I don't know if I'm looking for advice or if I just want to get this off my chest. I'm in my mid-30s now, but all through my teens and twenties, I suffered pretty debilitating health anxiety. Many evenings were spent in the emergency room for unexplained chest pains and I was sent to various specialists, got stress tests, even a couple entirely unnecessary colonoscopies (thanks, hindsight). 

By some miracle, when my wife and I relocated from NYC to LA, my anxiety went away. Entirely. No panic attacks, no obsession with my health and breathing and chest pains. None of it. All of 2020 was 100% anxiety free. All of 2021, too, up until the final week, that is. I contracted COVID. I wasn't freaking out about it though. I'm double vaxxed, but not yet boosted. I developed a 102F fever that wouldn't go away for three days, so I decided to look into monoclonal antibody treatments. I was told that the only place to get it near me was to go to the local ER. Luckily, this was two or three days before the huge Omicron surge, so it was busy, but not as bad as I've heard it's become.

Anyways, they decide to give me an X-Ray and blood work just to be thorough before providing the treatment. They discover I have COVID pneumonia. I have no breathing symptoms, but of course I immediately Google "COVID pneumonia" and it's the scariest fucking thing I can imagine. I text my wife and my parents just to give them an update on my situation and before I know it, I'm getting calls from various family just checking in on me, which scares the shit out of me. When the nurse comes to set up my IV, they comment that I'm so incredibly pale, and they also can't find a vein. They need an ultrasound machine just to get the needle in a vein. They hit an artery and blood shoots out. They tell me they hit an artery but won't elaborate on what that means and if it's serious. They do this on both arms until they finally find a vein, a good twenty minutes after trying and need a second nurse just to help. It's scary, uncomfortable, and after I do my stupid-ass Googling, I feel like maybe I won't leave the hospital. My O2 monitor they put on my finger keeps beeping reading super low, but nobody ever comes in to check and reassure me that that's just what happens when you fidget around. 

I know it's not the most harrowing tale, but it was really scary. To fast forward, I was released a couple hours later, the antibodies seemed to have done the trick because my fever never returned and I was better in a few days. But ever since, my health anxiety is through the roof. Mostly related to breathing. I keep taking very deep breaths (something I couldn't do for a good two weeks after COVID), and while I can get some satisfying breaths, I have a feeling that this compulsion is probably stressing out the muscles or whatever, making it so subsequent breaths are less deep and reassuring. I bought an Apple Watch and can't stop checking my O2 levels (never below 96-97, usually at 99 or 100), and now my old friend Heart Anxiety has come back. I almost had a panic attack driving home from work yesterday because my heart felt too slow. It was 57 BPM, which my watch was kind enough to tell me that it was the lowest I've had all day, which stressed me out even more. Is my heart going to slow down and seize? Of course, this anxiety sped my heart rate back up, but try to reason with my racing brain in that moment.

Again, not looking for advice necessarily, but I'll take it if you got it. My main concern here isn't for me so much, but for my wife and family. I don't want to repeat old patterns of spending every waking moment trying to get others to reassure me that I'm okay. It's frustrating I'm sure, and I know how much pressure it puts on others. I'd just like to go back to where I was a month ago before I was traumatized (is that a bit dramatic? It really feels like what it is) by COVID and my trip to the ER.