How would you/do you deal with acute hypochondria?

[ShinyAndNew]

Dh is constantly ill. Quite often his 'illnesses' are life threatening at best.

Since I have been with him he has had brain tumours, liver disease, kidney failure, liver cancer, lung cancer, stumache cancer and bowel cancer. As well as various other sniffles serious flu's and infections.

All of which he has fully recovered from without medical intervention or even formal diagnoses.

I used to just try and laugh it of but it is getting worse. In the last three weeks he has had an epiletic fit , he has suspected lung cancer , which he has actually been to the doctors about this time. He is awaiting the results of an x-ray and has adnitted that it may not be lung cancer after all but it is very serious.

This week he very, very, very, very bad flu. He is not sure if it is swine flu or not.

All of this means that I am being unreasonable expecting him to help out in the house, he is after all, seriously ill.

Also I think he may need couselling. He does genuinely believe that he has all these illnesses. He was sat crying last week about dying and leaving the dd's fatherless. I asked him to ask the doctor about counselling, when he went to see about his lung cancer but he just scowled at me.

He really needs help.

It might be worth you going to your GP to see where help might be found.

At the moment he has had no medical intervention which is good but you don't want this to develop into full blown Munchasen's.

Definitely need help here. I would visit the Dr (probably a different one) and explain. Mention not wanting to waste NHS resources with tests appointments etc not needed.

Push for counselling, but probably need to get your Dh to take some anti-Ds too maybe??

Well that's another thing that worries me. He is not wasting NHS resources because apart from this time, he has never seen a doctor about any of these illnesses, for fear of being diagnosed with untreatable cancer. Which means if there ever was anything genuinely wrong, we wouldn't know untill it was too late.

I used to think that maybe he didn't genuinely believe he was that ill and was just trying it on for sympathy, untill this week when he started crying about leaving the dds.

Could you use the crying angle as a lever to persuade him to go to counselling? Not exactly honest, but maybe you could sell it to him as "Helping him to deal with his feelings about dying young" rather than hypochondria. I'm sure the counsellor would quickly spot that he isn't actually suffering from any of these ailments and realise he's dealing with hypochondria.

Amuminsscotland, I did that when I asked him in the first place. I told him that I was concerned that he had a fear of death and it was impacting on his life and I thought that it would be helpfull if he spoke to his doctor about this.

I think I might go with him when he goes for his results and mention it myself. I wasn't sure if I was overreacting thinking he needs counselling.

It is understandable that he has a fear of cancer. His father, nephew and grandfather all died from it as well as a close friend of his. He has had a lot to deal with this year, so imo, could benefit a lot from just having someone to discuss how feels about it all with.

I think it's a good idea to go with him to talk about the results, because that way you can make sure the GP realises there is more to this. Otherwise he may "put a brave face on it" and not tell the doctor how worried he is. It certainly sounds like he needs some proper help - I don't know if this would be counted as stress or depression or quite what, but if it's impacting your lives this much, it needs intervention.