Flu deleria.

Have you ever had a headache and become determined that it must be a brain tumour? Or growing pains that result in you looking at the online symptoms for Meningitis? Well, maybe not, to must people this will sound a bit drastic, but to a hypochondriac like me, this sounds like a relatively normal day.
My latest bout of Flu has inspired me to write this blog, as it has surfaced familiar worries.
Over a year and a half ago, I was bed-ridden for three months, and thanks to snail-pace doctors, I had no idea what was wrong with me. It led me to interpret every ache, pain and itch as the symptom for some deadly disease. Part of my daily routine became searching online for different illnesses that I thought may have had.
I'm sure that this was what led me to become such a hypochondriac. And I don't mean slightly worrying, I mean full blown panic attacks, and actually believing that I must be terminally ill. It turned out that I was anaemic, a relief, I'm sure you can imagine.
I'm improving now, but I don't think the media helps. I know it's good to raise awareness about diseases and how to live with optimum health, but sometimes the line is crossed into a slight moral panic (for me, anyway).
The reason I'm writing this blog is that I don't feel there is enough awareness of this mental disorder, and that's exactly what it is, however, it is not perceived as that. It's seen as human nature to slightly worry whenever you become ill. However, there are people at the other end of the spectrum, people that honestly believe that they are seriously ill. Since I began to suffer from hypochondrasis, no one has really understood the extent to which it took over my life.
Well, this was a rather morbid blog. But maybe next time someone tells you they think they’re dying because they have a tickle in their throat, maybe you can pretend to you understand.