Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, Welcome The Mother Knows Death. On this week's
Speaker 1: External Exam, I will be interviewing author and podcaster Caroline Crampton.
Speaker 1: Caroline just wrote a new book called A Body Made
Speaker 1: of Glass, A History of Hypochondria, which came out last week.
Speaker 1: She also has a podcast called She'd Done It, a
Speaker 1: storytelling podcast that unravels the mysteries behind classic detective stories.
Speaker 1: Hi Caroline, Welcome The Mother Knows Death.
Speaker 2: Hi, thanks very much for having me.
Speaker 1: When I first learned of your book, I was immediately
Speaker 1: intrigued by the title, mainly because I feel like I
Speaker 1: suffer from hypochondria a tad as well. Can you please
Speaker 1: explain to everyone what a hypochondriac is. So.
Speaker 2: Hypochondriac is someone who has an unwarranted and persistent fear
Speaker 2: that they have a serious illness, often in the face
Speaker 2: of a lack of evidence of any organic cause of
Speaker 2: a disease. So it's someone who has been to the
Speaker 2: doctor to have a loaded symptoms checked out and the
Speaker 2: doctor's saying I can't find anything. All your tests are
Speaker 2: coming back fine, but the person is saying, well, I'm
Speaker 2: still experiencing this thing. It's more commonly today known as
Speaker 2: health anxiety. That's the kind of modern medicine's preferred term.
Speaker 1: In the beginning of your book, you speak a lot
Speaker 1: about a little bit about your life and how you
Speaker 1: came into this particular subject. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that you stated, which makes total sense to me as
Speaker 1: to why you're interested in this subject, is that you
Speaker 1: are diagnosed with Hodgkins lymphoma when you were a teenager,
Speaker 1: which has a pretty good success rate of survival if
Speaker 1: it's caught early, and then it tends to go down
Speaker 1: a little bit more as the disease progress. And when
Speaker 1: you were seventeen, you were diagnosed with this and had
Speaker 1: you receive treatment, and they kind of told you, oh,
Speaker 1: you're good, everything's fine, and then you went away to
Speaker 1: college and then a lump pop popped up in your
Speaker 1: neck and then they told you, oh, it came back,
Speaker 1: and then you had to get more aggressive treatment after that.
Speaker 1: Do you think that that's the reason that you started
Speaker 1: to become a hypochondriac yourself, because you lost trust in
Speaker 1: the system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's definitely the reason I became a hypochondriac. Partly
Speaker 2: that incident that you're describing where I was given the
Speaker 2: all clear to head off to college and then dragged
Speaker 2: straight back again to the hospital. And then also partly
Speaker 2: just the fact that as part of their recovery from that,
Speaker 2: you know, good doctors always say things like, you know,
Speaker 2: you should come and see us whenever you have any concerns,
Speaker 2: or you should always keep an eye on this, and
Speaker 2: if you feel anything that doesn't feel right, come straight in.
Speaker 2: And that habit of checking and hyper vigilance and always
Speaker 2: being on high alert that something could be wrong. That's
Speaker 2: really the core of the anxiety for me. That's where
Speaker 2: it began. The issue of losing trust in doctors is
Speaker 2: an interesting one though, because I actually didn't really find
Speaker 2: that that was the case, partly because my doctor was
Speaker 2: very upfront about this could happen. He didn't try and
Speaker 2: pretend that this wasn't a likely outcome, but he just
Speaker 2: and I did my own research to double check that
Speaker 2: this was true. He laid it out, as you know,
Speaker 2: this treatment I'm doing for the first round has a
Speaker 2: ninety five percent chance of affecting a total cure, so
Speaker 2: absolutely overwhelmingly on your side, but there is a five
Speaker 2: percent chance that it won't work, but the scandal seemed
Speaker 2: to show that it had worked, and so off I go.
Speaker 2: But then once I found the lump again, I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: so I'm just in the five percent. It wasn't like
Speaker 2: I'd been promised something that was then withdrawn. It was
Speaker 2: it was presented to me as a possible outcome, just
Speaker 2: not a likely one.
Speaker 1: That's good because I hear a lot of stories of
Speaker 1: people getting diagnosed with some nasty like nasty cancers, including
Speaker 1: my grandmom, and the oncologists kind of giving them a
Speaker 1: lot more hope than what the actual numbers show.
Speaker 3: So it's good that you were you at least.
Speaker 1: Had it laid out for you, that you know this
Speaker 1: was a possibility, and you just so happened to fall
Speaker 1: in that rare percent of it coming back unfortunately. It
Speaker 1: so now, just to get this out there, like you've
Speaker 1: been all clear for a while since you've gotten diagnosed
Speaker 1: with that, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think it's fifteen coming up, fifteen years now.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, that's awesome. Congrats on that.
Speaker 1: In the book, you talk about the history of hypochondria,
Speaker 1: which is really it's really interesting to me actually, and
Speaker 1: you start with Hippocrates and then you go to modern day,
Speaker 1: which would be like people google doctor Google, they say,
Speaker 1: googling your diagnosis. Through your research, what are some of
Speaker 1: the common themes that you've seen throughout history as it
Speaker 1: relates to being a human with health anxieties.
Speaker 2: One of the really big ones is people seeking alternative
Speaker 2: treatments to whatever the medical authority is in their particular
Speaker 2: decade or century. So I had a lot of fun
Speaker 2: actually with this aspect of the research in the book
Speaker 2: is diving back into what was once upon a time
Speaker 2: called quackery. So you know, there's ancient Egyptian accounts of
Speaker 2: people being prescribed mixtures of dung and honey for a
Speaker 2: whole variety of conditions. And then you get into the
Speaker 2: Middle Ages when people are carrying parts of animals around
Speaker 2: with them because they've been told it will ward off
Speaker 2: a particular type of sickness, or taking some really incredibly
Speaker 2: noxious remedies including mercury and things like that, because they've
Speaker 2: been told by some medical pseudoscientifical salesman that this will
Speaker 2: solve all of their problems. And then I really do
Speaker 2: think it connects right up to the present day with
Speaker 2: our modern wellness industry. An awful lot of that is
Speaker 2: uh designed to tempt people who feel like conventional scientific
Speaker 2: medicine is not satisfying them, it's not giving them the
Speaker 2: answers that they want. So why don't you try these
Speaker 2: supplements and on regulated industry, why don't you try these habits,
Speaker 2: these things, all of which you conveniently have to pay for.
Speaker 2: So that was a really really big theme. Another one
Speaker 2: is just how sad and tragic this can all be.
