Help, I Think I'm a Hypochondriac

°
Apart from being born dying, my first experience of terminal illness came when I was 5. I lay on the sofa, bandy legged and nauseous after a school medical, feeling for whatt had been described as “an irregular heartbeat”. I heard that expression over and over again, and with each repetition the face of the school nurse became more drained and more concerned. Soon, in my young head, she had straightened up after listening to my chest, absolutely speechless and horrified. My future was so terrible, I was so damned, that it was unutterable. It must have been, as she sent me packing with a smile and without a word to anyone. I was only five, yet already I was preparing for the hospice... I was dying.

As neither of my parents were informed of my condition, I battled it alone, understanding what I could from my step-fathers thick volumes of medical encyclopedias. I never did leave those books with an exact diagnosis, but I did leave them with enough medical knowledge and facts about disease to fuel a 30 year long panic attack... and that’s exactly what I’ve had. I can barely remember a time when I was not bound to my bed by straps of irrational fears... imaginary pains shooting up my arms. And it really was that... I didn’t just imagine the symptoms, I felt them.

In the years following that first taste of phobia, I went down with the lot... every fatal disease imaginable. I had tuberculosis, yellow fever and jaundice. I succumbed to the plague, legionnaires, polio and parrots disease. With the winter came bird flu, pneumonia, bronchitis and meningitis. And survival done nothing to brighten my days, all it meant was I was alive to catch rabies, scabies and lockjaw through tetanus. At 10 I made the self diagnosis of HIV, and in the same year came down with diabetes and gangrene. When my brother whacked me in the head with a pair of swinging binoculars I collapsed with brain hemorrhaging. Three stitches later and a short taxi ride home I learnt it was more probably a slow build up of fluid in the skull cavity and that my death would be postponed until at least Friday. When my math’s teacher talked of cubic feet or square foot I looked down worryingly. And as for cancer... well. I’ve had tumours and growths of all sizes on every part of my body. I’ve had cancer of the lung, liver and stomach... I’ve even had cervical cancer and I don’t have any cervix. And that’s not all... oh no, because to top it all off, I worried endlessly that I was a hypochondriac. I certainly had all the symptoms.

But though I can laugh about this, there is a serious side, as it was due to these irrational fears that I first sought an escape from the world... that I first sought an immediate emergency exit. It wasn’t drugs at that young age but rather TV and books. In order to free my mind off a skipping heartbeat and shortness of breath, I’d curl up with a pillow and blanket close to the TV and watch fantasy films and cartoons. I’d become so enwrapped in them that I was lost to the world, lost to disease and lost to death. And it’s here that it is interesting... that it has a relevant place on this blog. Because there began a history of escapism... an early clue as to how I would handle future torment. From that very tender age I was already self-diagnosing and (in a way) self medicating... it was just a small hint of things to come.

As to how I first acquired this fear of disease is not clear, but there are two things from my early years that I can link this behaviour to:

1) my drunken mother feigning terminal illness for attention
2) my step-fathers tales of death, decay and our days out together - spent exploring he local cemetery.

This first point I’ve touched on in a previous post, so will not revisit here, though the second I will expand upon a little.

My stepfather was a bizarre man obsessed by the paranormal, magic and the afterlife. He would often predict the death of family members and explain in minute details all the macabre and grisly details. He would make pendulums and dowse the city maps for gold or lost money... he believed in fate, luck and chance. It will come as no surprise to hear that he was a compulsive gambler. Anyway, along with stories of gruesome deaths, ghosts and rotting bodies, he would take me for dark days out around the local cemetery. There, he’d clear the top stones off old tombs, and holding my little legs would allow me to lean far in... staring down into the blackness. Before a young boy should even know what death is I was looking at it. But death isn’t attractive or clever to a small boy... it’s frightening and scary, and I think my fear of disease (mortality) has more to do with these days passed with my stepfather than with my mothers declarations of having a terminal cancer.

