My parents are obsessed with illness

[Porrrly]

Has anyone else’s parents become obsessed with illness and disease?

In the years since turning 60, both of my parents have become obsessed with illness, disease and health. They are continuously paranoid about catching anything, to the extent they will avoid meeting up with family members for a 2 week minimum isolation period to ensure all ‘contagious’ disease is gone. This is incredibly difficult as myself and my brother have little children at school and nursery, so they almost always have some sort of cold.

Additionally, they are constantly googling symptoms and will become sure they are having a stroke / heart attack / cancer and are constantly either at the GP or are at A&E. Even when they are told they don’t have such and such an illness, they will then demand to see NHS consultants or will pay thousands privately to see doctors and specialists.

They cancel plans and meet ups at the last minute, sometimes they just don’t turn up and they don’t even bother telling me at all, until I phone them or speak to my brother and find out they are in A&E again because my dad thinks he’s having a heart attack.

They also wear masks everywhere and are obsessive about hand sanitising.

They’ve now said they aren’t sure about coming for Christmas as my youngest daughter, who is 3, has a cold and they are convinced it might be the new strain of super flu. I’ve already paid for everything and told DH’s family they can’t come as it’s my parents turn this year, so it’s especially maddening.

Is this just a normal part of aging and everyone’s parents get to this stage or is something else going on?

They have health anxiety. They need to go to their gp about that and get some medication and be put on the waiting list for talking therapy.

It would be useful if they could accept a degree of anxiety around health is normal and channel that into useful lifestyle changes eg eating more fiber, less processed food, less sugar, strength training, walking daily, keeping an active brain through meeting new people and doing new things.

Me and my friends are your parents age, OP, and this is absolutely not my experience. A few friends have had some genuine health problems, but by no means all, but nobody ever talks about it unless pushed to. None of us bother about colds etc, nor isolate ourselves - it's the opposite, as we're all really busy.
You have to "think young" and enjoy life once you hit your 60s!

No not normal, i'm in my 60's and couldn't imagine being so fixated on illness and ill health. I want to enjoy Christmas with grandchildren and family. I don't want to be fixated on doctors appointments, masks and
Illness. Very sad and not normal.

Yes my in laws lost the plot a few years ago. Were always very sensible, no underlying problems and no reason for the paranoia. They the. stopped talking to us because we didn't get the covid vaccine for our children 🙄 nutters.

My MIL is mid-70s and doesn’t have the health anxieties that my parents have, however she has recently become obsessed with death. She’s lost three people this year and all she can now talk about is her own death, how many years she’s got left, her will, visiting solicitors to sort out her estate. I don’t know if a level of this sort of obsession is ‘normal.’

Sorry, but I completely disagree. We all know we're going to die, but there's nothing at all frightening about it.

It’s really not normal. Please seek help, you don’t have to live with health anxiety.

Yes my in-laws are like this. Not quite as bad as yours sound though thankfully.

I blame covid a bit as they were totally obsessed with it (mid 60s ish then, healthy) and I think it just aged them massively. They went from newly retired with social lives to basically hermits within a few years.

My parents are a similar age and they aren’t like this

Their GPs will view them as "heartsink patients", and A&E will be sick of the sight of them.
It's really not normal behaviour - most of us have to be dragged kicking and screaming to a doctor, because we don't want to waste their time.

My parents were fairly relaxed during Covid, super paranoid in the first lockdown but then sneaking around to see everyone during the second lockdown!! They also both refused the Covid vaccine!

It is like since turning 60 a switch has flipped.

This will be you one day too. When you are next in line for the gravestone you feel it.

I am the best part of a decade past 60 and I am not at all like this. Neither are any of my friends.

We might adopt healthier habits - upping exercise, eating better, adding kimchi etc. lots of us doing this sort of thing, but not obsessively and talking about it more than a bit in passing.

I think this is a personality and mental health issue.

They are allowing their world to shrink and turn inwards.

Yes, your mortality looms more into view, yes, I am sensible about not getting muscle injuries (when I go to the gym or hill walking...) because they take longer to heal than when I was younger. Yes, I accept all the vaccinations and screening tests - because why wouldn't I?