Speaker 2: I found accounts of people from second third centuries who
Speaker 2: have such advanced anxiety that they believe that they're made
Speaker 2: of pottery. It was called the earthenware delusion. That they're
Speaker 2: so concerned about the fragility of their bodies that they
Speaker 2: think that they're actually made of pottery. And then right
Speaker 2: up to the present day. I think it's a really
Speaker 2: tragic and sad thing when someone isn't able to enjoy
Speaker 2: that the body that they're in, they're not able to
Speaker 2: enjoy the health that they've got, whatever state that is,
Speaker 2: because they're always so anxious about what could be about
Speaker 2: to happen. And I say that from personal experience, it's
Speaker 2: this concert did a cycle of guilt in my head
Speaker 2: that well, I seem fine. Why can't I just enjoy
Speaker 2: being fine instead of living constantly in the space of fear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is a terrible I've gone through it sometimes,
Speaker 1: so it is definitely a terrible way of living. And
Speaker 1: it is interesting though that you say that about the treatments,
Speaker 1: because I just wrote about Steve Jobs last week. He
Speaker 1: was the creator of Apple and mac and stuff, and
Speaker 1: he had gotten diagnosed with a cancer that was seemingly
Speaker 1: pretty treatable, and he decided to go the alternative route
Speaker 1: as well, and then he ended up having it come
Speaker 1: back a little bit worse, and by the time he
Speaker 1: actually decided to go with traditional medicine. So I've definitely
Speaker 1: heard about that. It's just interesting that you've been seeing
Speaker 1: that hundreds of years ago. It's really interesting in your research,
Speaker 1: did you find that health anxieties followed trends like, for example,
Speaker 1: right now, the hu to in the news the past
Speaker 1: couple of months has been that there's an increase in
Speaker 1: cancer in younger people. So now all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: people that maybe never had calling cancer on the mind
Speaker 1: when they were thirty, or like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: might have calling cancer. Is that something you've seen with
Speaker 1: trends throughout history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, very very markedly. I think I wrote a
Speaker 2: lot about actually how medicine and hypochondria to me seem
Speaker 2: to go hand in hand, that whatever the state of
Speaker 2: medical progress is, that's where hypochondria will be. So yeah,
Speaker 2: today it's people young people fearing that they've got kinds
Speaker 2: of cancer that are traditionally associated with people a bit
Speaker 2: further on or I don't know, in the mid twentieth century,
Speaker 2: people are fearing that they've got AIDS because that's just
Speaker 2: kind of come onto the news that they've just heard about. It.
Speaker 2: Go back one hundred years before to the nineteenth century,
Speaker 2: people are afraid that they've got tuberculosis. You can do that.
Speaker 2: Whenever the condition du jour is any century, that's what
Speaker 2: the hypochondriacs will be afraid that they've got. And there's
Speaker 2: something about it that is just this hunger for new
Speaker 2: information and incorporating new information into your anxieties. And yet
Speaker 2: you see that absolutely throughout history.
Speaker 1: Throughout the years, there has definitely been obviously you're talking
Speaker 1: about all this documentation of health anxiety, has there ever
Speaker 1: been any kind of suggestions for treatments and ones that
Speaker 1: actually work? Is it a combination of therapy and maybe
Speaker 1: just like taking some kind of SSRIs to like chill
Speaker 1: you out, or like what seems to be something that
Speaker 1: helps it.
Speaker 2: So historically there have been some very bad treatments. So
Speaker 2: in the sort of eighteenth nineteenth century, you've got these
Speaker 2: really entrepreneurial quack medicine salesmen who are saying, oh, nothing
Speaker 2: cures hypochondria apart from my potion, which contain I don't know,
Speaker 2: mercury and phosphates and all kinds of other things you
Speaker 2: definitely don't want to ingest. In the twentieth century and
Speaker 2: into the twenty first we have a much better grasp
Speaker 2: on it. There was some really good research done in
Speaker 2: the sixties and seventies and more recently about Yeah, the
Speaker 2: effectiveness of SSRIs and antidepressants generally have really shown to
Speaker 2: be effective for people with health anxiety. And the biggest
Speaker 2: thing there is cognitive behavial therapy, and that's I know
Speaker 2: in the UK where I live, that's what you will
Speaker 2: be referred for if you are diagnosed with health anxiety,
Speaker 2: and I think it's the same in other places as well.
Speaker 2: Often a combination of those two things, antidepressants and CBT.
Speaker 2: I personally, also did a course of what's called EMDR therapy,
Speaker 2: which is this eye movement and desensori desensitization, which is
Speaker 2: often used for people with PTSD. I think the quite
Speaker 2: big book The Body Keeps the Score is all about
Speaker 2: this and its use on military veterans, but it can
Speaker 2: be used on other kinds of trauma too, and medical
Speaker 2: trauma is one of the kinds. So I found that
Speaker 2: really helpful personally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe that too because my older daughter, actually,
Speaker 1: she when she was younger, she had I mean, she
Speaker 1: didn't have something as terrible as you were going through,
Speaker 1: but she had asthma and she was in the hospital
Speaker 1: a lot as a child getting IVS. It's a lot
Speaker 1: for a little kid to have to go through that.
Speaker 1: And now as an adult, she wants to faint when
Speaker 1: she has to get her blood taken. And I could
Speaker 1: directly just relate it back to her going through all
Speaker 1: that as a little kid, that just the thought of
Speaker 1: any of that stuff just makes her want to pass out,
Speaker 1: you know, it's nuts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a really common reaction, especially people
Speaker 2: who've had childhood medical experiences, medical trauma, and what EMDR does,
Speaker 2: which I think is really interesting, and it's still it's
Speaker 2: a difficult thing to produce evidence about, so it's a
Speaker 2: slightly contested therapy. People who've done it and find it
Speaker 2: works are very positive about it. Other people are skeptical.
Speaker 2: What it purports to do is move memories from one
Speaker 2: part of your brain to another, So memories that are
Speaker 2: from the past, but you're still experiencing them, and you
Speaker 2: every time you say go to get an IV, you're
Speaker 2: connecting it back to that experience in the past, and
Speaker 2: you're re experiencing your kind of retraumatizing yourself. What EMDR
Speaker 2: proposes to do is move that memory from that part
Speaker 2: of the brain that's very much in the present and
Speaker 2: move it into the part where memories are stored from
Speaker 2: the past, so you can still think about it, you
Speaker 2: still know that it happened, but it's not reaffecting you
Speaker 2: every time you find yourself in a similar situation. That's
Speaker 2: the theory, at least. I think we'll have to wait
Speaker 2: for some clever neuroscientists to finally produce the proof or
Speaker 2: whether that's possible.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you had it done and you said
Speaker 1: that you feel like it worked for you, right.
Speaker 2: I did, I really did, But even while I was
Speaker 2: doing it, I had my doubts about whether itlt a
Speaker 2: bit like hypnotism in a way because the eye movement
Speaker 2: part of the acronym. What it refers to is the
Speaker 2: moving of those memories. The way they do it is
Speaker 2: you have to do what they call bilateral stimulations, either
Speaker 2: by moving your eyes from side to side in a rhythm,
Speaker 2: or some therapists I think, like to do sort of
Speaker 2: tapping on alternate sides of your body, either you doing
Speaker 2: it or someone doing it to you. And you combine
Speaker 2: that bilateral stimulation with talking therapy about the incident and
Speaker 2: ideas that are connected to it for you. So you
Speaker 2: start with that incident and then you talk about, well,
Speaker 2: then it happened this time, then it happened that time,
Speaker 2: and you keep connecting back and they keep checking in
Speaker 2: with you the whole time you're doing this and saying like,
Speaker 2: how upsetting are you finding this memory? On a scale
Speaker 2: of one to ten, they keep doing it until you
Speaker 2: basically till you get down to one. So even as
Speaker 2: I was doing it, I was like, is this hypnotism.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of moving my eyes in a rhythm. I'm
Speaker 2: being It's very after a while, you really get into
Speaker 2: the rhythm of it and feels very mesmeric. So I
Speaker 2: did have my doubts even while it was going on,
Speaker 2: but I experienced very positive results from it, and you know,
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful for that. Whatever happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's almost like who cares? It worked, right,
Speaker 1: And you really, having health anxiety is so disabling because
Speaker 1: it's only going to get worse as you get older,
Speaker 1: because the more you're you get older, the more your
Speaker 1: body starts falling apart, and then you need blood work
Speaker 1: every couple months for certain medication you're on, and all
Speaker 1: this kind of stuff. Like you just got to get
Speaker 1: over it somehow.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And people with health anxiety as well, they with
Speaker 2: the diagnostic manual categorizes them into two different types. They're
Speaker 2: either care seeking or care avoiding. That doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be any in between. Care Seeking are the people who are,
Speaker 2: you know, at the doctors every other day, always wanting
Speaker 2: more tests, always wanting reassurance in that way. Care avoidant,
Speaker 2: I think, are the people who struggle even harder as
Speaker 2: they age because they're the people who would rather never
Speaker 2: go near a doctor in case they get bad news.