I don’t know for sure, but whatever brought this into my life it exists and continues to this day. What is more bizarre and probably what many of you are wondering is: How can a person suffering with hypochondria become an injecting heroin addict? How can one with an irrational fear of disease take daily injections of street drugs from unsterilized equipment... leaving himself wide open to two of the worst diseases we know of? Well, I cannot answer that, and I do not understand it myself. All I can say is that it’s another one of the many contradictions that hold me together. It's all a balancing act...a calculation. If the the gain from the exit seems worth the loss of the entry, I do it. Actually, we all do that... it's called living.

Still, In relation to heroin and the needle, my hypochondria has served me well. My fears and paranoia of disease have ruled out any sharing of equipment or group use. In my ten years of heroin addiction only a handful of people have ever witnessed me inject... Of those, 3 were addicts. For me, even injecting in the same room is too close for comfort... it's asking for trouble. Instead, I score, sneak off alone and put up with the suspicions and accusations of being the police... the rat amongst the pack. And maybe I am a rat, but you'd better get used to it, because after surviving 35+ fatal illnesses I've got the feeling I'm going to be around for quite some time to come.


Wishing everyone the best of health, Shane.

53 comments :

Bekka. said...

Hey Shane.

I can really relate to this, actually. My mum has Munch House Syndrome, and everytime I sneeze I'm always paranoid that she gave me some new disease, so I start googling "What diseases have sneezes as a symptom?" And of course, I have to have them all. I start to quarintine myself, I'll go to the ER, they'll laugh at me.
And even when I get a papercut, it's either A)I go to the ER for stitches and ultimately get laughed at because of my mum or my own hystarictalness, or, B)She dumps all these things on it and does all this crazy stuff to it and it gets infected.

It's really devatating.
I hope you can somehow get better.

I hope you're well.

Kat Skratch said...

I had the exact opposite thing. Whenever I got sick as a child my mother would tell me I was faking it, that I was fine. That I needed to toughen up and go to school.

When I was ten I came down with strep throat. And it wouldn't go away. Finally my mom took me to the doctor and confirmed my diagnosis. I however, never really got better. Soon it turned into tonsillitis. I missed a total of about three months of the fourth grade until she finally consented to what the doctor had said from the start: You need to have your tonsils removed. So we scheduled the surgery and in I went.
The doctors told me when they removed the tonsils they were falling apart. It was the worst case they'd seen. I finally returned to more or less decent health until 17.

When I got cancer, I knew something was up. I was rundown, Feeling not myself. Then I found the mass. Again, I was told I was imagining what was going on, that it wasn't that serious. Sigh. We caught it in time. But there were complications, and I still deal with them today.

I worry now because when I get sick it lasts for weeks. I don't think I'm a hypochondriac, but my body is telling me there's something wrong now, but nothing turns up on tests. Maybe I should snag your medical books and diagnose myself with something not even related. :)

This entry was wonderful! Humorous, and I'm glad you allow me to read your posts. :) I look forward to them. You're brilliant Shane.

Herbert Barry Woodrose said...

Hilarious. I know people with the exact same condition - not just hypochondria, but the baffling second side that makes one engage in a risky behavior even though one knows it will keep one up all night in a panic.

I think Evolutionary biologists would say that you have millenia of successful risk taking wired in, right alongside millenia of successful alarm systems wired in. They are not mutually exclusive behaviors, as you and many people I know bear out.

I don't have the common sense to get in out of the rain, let alone worry about whether my fork was clean enough or why my face turned purple. I'm much more likely to let something go on too long.

Hilarious post. Talk to you soon.

Poetic Genesis said...

Funny and I know what you mean. I've been able to tone my dis-ease with diseases down by 75%...lol The only thing I do now is walk around saying 'universal precautions-universal-precautions' but I no longer run to the hospital every time I cough or have a weird ache or hear people discuss symptoms and remember having those same symptoms. Though one time I needed surgery for an ache which only reinforced the hypochondria...kwim?

