I am 23 years of age, happliy married and studying for a degree at university, its only now that I can realise the extent of what I have been going through since my 21st Birthday. I have suffered an extreme form of anxiety disorder all centred around the fear of being sick.
Perhaps, post traumatic stress disorder best discribes the experience....
At 13, my older brother was diagnosed with cancer, the night I was told was when the fear of vomiting first hit me, A realsitic reaction to such devastating news, but from then a demon started to grow inside my head and I had no idea of the effect it would cause me.
Every night I battled the physical symtoms of feeling sick, and felt triumphant aged 16 when I had my firts entire nights sleep without waking to feel sick.
However, there were more incidents that combined to create the problems i have to face.
My brother is now aged 26 and healthy and successful, and it wasnt until this happy stage that my problems really manifested. At aged 19 i witnessed a suicide, at aged 20 i nearly lost my dad in a traumatic event. Aged 21, 3 days fter my 21st birthday, I woke in the night feeling sick....i got out of bed, fainted and fell all the way down the stairs. I had at this point become a complete control freak, over everything in my life, the night i returned from the hospotal after the stairs incident, i knew everything had changed, for the worse. I couldnt sleep anymore.....at all. It took months of trying to shake these hidious feelings of being so afraid to go to bed. After almost 8 months of trying to soldier on (exhausted, depressed and scared) I noticed my hair was falling out. My family knew i wasn tmyself but it was a big awakening for me. From seeing the bald patch in my hair, within a week i was incapacitated by anxiety. I couldnt eat, sleep, think at all. I shed 4 stone in weight, drank a bottle of pepto bismol in 1 day, every day, I lived on the idea that if i controlled evertyhing, i wouldnt be sick. The emetophobia had manifested itself into a life and sole destroying monster. I couldnt leave the house, i lost my job lost my personality almost. My fiance stuck by me and my family were very supportive....
it took 4 months of being of work before i could begin to think straight, but the anxiety had become ny best friend. I barely ate and when i did i was surveyed every charactersitc of my food, In the end i was the picture of malnurishment and ill health, i survived purely on stress.
Almost a year later, i was bored, tired and needed my old self back, i decided to take a holiday with my best friend to a remote part of china. This is where everything changed. I had no medication as i was too afraid that the pills would make me ill, my GP supported my plan to conquer this myself, i knew it would be hard and if im honest, now that i am well i often feel very exhausted and remember just how much of me this took away.
I had become petrified of going away from my parents house, i hardly ever travelled and i never ate. I also had an OCD for hand washing, using bleach at one point, almost 60 times a day.
So, with my emaciated frame, bleeding hands and a pocket full of valium, i flew to hong kong. A suitcase full of air tight cereal bars and a heart full of fear, i did it. 3 weeks travelling around china with little access to hand washing material and very little food, i clensed my sole. At the top of the yellow mountain in china i promised myself I would learn to enjoy life.
I returned home evn thinner, but the tiniest twinkle was back in my eyes. I had been back at work for 10 months by this point, and was feeling much stronger. 8 weeks later I married my fiance and now have a beautiful home in cornwall. I study at university and am doing very well.
Its not all sweetness and light, my parents have a job to get me to actually spend time in my own house and i am soetimes very fearful of being ill away from home. I get feelings of anxiety from time to time, and live each day with a head full of