Speaker 2: And I think you're right as you age, there's more
Speaker 2: good reasons why you should be getting stuff checked out.
Speaker 2: You should be receiving regular care, and if you're not
Speaker 2: willing to cross the threshold of the doctor's surgery, you
Speaker 2: could end up in some serious trouble because of it.
Speaker 1: We had this story once in one of the hospitals
Speaker 1: that I worked at. One of the doctors told us
Speaker 1: that there was this doctor that she used to work
Speaker 1: with that had this chronic cough and just stop didn't
Speaker 1: want to go get it checked out because this doctor
Speaker 1: swore that he had lung cancer and he never got
Speaker 1: it checked out, and then he ended up dying. And
Speaker 1: when they checked him and it did his autopsy, he
Speaker 1: ended up having TB, which was something that could have
Speaker 1: totally been treated for the amount of time he let
Speaker 1: it go on. And just working in surgical pathology and autopsy,
Speaker 1: I've seen lots of cases like that that you're just like, Man,
Speaker 1: if this person just got this checked out when it
Speaker 1: presented the they wouldn't be dead or have this massive
Speaker 1: surgery right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it can feel a bit like you're
Speaker 2: in a catch twenty two though, because absolutely you feel
Speaker 2: like all the good advices. You should always get something checked.
Speaker 2: Like I was saying my cancer doctors being like, if
Speaker 2: you have any concerns, always come back and get checked.
Speaker 2: And then if you go too much, then they start
Speaker 2: to go. You're always hear what's really going on, what's
Speaker 2: really lying behind this? So in your mind, as the
Speaker 2: anxious person, you're like, well, where's what's the perfect number
Speaker 2: of visits? What's the perfect number of times I should
Speaker 2: go to the doctor. And of course that all feeds
Speaker 2: into the overthinking.
Speaker 1: That's what's so scary though, because you always read these
Speaker 1: news stories that are titled like she had a headache,
Speaker 1: it turned out to be so much worse and it
Speaker 1: was like stage four brain cancer or something like.
Speaker 3: And then you say, well.
Speaker 1: I have a headache, could that be why I'm having headaches?
Speaker 1: And it's hard to just because you hear a lot
Speaker 1: of times of these stories where people had these super
Speaker 1: mild symptoms and it ended up being something really bad.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, and even in real life, I feel like when
Speaker 2: you've had a health condition or you're known to have
Speaker 2: had it, people love to share their stories with you,
Speaker 2: and mostly they do that from very positive motives and
Speaker 2: they're trying to be kind, but they will say something like, oh,
Speaker 2: so you've got a blood cancer. My cousin had a
Speaker 2: blood cancer and she's dead now, or you're like thanks,
Speaker 2: or went she went through five years of treatment and
Speaker 2: she's mostly okay now. But you know, everyone's always got
Speaker 2: a treatment, they've always got a story to tell. So yes, absolutely,
Speaker 2: I think what the CBT around health anxiety tries to
Speaker 2: do is just try and persuade you hard as it is,
Speaker 2: to only trust yourself in that regard. If you feel
Speaker 2: like something's wrong, take the appropriate action, but don't allow
Speaker 2: yourself to be kind of externally persuaded that as you say,
Speaker 2: you've got a headache, so you've got a brain tumor.
Speaker 2: If you've a headache felt normal and fine before, it's
Speaker 2: probably still normal and fine.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: It's just like I feel like that's the key to
Speaker 1: life though, right, is to just like think for yourself
Speaker 1: and not listen to the outside noise, like if we can.
Speaker 3: It's just like a lot easier said than done, you know.
Speaker 2: It really really is. And I also think that some
Speaker 2: of the tools that we have available to us today
Speaker 2: make that even harder. I think I included this in
Speaker 2: the book about how if you do a Google search,
Speaker 2: because the search results or the suggested search is tailored
Speaker 2: to what you've searched before and what it thinks you
Speaker 2: might want to see. If you type in does headache mean,
Speaker 2: it'll say things like brain cancer, miscarriage, death, rather than
Speaker 2: like dehydration, needs fresh air, should take a nap exactly,
Speaker 2: all of which I'm much more likely outcomes, but the
Speaker 2: scarier ones or what will get you to click what
Speaker 2: you keep you online longer. And that's what the company
Speaker 2: providing the search engine wants for you.
Speaker 3: I know that it really is.
Speaker 1: And that's I was going to ask you that, like,
Speaker 1: just through your research, have you found that health anxiety
Speaker 1: is worse now because we do have so much information
Speaker 1: than we had before.
Speaker 2: I mean, anecdotally, I feel like worse and also more prevalent,
Speaker 2: more people have it, and the people who have it
Speaker 2: have it worse. It's really hard to get hard data
Speaker 2: on the number of people out there with health anxiety.
Speaker 2: It's something that I really struggled with in the research actually,
Speaker 2: because a lot of it is reported differently in different
Speaker 2: countries and over different times, and it's all done on
Speaker 2: self reporting as well, on these different questionnaires and they
Speaker 2: change the questionnaires, so it's quite hard to compare and
Speaker 2: look at percentages, but it does seem very reasonable that
Speaker 2: there would be more people with health anxiety now, and
Speaker 2: also that just the constant availability of information about medical
Speaker 2: conditions would cause those same people to have it worse.
Speaker 2: It was interesting researching and looking back, though, I found
Speaker 2: some quite interesting references to similar anxieties as we might
Speaker 2: have now about the relationship this has with the Internet,
Speaker 2: with the wide availability of books and them being cheap
Speaker 2: and easy to consult in libraries and so on. And
Speaker 2: there's even a really funny satire of this in a
Speaker 2: comic novel from the late nineteenth century called Three Men
Speaker 2: in a Boat, in which one of the men, who
Speaker 2: is a hypochondriac, writes about how he went into a
Speaker 2: library worried about some symptoms. He had to look in
Speaker 2: a medical dictionary, and he left with an alphabetical list
Speaker 2: of ailments because the book convinced him that he had
Speaker 2: all of the things that it listed, which is not
Speaker 2: dissimilar to how you might feel after a long googling
Speaker 2: session or falling down a few Internet rabbits.
Speaker 1: It's a It's really interesting because we just went through
Speaker 1: this having lived whatever forty years of my life before
Speaker 1: the pandemic happened and then going through that, and you know,
Speaker 1: in my personal life as well as my professional life,
Speaker 1: I just know people that from all spectrums of like
Speaker 1: being a germaphobe, so to speak, like I'm absolutely not.
Speaker 1: I just like really don't care if I get blood
Speaker 1: on my hand, I just wash it off whatever. Whereas
Speaker 1: other people that are doing like a little biopsy in
Speaker 1: the lab put on like a biohazard level three suit
Speaker 1: just to.
Speaker 3: Like touch it.