But honestly, as we ARE aware of our active time running out why would we cut it short by retreating into a miserable anti-social pit of misery and anxiety?

Anyone feeling like this - get outdoors and keep your natural Vit D up, eat well and give your MH some attention! It isn't normal or necessary to be like the OP's parents. (Unless actually ill or incapacitated, obv) .

I'm 62 and very aware of getting older. My husband is 67. I do fear getting something awful and dying early. Think more so as my first husband died at 50 so my daughter only has one parent. She's 32.
But I'm at the gym 4 days a week, we go out for lunch, we meet friends occasionally (not got many) we go on holidays.
My son is immunosuppressed so if he is here I have to be careful but he doesn't avoid us.

Your parents' reaction is not normal.

I don’t think j it’s normal no. I would say it’s a sign their world has got a lot smaller. I’m assuming they don’t work?

You don't have to lay yourself down in it and wait for the last 20 years of your life!

Sorry you are dealing with this op

1. The pandemic left some people with lasting mh issues
2. Retirement is an extremely bad idea for some people

My siblings and I are in our sixties and we can vouch for the fact that we don’t have the energy of forty year olds, our friends are starting to get ill and some have died or are dying and we are just far more aware of our mortality!

However, that all comes (usually) with a greater appreciation of waking up every day, especially waking up healthy, a greater appreciation of being with family and friends, a greater appreciation of nature and of the quiet ordinary daily moments of chatting with your spouse, sharing a cup of tea with the neighbour down the road, art classes, an appreciation of feeling wiser and knowing how the world works and not being wracked by doubts.

I really feel sad for your parents bc they are fixated on the wrong things? Ignoring the good things in front of them!

How is their sleep, diet, exercise schedule? Do they need some vitamin D?

How about buying them gratitude journals for Christmas? I’ve read that they have a measurable affect on the brain in terms of positivity if used consistently.

I suspect it's the lack of purposeful activity in their lives now they have retired. If they were still working/volunteering or had hobbies I suspect they wouldn't have time to worry about their health.

I’m mid 60s and all my friends are far too busy enjoying life/keeping fit/going places to worry incessantly about their health.

We’ve all got to die sometime and if you’ve not come to terms with that by the time you’re in your 60s then that must be very difficult and limiting.

I’m 61 and I don’t. My friends are similar ages and dont. My sister is 68 and she and her friends dont. I have much older friends who don’t. It’s not normal in my experience - I only know one person who is a bit like this, and even she doesn’t let it stop her going places or doing things.

I'm not sure it's normal. I'm 65 and got a letter from the GP in the summer saying they assume I've moved as I haven't had an appointment for 5 years so they would remove me from their patient list unless I advised otherwise.
I haven't deliberately avoided a Dr I haven't needed to see one.

Sorry but I’m the same age as you and it’s not even remotely normal. I do not know a single person who behaves anything like this

Normal in you 80s though - when your friends keep getting things and/or dying ime

Covid gave lots of people health anxiety unfortunately. Be patient. As I approach 60 I’m definitely more conscious of my health. That’s to be expected don’t you think. My chances of dying from flu, strokes, heart problems are greater in someone of 30.

I haven't seen the GP for 5 years either. I'm just aware of how fast time goes. I don't know where you got from my post that I'm constantly at the doctors.

For me awareness of mortality makes me want to do and see and experience more, not less though…

OP, my Dad retired at 50 and was like this for 25 years. It's so draining. To be absolutely fair to him, his first five years of retirement involved nursing my mum through terminal cancer, so I understand that that coloured his perspective.

He was always someone who worried about health, even as a young man. This just became more of an obsession as his world got smaller. He would tell me about the colour of his wee before asking how the kids and I were doing. Even when I was diagnosed with MS five years ago, he made it a competition with whatever illness he either had or thought he had at the time.

I am the other way and don't really talk about my health AT ALL unless others ask. I really, really don't want to end up like him.

He died early this year after a short but brutal illness - colon cancer. I don't really think I believed he was as ill as he said he was because of the number of false alarms they'd been before. I feel quite bad about it now but it was very hard living with it.

I have nothing helpful at all to suggest but just wanted you to know that you are not alone!