That experience actually 'cured' me in a sense. I never realized how much I didn't trust doctors until I had the surgery and decided if I didn't want to end up having to be at their mercy, I'd better get a handle managing my behavior :)

After all, where does a hypochondriac who doesn't like doctors get help?

Thanks for sharing more of yourself.

Hugs and Peace

Genesis

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Bekka,

Thanks a lot for taking the time to comment.

there's that old joke:

A hypocondriac who had carved on his headstone: "I told you I was ill!

That's it, no-one believes you until you"re dead...what can we do? ;)

I'm very well thanks...hope its the same for you.

BW, Shane.

Bar L. said...

Oh Shane, I have to admit I laughed out loud at you having cervical cancer!!! I get brain tumors on a regular basis (aka headaches). I think its horrible that you had to have those terrifying cemetery visits!

Hey my boy is on day five of suboxone...

Brilliant Sulk said...

When I was 13 I feared I had Dengue fever. At 16 I feared I had bone cancer. At 20 I feared I had Small Pox. Nope.

Glad you're being safe.

By the way, good to see people haven't forgotten about the West Memphis Three....

'Stoopid Slapped Puppies' said...

Hey Shane
Sorry I laughed out loud. Very funny imaganing you having all illness known to man. Do you know your record for how many illnesses you had at the sametime?
I'm the opposite, I go into complete denial about any illness I may have and then wonder why I am sweating and sneezing so much when I have a cold.
Anyway..hope you are well, (although I guess that wish maybe relative)
Love Ya
Nick XX

Changedit said...

That was an excellent read, Shane, and I could relate to it. My mother was a hypochondriac, I was just told to shut up when I was ill. So when freed from parental strains, I went down the same route. I had heart attacks aplenty and the local ambulance wouldn't come out if I rang them. Scary in hindsight, because if anything had really be wrong, I could indeed have died.

Make sure you're safe with the equipment. I've just been through HepC and treatment, and it's not pleasant. Get tested regularly too, just in case.

Much love
K xxx

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Cat Scratch (with 2 K's),

Thanks for the comment... we can't win, hey? I'm not ill and am convinced I am... you were ill and evryone was convinced you wasn't!! Oh, well... we're both here swapping comments... that's the god part of it.

Thoughts and wishes, Shane. x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya H,

"..but the baffling second side that makes one engage in a risky behavior even though one knows it will keep one up all night in a panic. "

And that behaviour isn't just drugs or alcohol. For years I've promised myself to miss health documentaries or turn my head to medical books, but something... some part of me cannot resist the fear and the panic that I know will be the result. It's almost like an anxiety that my body doesn't want but needs. With medical books I always convince myself they will serve to dispell my current fears... well, they've nevr done that, but just to inform me of other life threatening conditions with the same symptoms.

Hope you and family are well... Shane.

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Poetic Genesis,

As ever thanks for your time nd your wonderful words.

What you say is another of my contraditions. I am petrified of disease, yet I NEVER go to the doctor! If I've a bad tooth I pull i myself... if I've a sever cut I treat it myself. Whatsworse than imagining one has a disease is knowing itfor certain (lol), so I avoid doctors at all costs. I ofen say: the next time I see a doctor I will be ddead.

Hope you're well PG... you're a wonderful, caring person.

I hope only the good things come to you... Shane. x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Barbara,

Wonderful news (not the brain tumours.. your boy.) I hope that life becomes a little more predictable now.

Cervical cancer... yeah, one of the best ones that! lol

All my love, Shane. x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

A,

No, some of us still care for the WM3. I am part of the 'Free the West memphis 3' group here in Lyon, and Herbert is doing his part over at Checking for Elves.

On a disappointing note I recently signed the petition on the WM3 site and was horified to see there were less than 300 names! It's just all very sad.

Thanks for all your comments and words... they mean a lot.

My very best wishes, Shane.

SaveNow said...

Hello,

My learn of english is not really godd but sufficient to understand the sense of your post.

The mind is a mighty thing. Many people take out oh his illness because a priest touch her arms or give a smack... And many people imagine his illness.