Speaker 1: Or people that just work in pathology, I've seen they
Speaker 1: use tissues to open the door knobs and things like that.
Speaker 1: And I feel like those people already kind of had
Speaker 1: their thing, and I think that the pandemic like threw
Speaker 1: them over the edge big time. And I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you think that it's at this like all time
Speaker 1: time high because of things like the twenty four hour
Speaker 1: news cycle and there was like a ticker that was
Speaker 1: telling you every time a dead body showed up, and
Speaker 1: then social media talking people back and forth and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, Like is that impacting our mental health.
Speaker 3: As far as health anxiety anyway?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the fact that for months and months
Speaker 2: governments were encouraging or in some cases requiring, behavior that
Speaker 2: had previously only been the realm of you, as you say,
Speaker 2: extreme germophobes, so obviously mask wearing. But then people were
Speaker 2: doing things like cleaning all of their groceries when they
Speaker 2: got them back from the store, or I did that
Speaker 2: one myself, or cleaning obsessively cleaning surfaces. And there was
Speaker 2: a lot of very sensible chat about this is just
Speaker 2: hygiene theater. This doesn't actually have anything to do with COVID.
Speaker 2: This is just done to make you feel like something
Speaker 2: is being done. It doesn't actually have any on your
Speaker 2: chance of getting the condition, all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: and yet I think it did make people feel better
Speaker 2: in some ways. It gave them a sense of control, which,
Speaker 2: you know, who's to argue with that if it helps
Speaker 2: you in a difficult time. But yes, I do think
Speaker 2: the fact that all of these behaviors, previously fringe niche
Speaker 2: things suddenly became widespread, even required in some areas, and
Speaker 2: therefore people kind of incorporated it into their previous beliefs
Speaker 2: in a way that I don't think is necessarily going
Speaker 2: to be helpful in the long term.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I definitely felt victim to it at first,
Speaker 1: like the first week, you know, just oh, you should
Speaker 1: really wipe down your phone with alcohol after you go
Speaker 1: into the store and just this. And then I did
Speaker 1: it one day and I was like, why am I
Speaker 1: doing this right now? Like I just worked in a
Speaker 1: lab with blood and a hepatitis C in HIV like
Speaker 1: all the time all around me, and I would pick
Speaker 1: up a pen that had blood on it and not
Speaker 1: even like and just like carry on right, So I'm like,
Speaker 1: what this Hell's us any different kind of But I
Speaker 1: think just when you hear it all the time, it
Speaker 1: starts you start thinking like, well, is this just like
Speaker 1: totally different than anything else I've ever experienced kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And so don't beat yourself up for cleaning your groceries,
Speaker 1: because we've all been we were told to do it,
Speaker 1: like it's just that's that's how it was.
Speaker 2: We were told to do it. And I also think
Speaker 2: that there's this element of the CBT that they do
Speaker 2: for hypochondria where it's about doing something that you're afraid
Speaker 2: of and then waiting to see what the consequences are
Speaker 2: so as to prove to yourself essentially that actually it's
Speaker 2: not that bad. That the fear was much worse than
Speaker 2: the actual thing. And one of the CBT therapists that
Speaker 2: I interviewed for the book described this protocol that she
Speaker 2: does for people with OCD or extreme gemaphobia connected to
Speaker 2: their health anxiety, where if they're of say public transport,
Speaker 2: she'll have them take the bus, touch the handle, and
Speaker 2: then lick their hand, which is for someone with that
Speaker 2: problem just unthinkable, could not possibly do it. And then
Speaker 2: they do it, and then they wait a week like, actually,
Speaker 2: I didn't get sick, nothing happened, And then it's easier
Speaker 2: the next time to get on the bus and touch
Speaker 2: the handle because they know that that time. So I
Speaker 2: did feel a bit like that myself with COVID, that
Speaker 2: you can't possibly be the perfect kind of surgical, sweet
Speaker 2: scrub down of every single thing that's touched the outside world,
Speaker 2: and every time you don't die of that, it becomes
Speaker 2: a bit easier to maybe not clean the groceries every
Speaker 2: single time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's I always would vision like if you've
Speaker 1: ever seen these videos sometimes they show with like ultraviolet
Speaker 1: light on surfaces to show you where all the germs
Speaker 1: are and stuff. You're just like, no matter how much
Speaker 1: I wear gloves. How perfect I am at this? How
Speaker 1: may ask what I There's no way to avoid it.
Speaker 1: There's just not it's it's just it's just them. It's
Speaker 1: just not possible. So I think, even though you think like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I wipe this stuff down and I did this, and
Speaker 1: you live like it's it's just like it's because you
Speaker 1: were exposed to it. That's how life works, right, you
Speaker 1: really have not. No.
Speaker 2: I also thought a lot about My great uncle was
Speaker 2: a doctor. He was one of the first gps in
Speaker 2: the NHS. So he started practicing in nineteen forty five
Speaker 2: in a very rural area, and I remember going to
Speaker 2: visit him with my little sister when he was retired,
Speaker 2: and my sister had impetigo on her hand and it
Speaker 2: was getting worse and worse, and my mum asked him
Speaker 2: if he could recommend anything, and he said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: this is what you should go to the chemists and
Speaker 2: ask for. But also in the longer term, you need
Speaker 2: to just she needs to be eating dirt more. She
Speaker 2: needs to like sit under the table and just eat dirt.
Speaker 2: Because this is a condition that is helped, this propensity
Speaker 2: is by greater exposure to more bacteria, more viruses, more things,
Speaker 2: And I just I still remember all the time him
Speaker 2: just saying that she needs to eat dirt and talking
Speaker 2: about how that was a positive thing. So I tried
Speaker 2: to keep that in mind when the sort of worst
Speaker 2: of the gemophobia hygiene stuff was really getting to me
Speaker 2: during the pandemic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm kind of the same way.
Speaker 1: Like I have friends that they make their kids like
Speaker 1: wash their hands before they eat and stuff, and I'm like, no,
Speaker 1: don't wash your hands, just get it all in, like
Speaker 1: whatever you've been touching all day, wash them when they're
Speaker 1: soiled kind of thing.
Speaker 3: Like I'm not.
Speaker 1: I'm like a really big proponent of that, just because
Speaker 1: of everything I've learned in school. That just completely makes sense.
Speaker 1: Do you think that people are who have health anxiety, Like,
Speaker 1: is there is the reason for all different things? They're
Speaker 1: just scared they're going to get sick, or is it
Speaker 1: they're scared they're going to die or the two just
Speaker 1: kind of go hand in hand.
Speaker 2: I think the two go hand in hand. I do
Speaker 2: think hypochondria is a form of fearing mortality. I think
Speaker 2: ultimately that's what it's about. But I think it's a
Speaker 2: bit of a variant on that because you're afraid that
Speaker 2: you're going to die, and then you're afraid that before
Speaker 2: you're going to die, you're going to go through a
Speaker 2: really horrible, prolonged period of illness, hospitalization, all this other stuff.
Speaker 2: I think for people like me who have a serious
Speaker 2: pre existing condition in their past, that's part of it.
Speaker 2: You're quite specific about your fear, like I don't want
Speaker 2: to go back into a hospital and be in an
Speaker 2: isolation room for a month and have you know, noxious
Speaker 2: chemotherapy given to me. I'm very very specific about the
Speaker 2: things that I'm afraid of, really because I've experienced them
Speaker 2: and I don't want to have to experience them again.
Speaker 2: And so I do think that it's kind of fear
Speaker 2: of illness and then fear of death in that order.
