being ignorant to our bodies and signs to look out for. If you have cancer you have cancer, not knowing about it doesn’t change that, sadly. I’d rather know what to look for

@mincepi us too, we had no idea DH's symptoms (frequent and very short notice shits, basically) were a classic sign of bowel cancer and spent nearly a year pissing about with diet changes before he went to a GP. If I'd known I'd have made him go much sooner and his treatment would have been much much easier. The test that got him referred on was literally just a matter of sticking a stick in a turd so really not a big deal for people to go and get checked out.

(By the way have you checked out Maggie's? We've been at this for a while now and they have been unbelievably helpful.)

OP having developed some health anxiety myself as a result of DH's diagnosis I know how you feel but sticking our heads in the sand doesn't really help. It's all about balance between keeping an out but being sensible about probabilities, and we can't get that right if we don't have the right information to begin with.

@Sagittarius25 also worth noting that even if it is cancer it's still not a death sentence; treatments are improving all the time and it is fast becoming very survivable. My DH has done unbelievably (literally, we and several medical professionals did not believe it was possible) well on a treatment that just didn't exist 5 years ago and is very possibly saving his life. I'm saying this because I think some people still assume cancer will ultimately kill them and avoid going to the doctor because they think they will just be facing inevitable bad news.