I choose to comment this post because you have whrite an interesting question.
"How can a person suffering with hypochondria become an injecting heroin addict? How can one with an irrational fear of disease take daily injections of street drugs from unsterilized equipment... leaving himself wide open to two of the worst diseases we know of? "

I think we are all the first for the ignorance of the choice of our lifes.
But all of this choice have a logical reason.
It's just we have choice to ignore them.

Indeed (i love use this word :) ), when we make a choice, we decide to make this. And if whe let the chance to choice. It is still our choice.

Many time, we are more happy when we dont know why we have make this choice...

So, my poor workmanship of english don't less me continues... Otherwise it's bcome more incomprehensible that it is already... :)

I love this sentence and finish this comment on this :
"Actually, we all do that... it's called living."

Really good post and good blog... I should be back soon.

Bye :)

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

My Friend Nick!!

Glad you ahd a little chucke... th blogs for that as well.

I know I've had at least 4 terminal illnesses at once (maybe a few less serious ones to boot!) tant pis! as we say here (too bad!)

i'm well... I think. uh oh... now you've gon and done it! lol

love returned, Shane. x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Fishwhiskers,

Thanks for your comment.

I've not always been so careful, so my first HIV & Hep C test was a huge worry. This was because in the first couple of weeks injecting youy are reliant on others, also I didn't have a clue what hepatitis was!! S, I was having injections but didn't know where the needle, spoon or water came from. luckily iyt was fine. I think that the first few weeks/months of using are the most dangerous.. once the addict learn whats safe and whats not he usually sticks to that. unfortunately it's then a little too late.

hep C is still a concern as we are told it can be transmitted in the heroin ove here... as you read, it doesn't stop me.

One otherscare I had, was my good friend who tried to infect me with HIV during my final day in England... i will blog about that episode soon. i'm still friends with him, nd he's not too well at the moment.

Best wishes FW, Shane.x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Save Now,

Tu peut repondre en français, si tu veux. Je peux lire le français parfaitement. à parler c'est un autre chose!!! oh!! ;)

My very best wishes, Shane.

Ps: Ton anglais est bon... et je suis un homme très poli! ;)

Lou said...

This reminds me of my son..IV injecting for probably 5-6 years, several overdoses.

When I suggested he go on methadone, he recoiled in horror, and said "No way, that stuff is bad for you."

;)

SaveNow said...

Bien sur ? Car je vais venir pourrir ton site avec toutes mes références et parlotes françaises... Comment résister aux perles de la langue française ?
J'ai voulu placer "C'est la vie" dans mon dernier poste car je savais qu'il était aussi utilisé par certains anglais... mais après réflexion, je me suis rappelé que c'était par les américain...

Tu comprends sans doute mieux quand je dis que je vais pourrir le site ? :)

Beaucoup préfère que je parle le moins possible, tu propose le contraire ... Ok Very well ;)

kellylebelly said...

I've got the feeling I'm going to be around for quite some time to come.I think I'll be dying at a ripe old age too.

Only the good die young ;->

Sarcastic Bastard said...

You'd better be around for quite some time to come! Great post.

We're two peas in a pod. I am always convinced I have THE CANCER. My fear of CANCER is such that it requires me to type it in all caps always.

Woody Allen and I should go bowling.

Much love,

SB

Jasmine B. Demented said...

i have only to sickness bi-polar disorder & a drug addiction. Self-medication is something ive done since i was 16.

It's good to hear that sharing drug paraphernalia give's you the creeps.
I've tried very hard to share bills with people when i'm out about doing coke, and the few time's ive injected i have not shared.

xo.
J.

Greta said...