Speaker 2: But something that writing the book I feel like allowed
Speaker 2: me to see a bit more clearly that I had
Speaker 2: really understood before, is that the fear of death part
Speaker 2: is not without cause, because we will all die. So
Speaker 2: actually being able to separate that and sort of see
Speaker 2: it from a different perspective and just say, well, I
Speaker 2: will die one day. Is this all this anxiety, all
Speaker 2: this fear, all this concern and preparation about illness. Is
Speaker 2: this how I want to have spent that time? It
Speaker 2: could happen anytime. So I did find that writing about
Speaker 2: health anxiety gave me a renewed appreciation for my mortality
Speaker 2: as it were, and it did help to lessen the
Speaker 2: anxiety some.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I feel like that too.
Speaker 1: Like I used to have a lot of anxiety about
Speaker 1: death when I was younger, and once I went to
Speaker 1: school for it and started writing about it and just
Speaker 1: really just trying to figure out why things happen and
Speaker 1: learn about it, it makes it a little bit easier
Speaker 1: to figure out that this is just going to happen
Speaker 1: to lots of people just because your anatomy and your
Speaker 1: physiology is not going to work perfectly all the time.
Speaker 3: And even with one of.
Speaker 1: My kids had a little bit of death anxiety a
Speaker 1: few years ago, and I guess my approach worked because
Speaker 1: it kind of went away. I just was like she
Speaker 1: would just be like, I'm just scared I'm going to die,
Speaker 1: And I was like, you are going to die. You're
Speaker 1: going to die one day, like and so am I,
Speaker 1: and so is everybody around you. Every single person you
Speaker 1: know right now is going to die. And this is
Speaker 1: when she was like six or seven years old, you know.
Speaker 1: And but I said, but it won't be if you
Speaker 1: just live healthy and stuff, it won't be for a
Speaker 1: very long time. So you don't need to worry about
Speaker 1: that right now. And I think a lot of people,
Speaker 1: and I even saw this during the pandemic especially, It's
Speaker 1: just like there was like this weird thing that like
Speaker 1: nobody should die ever, and everybody just needs to know that,
Speaker 1: like that's going to happen for people all the time.
Speaker 1: And really, when you think back to like back in
Speaker 1: the day where the average life span was like thirty
Speaker 1: seven years old, people living to eighty and stuff is remarkable,
Speaker 1: you know, and certainly things are going to take them
Speaker 1: out just because they're basically pumped alive with drugs as
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, I had my own experience like you and
Speaker 2: your daughter, where my grandmother died when I was five,
Speaker 2: and my mother and I flew out. She lived in
Speaker 2: South Africa. We flew out for her funeral, and my
Speaker 2: mom had done a really good way, she'd done a
Speaker 2: really good job of like preparing me for everything that
Speaker 2: was going to happen. But the one thing she'd forgotten
Speaker 2: about was that my grandmother was going to be cremated
Speaker 2: after her funeral, which was her wish. And so after
Speaker 2: the funeral of them family go with to the crematorium,
Speaker 2: and you know, everyone knows what that's like. I was five,
Speaker 2: and I was like, what are they doing? What are
Speaker 2: they doing to grandma? No one had explained the concept
Speaker 2: of cremation to me, and that was the particular part
Speaker 2: of it that I was absolutely horrified by. But then
Speaker 2: afterwards she gave me the same talk that you did.
Speaker 2: She was like, you know, this was her choice, this
Speaker 2: is what she wanted. She knew she was going to die,
Speaker 2: and she chose this option, and we're just carrying out
Speaker 2: her wishes and so on, and so I really went
Speaker 2: through the whole sort of cycle with that thinking it
Speaker 2: was awful, thinking how could you do that to someone?
Speaker 2: How could that possibly happen to me? Could that happen
Speaker 2: to other people? And then coming out the other side
Speaker 2: of oh, I see how actually this is. We're just
Speaker 2: we're fulfilling her wishes. And she had a finite number
Speaker 2: of options at this stage and she chose this one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I do think that being upfront with people,
Speaker 2: even children and quite young children, they can handle it,
Speaker 2: and it's actually better than lying to them. It's better
Speaker 2: than pretending. I saw some stuff when I was in
Speaker 2: hospital because I was seventeen when I was diagnosed, I
Speaker 2: was classified as a child, even though because I was
Speaker 2: under eighteen, even though I was two months away from
Speaker 2: being eighteen, and you know, to all extents and purposes,
Speaker 2: had the same cognitive abilities I would have after my birthday.
Speaker 2: But so I was kind of on some children's wards
Speaker 2: and stuff, and I I saw the different approaches people took.
Speaker 2: You know, some parents visiting their children in the wood
Speaker 2: were very like, it's all sunshine and rainbows, and others
Speaker 2: were very like, you're going to have surgery tomorrow. Here
Speaker 2: are the risks. We hope they won't happen, but these
Speaker 2: are the risks. And those are the parents that had
Speaker 2: chosen to be fully transparent with their children. And those
Speaker 2: kids didn't cry, they didn't feel like they'd been lied to,
Speaker 2: they didn't feel like they'd been let into something that
Speaker 2: they weren't prepared for. So it's a difficult choice to
Speaker 2: have to make, but I don't think you can never
Speaker 2: go wrong by being completely honest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and especially because I mean the chances of your kid.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: In my life, it was really weird that I only
Speaker 1: had a couple of family members die before I was
Speaker 1: twenty years old. But sometimes kids have to deal with
Speaker 1: like you did, like a grandparent dying very young or
Speaker 1: something like that, and you don't wanted to kind catch
Speaker 1: them off guard because I feel like they can go
Speaker 1: down a rabbit hole like real fast if they're not
Speaker 1: preparing for that, and then all of a sudden someone
Speaker 1: that's really close with them is gone one day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. I think the kind of healthier attitude you
Speaker 2: can cultivate towards mortality the younger you are, I think
Speaker 2: the easier you will find those hard things, and probably
Speaker 2: the more you'll get out of life, because you'll understand
Speaker 2: very early on that you only are going to get
Speaker 2: so much of it, and therefore you need to choose
Speaker 2: what you're going to do, don't put things off, and
Speaker 2: so on. So yeah, I do think it's best if
Speaker 2: people know the deal.
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Speaker 1: Join the grossroom dot com today. Have you found hypercontraction
Speaker 1: more common in certain demographics like certain age groups, male, female,
Speaker 1: certain races, or certain geographic locations like I'm sure that
Speaker 1: it's probably higher in people that work in the medical field.
Speaker 1: That would just be That would be my theory, But
Speaker 1: do you have you seen trends in other areas.
Speaker 2: So the only objective data that I've seen about this
Speaker 2: is from the World Health Organization, and it's to do
Speaker 2: with access to healthcare, and they're saying that there's a
Speaker 2: there seems to be a strong association between people who
Speaker 2: don't have access to healthcare have a higher level of
Speaker 2: health anxiety, which makes total logical sense to me that
Speaker 2: if you're not able to get things checked out by
Speaker 2: a medical professional, if you're not able to be sure
Speaker 2: that you're getting good advice and get that advice whenever
Speaker 2: you want it, your level of anxiety would be higher.
