Health Anxiety And Undergoing Your First Operation
Anxiety so often stems from factors that feel outside of our control, and often nothing can feel more so than our health. A daily multivitamin or celery juice here and there can make us feel like we’re doing our bit, but when life takes over and throws a curveball our way, tackling the strain on our mental health can feel just as challenging as physical recovery …
“I came up with the idea for this piece in what now feels like a very distant pre-Cororvirus lifetime. A time when our every thought wasn’t consumed by anxiety-inducing medical talk and the virus (whether physically or mentally) hadn’t crept its way into all aspects of our lives. It’s hard to fathom that just a few months ago, words like ‘transmission’, ‘self-isolation’, and ‘quarantine’ weren’t part of our everyday vocabulary. Looking back, my minor surgery seems just that; minor. Nevertheless, the fears and anxieties I felt at that time remain very much real. I was extremely lucky to be young, fit, and healthy. And especially lucky to have The National Health Service. Many aren’t this lucky, and I urge you to think about them during these unprecedented times.”
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“Earlier this year I underwent a salivary gland and cyst removal procedure. I had gotten to the ripe old age of twenty before I’d had to undergo any big medical procedures. Naturally, it wasn’t something I thought about day-to-day, which is why when the incident did occur, I felt so astoundingly unprepared.
I had been very lucky that throughout my lifetime I hadn’t had many trips to the hospital, albeit, even the doctors. The odd occasion here-and-there for a case of tonsillitis or (another) blasted urinary tract infection. These were usually sorted following a round of antibiotics and about a gallon of cranberry juice.
It was a late spring morning when my mum insisted I go to the doctors on account of my throat and neck looking swollen. I’d felt completely fine and was certain it was just my mother’s motherly worries getting the better of her. Nevertheless, to appease her, I begrudgingly dragged myself round to my local GP’s office.
As a host of doctors and nurses (I’m pretty sure even the receptionist got a look in) took turns feeling up the inside of my mouth and the outside of my neck, each seemed as befuddled as the next. I began to worry. After over an hour-long chorus of “I’ve never seen anything like it!” and an abundance of interjecting medical professionals, I was sent off in an anxiety-induced panic to the hospital.
Suddenly, everything felt a lot more serious; my laissez-faire attitude that morning became a distant memory. My mind spiralled through a multitude of self-perpetuating worries: How did no one know what was this was? Was it serious? Was it deadly? Was I overthinking? Probably. Was it okay to be overthinking at a time like this? Also probably.
My parents left work and we headed up to the Maxio-Facial ward for yet more well-meaning professionals to cop a feel at the obtrusive lump lingering from my jaw. Sitting on one of them motorised sticky plastic chairs, I was subject to a bad case of deja-vu with yet another rendition of uncertainty and second-guessing reverberating off the walls.
I felt like screaming:
“This is your job, how do you not know what’s wrong with me?!”
I bit my tongue.
I clung tightly to the soft fabric of my cardigan, acutely aware that if I let my rapidly expiring hands anywhere near the tacky plastic of the chair beneath me they’d leave behind a pool-sized residue of my sweat.
“Hospital fear can seem so irrational; if you’re in danger, this is the best place to be, undoubtedly. But, anxiety doesn’t care about rationality. ”
Eventually, an older doctor came to see me. I was reassured he had a great deal of experience. If anyone knew what was wrong with me, he would. My chest thumped with anticipation as an increasing number of invasive eyes lingered on me and my lump. Thankfully, one quick poke and prod lead to a confident diagnosis. He’d made it seem so easy, so obvious. His confidence was immediately calming.
Unfortunately, this was just the first piece of the puzzle. A year and a half of scans, consultations, and numerous cancellations spread ahead of my bewildering eyes. Over time, the profuse anxiety I had experienced that day began to feel like a distant memory.
My operation date had been moved and cancelled so many times that it started to feel like it was never going to happen. I was moving towards a never-ending finish line; it was the first time in my life I was comforted by the unattainable. It also meant that when my final operation date did eventually roll around, part of me was still reluctant to believe it.
It wasn’t till I was four hours in, cloaked in a very (un)fetching hospital gown and pressure stockings, with my stomach tightening every time someone in scrubs emerged from behind the pair of double doors that it started to feel real. This was actually going to happen.
Hospital fear can seem so irrational; if you’re in danger, this is the best place to be, undoubtedly. But, anxiety doesn’t care about rationality. By this point, my worries were exhausting me. My mind was brimming with ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’, weighed down with the questions I couldn’t answer and was too afraid to ask.
I was the last person to go in for my operation. I had arrived at half eleven and was taken down at five. I felt like a child on their first day of school when the nurse finally came and took me away from my parents. My mind was utterly consumed by the unknowingness of it all. It was as though all other information and social cues had plummeted from my brain as every crevice of my mind and body became occupied by nervousness.
I winced and wiggled as they examined and injected me. The anesthesiologist injected something he assured me would calm me down. Right away my mind spiralled at how uncalm I felt– “it isn’t working!”
I woke up, heavy with haze, to see the familiar eyes of my parents and boyfriend grinning down on me. Later that evening, the surgeon came to see me. He informed me he was pleased with how the operation had gone. The discomforting pain that erupted from inside my mouth was the only reminder that it had actually happened. The anxieties I’d felt, the second-guesses, the late-night over-thinking, it all felt completely foreign to me now.”
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To see more from Jasmine you can find her on Instagram at @jasmineisabellas.