I just posted this in a Facebook group I belong to, it’s a ‘cancer survivors’ group, and a recent new member starting posting all about her mysterious health problems without a diagnosis…

So someone posted a pretty mean comment, ‘are you a hypochondriac? Sounds like you want to have cancer’, etc etc, pretty mean stuff.

(Seriously, why can’t people just leave that meanness at home? It took more effort for him to make that comment (and even to think it), then it did for him to just delete the post and move on—

Anyhow…I had to speak up…as a person who went through (and is still going through…), having a mysterious illness without answers, I know how mean these comments can be and how much they can hurt—

Do hypochondriacs exist? Of course. Do serial killers exist? Of course. Do every time you walk into a bar and talk with a stranger, do you think they’re a serial killer? Of course not.

Too much jumping to the diagnosis of ‘hypochondriac’ (or ‘anxiety’) in the medical field right now…why? Because it lets doctors off the hook. If your parent is a hypochondriac, then you don’t have to help…you don’t have to listen…

And it’s very cruel…

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I understand your frustration, but sometimes when people are suffering badly with a disease they don’t know how to put it into words (and that’s how people can sound like a ‘hypochondriac’ — they’re not wording themselves correctly).

If Jenny’s scans all come up negative, then she very well might have a bad autoimmune disorder (and not cancer), which means that this isn’t the correct group for her, but we should still have compassion for her and her fight to get answers.

When people are suffering without an answer, they might scramble and cry for help in random places, but even if the cry is in the ‘wrong’ spot, we should still have compassion and try to help her get to the ‘right’ spot. No one wants to have cancer, it’s just a representation of the degree of suffering. For example, I once thought I had a brain tumor, but it turns out I had lesions from MS — still a pretty crappy disease (though I have cancer somewhere else now).

Did my friends ridicule me later because I had told them I thought it was a brain tumor? Of course not. Because my suffering was real and I definitely needed help. I know it’s frustrating to suffer with cancer, and we can even be jealous of those with other ‘bad’ health problems (because let’s face it—cancer is worse than most problems—ie, I’d rather have lupus than cancer—), but all of these serious diseases are all bad, and they each have immense suffering that go along with them too…

When in doubt, compassion ❤️