Speaker 2: Then anecdotally, I think, yeah, there's this thing called medical
Speaker 2: student syndrome, which is this idea that everyone, or a
Speaker 2: high proportion of people, at some point during medical studies
Speaker 2: will develop anxiety that they have one of the things
Speaker 2: that they've been studying that just seems to be a
Speaker 2: product of the extreme and rapid exposure to so many
Speaker 2: different possibilities in the way that the human body can
Speaker 2: malfunction that your brain just starts to take them on
Speaker 2: in that way. Then there's also some stuff which is
Speaker 2: a bit harder to define, but groups where there has
Speaker 2: been historically medical bias or a lack of seriousness given
Speaker 2: to their reporting of symptoms and pain, So women, non
Speaker 2: white people, indigenous folks, basically anyone from a traditionally marginalized group,
Speaker 2: it seems to be that there are higher levels of
Speaker 2: health anxiety there. But it's really hard to untangle from
Speaker 2: what is health anxiety, what is hypochondria, and what is
Speaker 2: people just not taking their illnesses seriously when they present
Speaker 2: with them. So you get in the gender area, you
Speaker 2: get into all this stuff about women just being quote
Speaker 2: hysterical about their health or having hysterics or having the
Speaker 2: vapors rather than maybe having a serious health condition that
Speaker 2: just isn't being tested for or treated or considered seriously.
Speaker 2: I found that the condition endometriosis is a really interesting
Speaker 2: case study for this. It's a condition that only affects women,
Speaker 2: and it's been historically very under researched. It just hasn't
Speaker 2: been something that a lot of money has been poured
Speaker 2: into understanding. And so people who do successfully get a
Speaker 2: diagnosis of endometriosis, I think the average is something like
Speaker 2: five years it takes people to get a diagnosis. So
Speaker 2: that's a lot of going to the doctor and saying
Speaker 2: I'm having these problems, I'm having these symptoms, what do
Speaker 2: you think it can be? And being told to just
Speaker 2: go away and come back if it's still a problem
Speaker 2: in six months, and that kind of thing. So again,
Speaker 2: it feels reasonable to me that in that situation you
Speaker 2: would experience anxiety about your health.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, I've had one of my best friends
Speaker 1: had this happen, that she was having all of this
Speaker 1: like pelvic pain and crazy bloating and everything, and you know,
Speaker 1: she was going to her regular gynecologists who just kept
Speaker 1: blowing her off and basically telling her to take motrin.
Speaker 1: And she finally went to because I was telling her, like,
Speaker 1: it sounds like you might have endometriosis.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I would say that it is kind of hard to
Speaker 1: diagnose because you can't really see it great on imaging
Speaker 1: and you have to go in and do a laparoscopy
Speaker 1: basically to go in and look around to see if
Speaker 1: a person has it. But she went to a specialist
Speaker 1: doctor who did that for her, and she had it
Speaker 1: all over the place and got surgery to remove certain patches,
Speaker 1: which isn't always the great the greatest, but it did.
Speaker 1: It worked for her for years. And I hear this
Speaker 1: all the time, especially with that particular condition, and it's
Speaker 1: almost upsetting to think that a person goes into the
Speaker 1: field of gynecology to specialize in female genital health and
Speaker 1: then like just tells you to take tile and all
Speaker 1: or something, right, It's kind of messed up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And I think there are lots of examples.
Speaker 2: I mean, I heard one recently from a friend. We
Speaker 2: were just talking about something else and she brought this
Speaker 2: up with when she was a teenager, she was having
Speaker 2: serious pelvic pain around her period. Mother took her to
Speaker 2: the doctor. Doctor was like, oh, that's just period, Paine,
Speaker 2: She's just having pelvic pain. She's having period. Pain, and
Speaker 2: I was like, I don't think she should be passing
Speaker 2: out and throwing up, you know, every time this happens,
Speaker 2: just doesn't feel normal. A lot of persistence and seeing
Speaker 2: a different doctor later, it turns out she had a
Speaker 2: really big cyst, benign cyst that was pressing on things
Speaker 2: and that was what was causing the really extreme pain,
Speaker 2: and she had it for months longer than she needed
Speaker 2: to have. If only when they'd first gone to report this,
Speaker 2: it had not been dismissed as oh, that's just what
Speaker 2: periods involve. So yes, I think there is a very
Speaker 2: difficult area of health anxiety that is not really hypochondria
Speaker 2: in the sense that a person does actually have a genuine,
Speaker 2: identifiable illness, but for a variety of reasons, including bias
Speaker 2: and incompetence, it's not being investigated and discovered, and they're
Speaker 2: being told that there's nothing there when actually there is.
Speaker 2: And I can imagine that being so distressing and cognitively
Speaker 2: difficult to just rationalize for yourself.
Speaker 1: In my book, I have over one hundred cases, and
Speaker 1: if you read, the genuine theme for all of these
Speaker 1: cases is this, it's the same kind of thing like
Speaker 1: they had this, they got blown off. It's really kind
Speaker 1: of amazing, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, And I think that's something else I took
Speaker 2: away from this project was that you just you have
Speaker 2: in the same way that you have to try and
Speaker 2: cut yourself off from external anxiety, from catching conditions from
Speaker 2: hearing about them on the news, you also have to
Speaker 2: really believe your own feelings and sensations. And you know,
Speaker 2: if you go to the doctor and they say, oh,
Speaker 2: that sounds like that, that's nothing, and you don't agree,
Speaker 2: you have to say, I disagree, Please look again, or
Speaker 2: is there someone else I can speak to? And of
Speaker 2: course that's much easier to do if you're able to
Speaker 2: pay for her second opinion and all these other things,
Speaker 2: but you have to have the confidence in yourself to
Speaker 2: do it.
Speaker 1: So you were saying earlier that there definitely seems to
Speaker 1: be an association with people that don't have access to
Speaker 1: healthcare having higher health anxiety.
Speaker 3: Do you I think things like modern day.
Speaker 1: Things that have been happening, like screening tests for like
Speaker 1: colonoscopies and now even like Kardashians paid to get full
Speaker 1: body MRIs just to kind of see if anything's wrong.
Speaker 1: That's definitely not like a normal screening test. That's something
Speaker 1: you'd have to pay for at this point. But do
Speaker 1: you think things like that ease people's anxiety?
Speaker 2: I screamed when I saw that on the Kardashians, when
Speaker 2: I saw Chris Jenna paying to have like a full
Speaker 2: body MRI scan just because and then being so happy
Speaker 2: when it didn't find anything. I think there's Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: two different things here. The first is what you might
Speaker 2: call public health programs, where healthcare providers mandate that you
Speaker 2: all strongly recommend that you have things like colonoscopies and
Speaker 2: perhaps smears and prostate exams at certain ages and at
Speaker 2: certain intervals because that's what the research suggests will help
Speaker 2: catch possible instances of disease early. And then there's elective
Speaker 2: extra scanning like the full body scans and so on.
Speaker 2: What was interesting to me when I looked into the
Speaker 2: public health angle of it is that there's really been
Speaker 2: a change in consensus about that that when it first
Speaker 2: became possible to really test for these things at scale
Speaker 2: without it costing vast amounts of money, governments and healthcare
Speaker 2: authorities were like, this is amazing. You know, we can
Speaker 2: just test everybody all the time for everything. And then
Speaker 2: no one will ever have to have a serious illness.
