Okay I have a little story for you...

 about what anxiety and catastrophizing looks like in real life. 

I am a world class worst case scenario thinker. I was raised like that. Every somersault was a potential broken neck, etc. Everything, I mean every-fucking-thing, was a disaster waiting to happen. I was raised on a steady diet of catastrophic thinking with a side of gaslighting.

It's another one of those things that I could write a book about but nobody'd publish because it sounds so over the top. 

Here's a quick one: I was a first time mother at 22. My son was an emergency c-section when they tried to induce labor and his heart rate dropped alarmingly, and much drama ensued and he was born via emergency c-section and with a partially collapsed lung and was briefly popped into the NICU on oxygen, and in about 3 days the drama was over and we went home. 

My parents were in town for their first grandchild's birth and were staying with us to "help." 

And I was told by my loving parents, while I was recovering from major emergency surgery and figuring out first-time motherhood: 

The doctors might be lying to you about him being okay. ARE YOU SURE??

I am NOT making that up. That was the "support" and "help" I received from my parents, as a nervous new mother who had just birthed her first child via emergency c-section.

They wanted to see him baptized before they'd leave. We weren't practicing Catholics, but we went through the motions to get them to leave, so two or three weeks after major surgery I got my ass out and we got him sprinkled so they would GTFO. They did go home, and I'm sure when my son turned out to be handsome and brilliant and 100% fine, they totally forgot the days they spent wringing their hands and telling me the doctors weren't telling me the truth. It was simply sent down the memory hole of things that inconveniently turned out just fine.

This is why my cousin said I could write a book but nobody'd fucking believe it. Looking back, I know they couldn't help themselves, they were both anxious and depressed people and thought that was the only sensible way to live. It's sad, but that's who they were. I'm not sure they were even aware of the lasting damage they did to their only child. 

The frustrating part of it is I KNEW they were full of shit at the time, and I've always been aware of how their reality was skewed, but man, it's exhausting to live with that.

ANYWAAAY...

Fast forward 40+ years, to how catastrophic thinking stays with me to this day, even when I know from life experience that the things that REALLY knock you on your ass seldom advertise their arrival in advance (see: brain aneurysms).

So, anyway...

I have had a growth on my nose for a while now. In recent months it expanded noticeably, and was bumpy and weird. My brain IMMEDIATELY went to "IT MUST BE CANCER!!" because of course it must be. After fretting and procrastinating for many weeks, I finally made an appt with a dermatologist's office. I of course picked one that had several specialists on staff that dealt with skin cancer on the face. I do know how to research.

So...my appointment was yesterday at 2. It was with a nurse practitioner, not a doctor, and I figured the NP did the screening on the first visit and then scheduled for a second appt with the doctor. 

I'm in the exam room and a tiny, strikingly beautiful young woman (the nurse practitioner) came in. She examined the growth on my nose carefully, and said cheerfully, "We'll do a biopsy of course, but that's a (something or other kera-whatever). They're benign. We can freeze it off or scrape it off." We discussed the impact of my need to wear my glasses to, yanno, function at all, and went with scraping. Freezing is the better option, it might possibly grow back after scraping, but I couldn't spend days with a healing blister where my glasses need to sit. Eddie and Gidget are many wonderful things, but useless as guide dogs.

A cheery, funny medical assistant put a bunch of shots in my nose to numb the area. I know a needle in the nose sounds dreadful, but this gal had mad needle skills, and I told her so. It was virtually painless. So I was numbed and prepped and the NP got to work. There was a somewhat gross moment when some sort of cauterizing tool was used and there was smoke and I realized it was coming from my nose, but that was more comical than actually scary. She stuck a bandaid on the spot, told me to dab it with Aquaphor and keep it covered with a bandaid for two weeks and that was that.

I've been shaking my head at myself ever since. I'd built this nose thing up into a BIG SCARY THING, imagining the worst as I'd been trained to do since birth, and now it's done and I have a bandaid where it used to be, and it was SO easy and no big deal at ALL. The entire visit took about an hour.

I wish I could get a refund on the mental energy I'd invested in this.

ANYWAY, I'm very glad it's finally done, and I can put it aside and focus on all my other imaginary catastrophies. I'm sure there will be more.