I lost both my parents in short succession. My mom passed in 2021 from
complications from chemo. Her death was unexpected as her lung tumour
was small so she had a good prognosis. However, a previous infection
resurfaced during chemo and she passed f...
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I lost both my parents in short succession. My mom passed in 2021 from
complications from chemo. Her death was unexpected as her lung tumour
was small so she had a good prognosis. However, a previous infection
resurfaced during chemo and she passed from sepsis 48 hours later. My
dad passed 8 months later, also from lung cancer. He had been battling
cancer for years so his death was expected but he still turned for the
worse really quickly, which made his death a shock all the same. I
wasn’t there for either of their passings. I live in Australia and both
my parents were in Europe. My mom passed mid-pandemic and I had a flight
booked to be there for my dad’s passing but due to his unexpected quick
decline I missed it by mere days. I saw him die on FaceTime, it was
traumatic. It’s now been 14 months since my dad’s passing and I’m still
not over it. It’s been a rollercoaster full of shock, anger, nightmares,
questioning the futility of life, guilt and many many tears. My newest
chapter seems to be health anxiety though; I’m all of a sudden petrified
of either myself or my husband dying/developing cancer. I actually went
to my GP yesterday after being convinced I was dying for two days. Turns
out I have acute bronchitis and not some obscure lung disease/cancer. I
literally convinced myself my blood oxygen was dangerously low as I was
short of breath, it was a perfect 99%. I thought I felt my fingers
tingling and I was lightheaded, focussing on my breathing only made it
worse, obviously. I nearly made it to the A&E but luckily didn’t make
that much of a fool out of myself and only embarrassed myself in front
of my GP - who very kindly enquired about my mental health as soon as we
established that I would live. I’ve been like this for months though, my
husband needs to be contactable at all times or I fear something has
happened to him, I’m hypervigilant about bodily functions and I envision
what my/his death will look like and cry in anticipation of the events
when we are both healthy and only in our forties. It’s becoming a real
problem. Has anyone else experienced this? And how did you get over it?