Speaker 2: And so they really went strongly for it, and more
Speaker 2: recently there's been a bit of a pullback from that,
Speaker 2: some recognition that actually you need to be sure that
Speaker 2: you're testing people kind of at the right times and
Speaker 2: at the right frequency, because testing too much can result
Speaker 2: in a lot of just stress and potentially mental health
Speaker 2: problems from people who get serious anxiety about contact with
Speaker 2: medical tests. Also, unnecessary biopsies of things that you know
Speaker 2: look a bit strange on imaging then actually are totally fine,
Speaker 2: and if you'd never seen them on the image, they
Speaker 2: would have just resolved themselves without anyone ever knowing. And
Speaker 2: just the general kind of looking at the population level outcome,
Speaker 2: like how much colon cancer are we preventing versus how
Speaker 2: much trauma are we causing with unnecessary colonoscopies. So there
Speaker 2: has been I think a bit of fine tuning of
Speaker 2: that kind of thing to try and make sure that
Speaker 2: the balance of that is always right. With the elective
Speaker 2: full body scans and stuff. I think that obviously, if
Speaker 2: you've got the money, you can do what you want.
Speaker 2: But I think from a purely from a health anxiety perspective,
Speaker 2: I don't think they do anybody any good because I
Speaker 2: don't think that in a very rare incidence, maybe it'll
Speaker 2: come back saying you're perfect, you're brilliant. Nothing. We didn't
Speaker 2: see anything at all like you are like the title
Speaker 2: of my book, you're a body made of glass. We
Speaker 2: saw perfectly through you. We didn't see anything that's caused
Speaker 2: for concern. But I think in reality, in most cases
Speaker 2: they will see something. It won't necessarily be something you
Speaker 2: were even aware of. It might not be something that
Speaker 2: was causing you any trouble or is ever going to
Speaker 2: cause you any trouble, but it did show up on it,
Speaker 2: you might end up getting further tests, you might end
Speaker 2: up spending more money, you might end up going through
Speaker 2: unnecessary procedures, all because you elected to do that that scan.
Speaker 2: So I'd say my personal view is not really something
Speaker 2: we have access to in the UK. And anyway, I
Speaker 2: think my personal view is that unless a doctor I
Speaker 2: trust is telling me it's a good idea, I don't
Speaker 2: think I would go anywhere near it.
Speaker 1: You're right, actually, because like for example, right now, I
Speaker 1: don't have any concerns about my KARATEID arteries in my opinion,
Speaker 1: they're fine. Right. If I go get one of this
Speaker 1: scan and it's like, oh, you're starting to get karateid
Speaker 1: stenosis and like you're at risk for a stroke in
Speaker 1: a few years, then I would be like, oh, great,
Speaker 1: now I learned about this, and you know, I would
Speaker 1: be like worried about it all the time, even though
Speaker 1: it's not something that maybe has to be addressed right away.
Speaker 1: Just knowing that that could be a problem in like
Speaker 1: five years from now or something would just give me anxiety.
Speaker 2: So I get that, Yeah, yeah, I think that is
Speaker 2: the overwhelming product of them, is extra anxiety. And I've
Speaker 2: also heard of people getting results from them and then
Speaker 2: making connections that aren't necessarily sound. So you know, they
Speaker 2: get told that, oh, we see some like something with
Speaker 2: the blood vessels in your brain, and then the person's like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: I do have terrible migraines. Could this be related? And
Speaker 2: they start building this whole story that isn't necessarily true
Speaker 2: and isn't easily verifiable without serious surgery of the kind
Speaker 2: that no one's going to want to do, and it
Speaker 2: all becomes further material for the health anxiety to feed on,
Speaker 2: which had they never gone and got the scan would
Speaker 2: they never would have known about.
Speaker 1: Have you heard about these apps that they're coming out
Speaker 1: with that are diagnosing people Like I just read about
Speaker 1: one a couple weeks ago that someone is making one
Speaker 1: for sexually transmitted infections in men, so they could take
Speaker 1: a picture of their penis and they could It just
Speaker 1: gives them like a thumbs up or a thumbs down,
Speaker 1: like thumbs up, you're safe to have sex. Thumbs down
Speaker 1: is like you better go get that checked out. They
Speaker 1: don't really specify what it is, but they're like, something
Speaker 1: doesn't look right. I feel like they're trying to make
Speaker 1: these kinds of things. I heard Google was making one
Speaker 1: for skin lesions, so people that find a bump and
Speaker 1: it's a Saturday night, they don't want to have to
Speaker 1: wait until Monday to go to the doctor and find out,
Speaker 1: like they could learn right away if they take a
Speaker 1: picture and upload it to this AI technology. Do you
Speaker 1: think that that's gonna again? I just feel like it's
Speaker 1: like the same thing. There's like nothing that's going to
Speaker 1: make it get better.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I feel the same about it. I hadn't
Speaker 2: heard of the STI one, but it doesn't surprise me.
Speaker 2: I think There's been a few different attempts with this
Speaker 2: over the last few years. The most recent is the
Speaker 2: kind of machine learning AI aspect of it, where they
Speaker 2: claim that, oh, you know, we can train a product
Speaker 2: to recognize the difference between a cancerous lesion and a
Speaker 2: benign one or whatever. But if you think back to
Speaker 2: something like Elizabeth Holmes and Theronos, that's kind of what
Speaker 2: she always claiming she could do, is you know, a
Speaker 2: pinprick of blood, she could diagnose a vast array of
Speaker 2: different conditions that you've never been able to diagnose with
Speaker 2: that little material before. And then now you can also
Speaker 2: get these home vitamin and hormone tests that again with
Speaker 2: like a relatively small blood sample, they claim to be
Speaker 2: able to find all these underlying problems for you. And
Speaker 2: I don't think it's ever it's ever gonna do anything
Speaker 2: apart from you know, it's either going to say you're
Speaker 2: you're fine, you're great, in which case what was the
Speaker 2: point in the first place, Or it's gonna say you
Speaker 2: should go to the doctor. The app is never going
Speaker 2: to actually give you, give you a prescription, or make
Speaker 2: you a surgery appointment or anything. So maybe you should
Speaker 2: have just gone to the doctor in the first place.
Speaker 1: I know, right, and imagine, like like my family, doctors
Speaker 1: closed on Fridays. So it's like, imagine something happens on
Speaker 1: Thursday night and then you have to wait four days.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, this app has now told
Speaker 1: you like something's not right. It would just make it
Speaker 1: even worse.
Speaker 2: I think, do you absolutely? I do? I do feel
Speaker 2: that thing about the doctor's office being closed. I mean
Speaker 2: I once had a very ridiculous situation where it was
Speaker 2: a long holiday weekend in the UK and on the
Speaker 2: on Friday night, I'd started noticing my hair was falling
Speaker 2: out at what felt like a much higher rate than
Speaker 2: was normal, Like you shouldn't be able to just like
Speaker 2: pull handfuls of it out by the Sunday night, and
Speaker 2: everything's closed on Monday as well because it's a holiday.
Speaker 2: By Sunday night, I'm like, I've got to talk to
Speaker 2: someone about this. So I called the sort of official
Speaker 2: non emergency helpline for the NHS in the UK, and
Speaker 2: I end up with this call operator, this guy, and
Speaker 2: he's just reading out responses that the computer is feed
Speaker 2: him and it doesn't have an option for one if
Speaker 2: pulling out handfuls of hair. So it just keeps taking
Speaker 2: us round and round in a circle until he eventually
Speaker 2: asks me the question are you currently bleeding? And I
Speaker 2: think this was meant to be a triarge question, because
Speaker 2: if someone calls that number with an actual, you know,
Speaker 2: blood spilling emergency, they're going to dispatch an ambulance. I
Speaker 2: was on my period, so I was like, yes, I
Speaker 2: am currently bleeding. Oh my god. The co operator went
Speaker 2: completely mad, started trying to call paramedics, and it actually
Speaker 2: took me quite It was quite difficult to like talk
Speaker 2: him down and persuade him, by which time by the
Speaker 2: time I'd calmed him down and called off the paramedics
Speaker 2: and stuff, I was like, I think this can wait
Speaker 2: till Tuesday morning. To be honest, I think the hair thing,
Speaker 2: I'm good. Never mind the whole chaos that doing that
Speaker 2: tried to cause really gave me some perspective on it.