Oh, I can relate to this!
One of my most impressive "childhood books" was the Pschyrembel. In Germany, it is THE medical encyclopedia.
It had pictures! I remember all these portraits of people in it, exposing every disease a child of 7,8 years could not have imagined. My favorite picture was one which showed a woman who had elephantiasis. I loved that, although it gave me horrible nightmares. Nausea, curiosity and fascination are linked quite closely.
The more I read in the book instead of just looking at pictures the more I discovered
symptoms on me, too. Later I learned that this form of hypochondria-caused-by-encyclopedia is something every single medical student on the planet goes through.
Perfectly normal we had all these diseases.
The other thing I like(d) about diseases were their names. E.g, I always thought that Pneumonia sounded like a distant adventure island. The Hemorrhoids sounded like an ancient warrior tribe to me. And in my language, lumbago is called "the witches' shot". My favorite term ever. I secretly wished I had one, just to brag about it using this word.

With healthiest regards, Greta

ryan field said...

I can relate to a certain extent. The first time I performed oral sex it was with three guys at the same time, and I was sure I had HIV for months afterwards. I was terrified. We were all still in high school and it happened at a party after a football game, where we all had a little too much to drink. I knew at the time I should have practiced safe sex, but I got lost in the moment and couldn't stop.

My fear was totally irrational and the guys were safe and I didn't get exposed to HIV. But it was also very real to me at the time. And for a long time, it ruined an otherwise wonderful, memorable experience. But it was the last time I had unprotected sex, ever in my life. So I guess I learned my lesson in that respect.

(I hope I can post things like this on the comment thread here...don't want to upset anyone.)

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Lou,

You will not be surprised ay how many junkies I've heard say exactly the same thing!! lol lol

I think I've even said it!!!

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Kelly,

The good die young and the best linger on!!

X

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya SB,

THE CANCER... that's it, thee's ONLY one and it kills!! ;)

My doctor says he'll be surprised if I make 45... I say: Shut up and write my fucking script!!! lol

Take care SB...

Much more LOVE, Shane. x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Jasmine,

Thanks for your comment... glad to hear your using safely also. It' not always easy though, and my firt few weeks of injecting were quite scary. I was new to it and needed other junkies help, so they were making and administering my injections. I'm just lucky that they didn't do anything to harm me.

My very best wishes, Shane. xoxo

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Greta,

Thanks once again for your words!

Yes, later in life I met so many peoiple who had this same hypochondria, but of course suffering and torment is lonely... a 1000 others may feel the same, but you are still alone with it... just as we're alone in life and death.

healthiest regards accepted... unhealthy kisses returned! ;)

x

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Ryan,

Thanks as always for your input & you can say WHATEVER you like here. It's all welcome and it's all appreciated. If it's the truth & it's a part of you, your life and experience, then it is not only accepted it is demanded... you have to write it.

On this blog there are homosexuals, bi-sexuals, , transexuals/genders & lesbians. There are Africans, Indians, Germans, Swedes, Portugesse & Frogs. There are poets, know its, writers and fighters... drug users, alcohol abusers and anonymous losers. We're all here and we're all very open minded. We all enjoy people for who they are and what they do.

Thanks for sharing your exprience with us... & so glad it served as nothing more than a healthy scare.

My very best wishes and thoughts, Shane.x

Herbert Barry Woodrose said...

I'm commenting here just once more to say EXACTLY right. I didn't mean vices per se - I meant just odd behavior.

A good buddy of mine did something hilarious a few weeks ago while we were working one night. We were going back and forth organizing stuff, and he was lamenting that he didn't have any food. He's single, and it gets pretty bad when he decides to slack. I'd been over there a few times a week and had noticed the fridge looking more and more like a display at the department store - completely empty.

So I'm sitting on the couch thinking about whatever we had been talking about and he gets up and goes to the kitchen.

It turns out he'd - in a classic Seinfeld bit - thrown out something or other he didn't want to be tempted to eat. He'd placed it on the top of a full kitchen pail, on its own plate. It was, in his hungry mind, really just resting on garbage, not really garbage.

So he picks it up and eats it - of which I had no idea - and then spent the next 2 hours almost unable to work because he was panicked that he'd done something stupid. "The garbage smells! Those are fumes! There was a bag with cat puke in it that you can smell!"

I couldn't lie; I agreed I could smell the cat puke when standing over the can. "Great! That means fumes enveloped that pastry!" I tried to tell him it wasn't true, that the particles that make up the puke in the air are negligible...

