My dh has gently asked me to visit the doctor about my anxiety.
Background: I have 3 kids. In the past 4 years all 3 have been life threateningly unwell, two physically (both requiring emergency medicine for life threatening sudden ill health) and one mentally (severe depression, including 2 years of school refusal and all the long term stress that entails; this teen is also autistic). They were not all ill at the same time but one after another a year apart. All are now much better and the two who were physically unwell entirely recovered from those illnesses. At the time I managed all of this and ploughed on with work only taking time off when my children were hospitalised and working around my son's mental health difficulties.
My youngest has been not very well for a few months with (painless) chronic diarrhea. There has been a bit of a loss of energy and they sometimes look a bit pale. We have been to GP and are waiting appointment with gastroenterology. It looks likely to be ibs or a food intolerance. They are 11 years old. I should say blood and stool tests to date have not been of major concern - minor inflammatory markers.
I have become completely obsessive about this child's health. I have been completely convinced at times that they have leukemia or lymphoma and this has literally kept me awake shaking on nights after they have complained of being tired or not very hungry. They had covid and then 2 weeks later a random high temp for 2 days and I was utterly convinced they had PIMS - that very rare multi system inflammatory condition. I took them to A and E at 1am and demanded blood tests and when we were discharged I made them sleep in their clothes for the next night in case I had to go back to hospital. I checked their temperature every hour and only calmed down once it came down easily after paracetamol.
We are now on holiday - I had to talk myself into coming away as I was worried about being somewhere different, and then we drove down in the rain and I was absolutely terrified that we would crash and all die - and I am aware that I am choosing activities that limit exercise because I am frightened of pushing my youngest child too far. If they refuse to eat a sandwich I lose my appetite and start to feel sick. I didn't have a drink last night in case I had to get up in the night to take my child to hospital again because they said they had a stitch during our walk.
I am currently (Peri?) Menopausal - on HRT but not sure it's working properly and I don't know if it's a symptom of that or some kind of post traumatic stress condition that has caught up with me. The thing is that my child is not right, and it's rational to be worried, and we have had a long wait for the specialist because of covid backlogs etc. But I seem to have lost all sense of proportion specifically regarding this child's health. What should I do? Will the GP be able to help? Does this sound irrational? It's got to the point where sometimes i wish I hadn't had children because I love them so much and it fills me with dread that something bad will happen, or I think that being dead wouldn't be too bad at all because I wouldn't be terrified about my youngest. (I don't have any intention of acting on this, but even that thought seems different from how I used to think). I have lost about 10 lb or so from not eating much since my youngest became unwell back in May.