Irrational Fears.

I have my next hospital appointment tomorrow, my initial appointment in connection with the leg problem. And now I’m scared because I’ve developed an irrational fear of hospital visits.

It increases as the day approaches. It’s bad when I go to bed the night before, it’s worse in the morning when I wake up, and when I’m travelling to the hospital I’m so scared that I worry about the standard of my driving. It’s what happened the last time I went for CT scans. Visiting the hospital has now become the source of a deep sense of doom-laden dread.

So where has it come from? I’ve been to the Royal Derby Hospital fifteen times over the past year and a half and I don’t remember any of the visits killing me. I had two operations, four incarcerations, and countless procedures both invasive and non-invasive. I was anxious from the start of that process for reasons I’ve explained on this blog, but this is more than anxiety. This is different; this is cold fear.

I reason with myself, of course I do. I tell myself that I’m being irrational. I argue that this is some sort of neurosis which has developed, that it’s effectively a kind of phobia and that phobias are irrational. I try to work out where it’s come from, but realise that the source of such a phenomenon is rarely as simple as one event.

I remember, for example, what I was led into the last time I went to the Royal Derby for a first appointment regarding a new issue. It began when they told me I had cancer. It wasn’t pleasant, and maybe that’s part of the answer. And I know that the events of last year brought intimations of mortality into sharp focus. Maybe that’s another part of the answer. I also know that I’m cursed with a painfully acute sense of awareness and a high emotional response faculty. I’m sure that’s part of the answer, too.

So is that it? I don’t know, but the reasoning doesn’t seem to help much in allaying the fear. It goes quiet for a time when my mind is occupied with something else, but then it jumps back in at the first opportunity. And when it does it stares me in the eye and snarls like a ravening tiger. Who wouldn’t be scared of a ravening tiger? Maybe I will have more to say on the matter tomorrow night. (Or maybe I won’t.)