Yeah right. Try explaining to someone in the throes of a hypo-fit that teeny tiny particles aren't filling his lungs and brain and in fact killing him. All I could do is laugh and make the situation as light as it really was.

But I was stricken right then by the idea that these two seemingly opposite behaviors could, and usually do, exist in people. How could a guy who KNOWS he is mentally sensitive to freaking about his health do something so silly?

But in that moment he became his own ancestor in my mind, a lemur or some babboonish creature - desperate for calories or water. Poking, testing... trying... all the while depending on a heightened alarm sense to warn him the INSTANT it went bad. Pay attention to rustling in the bush, that can be a lion... pay attention to flies and such... pay attention to traps - it could be an animal or plant cleverly disguised as fruit, or rotting flesh. That shadow moving in the water is most certainly a crocodile.

Millenia later, the poor simian is in his own kitchen...

Greta said...

I just sent you a mail to myheroinhead@...
in case you only check monthly or so... i'm telling you here.

Unknown said...

You're interesting.
Aren't you?
Be well.
-Sky

Unknown said...

Yeah, I've alternated between only taking a half dose of ibuprofen so I can go easy on my body, and then emptying bottles of pills down my throat. Much like Lou's comment about her son worrying that methadone is bad for you after using for years.

Longy said...

Hi Shane. Top post again.

I'm glad I'm not the only hypochondric around here! I can relate to much of your symptoms but unlike you,I can't really think why I'm like that at all. I've definately got a touch of the "Dot Cottons" thats for sure.

Funny enough I did have a real life health scare recently when I went to the dentist and she casually mentioned "That looks like a tumor on your tongue" Naturally I went for an immediate biopsy and for the next 2 weeks was shitting myself wondering just how long I had left and speculating who I should leave my record collection and Chelsea Season Ticket to. To me I was as good as dead. A goner. No hope. The big C that had wiped out most of my family already was taking me too.

Well it was good news and although it was such a relief,it was so unexpected that I didn't really know to handle it at first. I thought the consultant was lying and told him so lol. Well another 6months has just passed and I've been for the follow up and all clear so I guess I believe them now (til the next time) Human beings are a funny lot. Without humour,I think I would of snuffed it by now for sure.

Take care mate.

Anita said...

My mother has hypochondriasis. You may think that I'm immature but I find it quite funny.

Andy Frankham-Allen said...

Ah, you know I remember the hypochandriac Shane well. In our time (including when I stayed at yours for a while way back in the day) I remember many illnesses you thought you had. All kinds of memories juggling around in this head of mine... the doors been opened, let the memories flood out I say.

Always yours, Andy
xx

Changedit said...

Shane, I caught the dreaded virus in 1999 ... so a long time AFTER I started injecting. I knew that the works I was using were used by somebody with the virus before. But need dictated usage ... so I did. It backfired. But glad to see you try and keep yourself safe. And for everybody else: you dont just catch HepC through IV use, but also through sharing snorting equipement, sharing razors and toothbrushes, getting tattoos and piercings where equipment is not properly sterilised and not thrown away, barbers & hairdressers who do not tend to use sterilised equipment, and until 1992 you could have caught it through a blood infusion, if you ever had one.

Sorry for the blurp ... but I thought I clear the myths up. I promise I wont preach about it anymore.

Fishy xx

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Fishwhiskers,

Thanks for the comment & you can preach as much as you like here. This space is for you and all the other followers & readers. It's a valuable part of the blog.

Also, it's a very important issue that you shed light on.

my best wishes, Shane.x

Gledwood said...

That's weird, I was convinced I was dying of cancer when I was 10. thankfully this went away or rather turned into ocd and an obsession about contamination and germs... i only really lost the contamination thing when i started injecting heroin, something i'd always looked on as scummy (I just hadn't realized what fun it was~!!)

Nikita said...

It's odd, but I'm just the opposite. I don't know if it's my bipolar disorder (diagnosed ;)) or just me being underwhelming... I never go to the Doctor. I'll be half dead before you can make me admit that I've seen better days.

There was always so much drama when I was growing up that I learnt to take a sip of cough syrup and get to school!

I take my anti-psychotics, sometimes a little Nytol... and I'm good to go.
I hope you are well. x

Anonymous said...

gosh, I lost so many posts on your blog. sorry! I wasn't here. oh well...
you already know what are my thoughts to this problem: I have it too!(by the way, I have a new email address, I'll send it to you later).

from all the disadvantages of being hypochondriac , there is one advantage: - we know a lil about every-f*cking disease there is on this world! xD and by that, we can go to those TV contest, win the show and become millionaires, uh?

hahaha, Just kidding! xD

now, seriously: I know what it is, I know it well. and I think that the fact that I'm hypochondriac is because of my father. He is also hypochondriac! -_-'

Oh well, I'm one since the begging of my teenage years! x| (... maybe 12/13)...and I'm now 18 (made in may 4th, yeah for me! xD)...so it's approximately 5 years of leaving it! I'm really tired of it because it doesn't let me live fully like everybody of my age.

These year will be, will have to be, the year of change! my year of change, and I'll put myself in test every-f*cking-day till it disappears (and I hope it does) - and by it I mean also my panic attacks that, I think, are "handed hand" with hypochondriasis.
wish me good luck x)


stay strong, take care, kiss kiss,
Vanessa Mota

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Nikita,

Well the bizarre thing is that I never go to the doctor either! I worry about disease and convince mysel I am dying, but the last place you'll ever find me is a Dr's surgery!!

Anyway, thanks as always for your input... my very best wishes, Shane. x

Cinnamon Girl said...

My mom is a registered nurse. So when I was growing up I was either faking it or dying of something with 7 syllables =) It was mildly exhausting!

Sarcastic Bastard said...

Shane,
Love ya. Just popping round to say yo.

Hope all is well with you.

Your pal,

SB

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

hiya SB,

Yes all's well.. i'm just very busy doing other things.

I started the blog during a period where I had just finished a painting exhibition and was having a month break. But I never knew when I started it just how important it would become and how much I would express myself through it... nor how time consuming it would be. It has now become my main form of expression.

But, I pay my rent through painting & I've had a lot of work these past weeks. I'm trying to rearrange my schedule so as I have more time to post. It's very frustrating. Anyway, I will work something out... I have to, because i am expressing myself better with words than with paint at the moment.

You'll just have to bare with me for a moment... & excuse me for not having visited for a while.

Thanks for the concern..

All my Love, Shane. x

Sarcastic Bastard said...

The rent must be paid, my friend. I am glad you have plenty of art work. It beats hell out of a full-time desk job!

Love,

SB

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

SB,

If you don't mind send me your mail address... then we can have news outside o posts & comments.

myheroinhead@gmail.com

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

STARRLIGHT?

Hiya...7 syllable diseases, they're just the worst aren't they?! ;)

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Sky,

hiya and thanks for the comment & for following. I'm very interesting if your not me! lol sometimes I just wish for a life with a wife and a dog... dinner at 7 and bed for 10... oh, what a dream!

You take care & keep reading, Shane. X

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Longy,

Hiya Mate,

So glad it was nothing serious & that your season ticket is still valid.

It's strange isn't it, you so easily accepted the diagnosis but found it hard to take the good news! doctors tell the truth when it's bad and lie when it's good!!! lol

Excuse me for the delayed response, was just very busy.

All My VERY best, Shane.

Memoirs of a Heroinhead said...

Hiya Vanessa M,

GOOD LUCK!!! BEST OF LUCK!!! ALL THE LUCK!!! THE LUCK OF THE DOG & THE LUCK OF THE IRISH!!! There you go!

Sorry for the delayed response was very busy. Don't worry about reading my blog, you've earned enough respect from me to never have to read it again.

I hope you're well.. I'm dying ( I think!) All my best thoughts and wishes, Shane. xx