Speaker 2: And I was like, I know, this felt unbearable and
Speaker 2: like I couldn't wait till Tuesday. I think it can now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, Like and what I mean, what are they
Speaker 1: really going to do anyway for that? It's not I mean,
Speaker 1: it is an emergency when you're losing your hair just
Speaker 1: because cosmetically it bothers you, right, but like you'll survive.
Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Have you come across cases where people are the opposite
Speaker 1: of hypochondriacs, so they just they just completely don't get
Speaker 1: treatment ever, I mean usually in the hospital. It would
Speaker 1: either be like people that don't have insurance, which you
Speaker 1: could understand because they like, at least in the US,
Speaker 1: it could cost you a lot of money if you
Speaker 1: can go to the hospital and get treatment, but it'll
Speaker 1: cost you if you don't have coverage. But then there's
Speaker 1: just like this whole other subset of people that came
Speaker 1: in with completely like this. I'll never forget this one
Speaker 1: messtectomy that we got one time double mestectomy and the
Speaker 1: tumor of.
Speaker 3: On the one.
Speaker 1: Breast was so large it was like bigger than her bob,
Speaker 1: Like I can't I don't even know how she could
Speaker 1: have worn a bra.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't even a fit.
Speaker 1: Like it just was like having two boobs on one
Speaker 1: boob and just thinking like, how how did this get
Speaker 1: to this point? How did you finally decide to come
Speaker 1: in here right now when this thing is like growing
Speaker 1: through your skin and smells and so have you seen
Speaker 1: stuff like.
Speaker 2: That, I'm not aware of a sort of official condition
Speaker 2: that is the opposite of hypochondria in that sense. I
Speaker 2: don't know what you might call it, kind of medical
Speaker 2: blindness or just a total refusal to experience what's going
Speaker 2: on in your body. It might you might think of
Speaker 2: it perhaps as a subset of body dysmorphia. You know,
Speaker 2: someone's so completely dissociated from their body that they just
Speaker 2: don't experience what's happening in it. I did have an
Speaker 2: incident personally that is a bit similar to what you're
Speaker 2: describing with that misectomy patient, where the initial consultations that
Speaker 2: led to my diagnosis with Hudkin's nymphoma. I had this
Speaker 2: one with the oncologist after he'd sort of given the
Speaker 2: diagnosis of the original biopsy. He was trying to get
Speaker 2: more information so he could start creating a treatment plant,
Speaker 2: and he said something like, apart from that mass in
Speaker 2: your neck, have you noticed anything else like that around
Speaker 2: your body? And I went completely horrified because I'd not
Speaker 2: noticed the mass in my neck that he was talking about,
Speaker 2: and with hindsight, I should have done. It was nearly
Speaker 2: as big as a tennis ball. It was like by
Speaker 2: my collar bone and like him. You can see it
Speaker 2: in photographs of me. In the months preceding this diagnosis,
Speaker 2: I'd not noticed it at all. It had grown so
Speaker 2: slowly and so gradually that I guess my mind had
Speaker 2: just accepted the changes in my body as being that's
Speaker 2: just my body, that's just what it does. It It
Speaker 2: didn't register as an intruder or something out of the ordinary.
Speaker 2: So bizarre as it might seem, I can kind of
Speaker 2: maybe understand how that could happen, although that doesn't sound
Speaker 2: like a much more extreme version of it, but.
Speaker 1: The same exact thing just happened to my father in law,
Speaker 1: Like he had throw cancer, and when I went to
Speaker 1: visit him right after he got diagnosed, I was like
Speaker 1: palpating his neck and it was I could feel it.
Speaker 1: Like as soon as I went like that, I was like, whoa,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you didn't feel he's like he's like,
Speaker 1: I mean, were solid there.
Speaker 3: But I didn't really think anything of it.
Speaker 1: And I was like, you didn't think a giant mass
Speaker 1: growing in your neck? Was that?
Speaker 3: It was just like funny, like messing with them.
Speaker 1: But I could see especially in your case though, because
Speaker 1: you're saying when you had the recurrence of the Hodgkins.
Speaker 3: This is when you didn't see it.
Speaker 2: No, the first time, it originally okay, so with the
Speaker 2: original diagnosis, and I think if I was trying to
Speaker 2: find an explanation for it, i'd say it's because the
Speaker 2: idea of having cancer was like just so far from
Speaker 2: my mind it didn't even register as a possibility. So
Speaker 2: I guess therefore the lump just didn't register. And I
Speaker 2: was like, oh, I guess this is just like the
Speaker 2: thing bodies do sometimes they become a bit squishy in
Speaker 2: places where they weren't squishy. I don't know. Of course.
Speaker 2: Then the second time, when I was sent off to college,
Speaker 2: and then I was obsessively checking because it was very
Speaker 2: distressing to realize that you kind of had visible cancer
Speaker 2: for weeks, if not months, and just not noticed. So
Speaker 2: after that, I was like, well, that's never happening again.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be very sure that I know exactly
Speaker 2: what's going on. And that's how I found the recurrence
Speaker 2: of it quite early, because I was checking.
Speaker 1: Basically, Yeah, I mean, that's good that you were like that,
Speaker 1: because that's why you have such a good prognosis.
Speaker 3: I think, because you found that right away, and.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't beat yourself up over that though, maybe because
Speaker 1: I feel like you were seventeen, like who thinks about
Speaker 1: You're just like thinking about like having a good time
Speaker 1: in high school and this and that, Like you're not
Speaker 1: really checked into your body that much at that point, I.
Speaker 2: Think, definitely not. I think I was also especially not
Speaker 2: in tune with my body because I was not someone
Speaker 2: who was athletic. I didn't do like dance or anything
Speaker 2: else where you are like training your awareness of your
Speaker 2: body or anything like that. So I say, in contrast
Speaker 2: with my younger sister, who was like a gymnast and stuff,
Speaker 2: she definitely would have noticed just because she worked so
Speaker 2: much with her body. She would have noticed any difference immediately.
Speaker 2: That was just not how I lived. What was very
Speaker 2: interesting in the diagnostic process was that when my mum
Speaker 2: first took me to the doctor was not because she'd
Speaker 2: noticed a lump or anything. It was because I had
Speaker 2: really bad fatigue and some other stuff that she just
Speaker 2: thought it would be a good idea to talk to
Speaker 2: a doctor about. The doctor was initially, and I think
Speaker 2: this is totally reasonable given the age I was, he
Speaker 2: was pretty sure I had glandula fever, which I think
Speaker 2: is quite common in girls that age and the most
Speaker 2: likely explanation for the set of symptoms we'd given him.
Speaker 2: So he did the blood test for that sent it off.
Speaker 2: When that came back negative, you should have seen how
Speaker 2: fast that man moved like he was like, oh, this
Speaker 2: is not and suddenly I was the same day getting
Speaker 2: x rays all this other stuff, and there was a
Speaker 2: real even though I didn't know it was like cancer yet,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh, this is all stepped up like
Speaker 2: five years, which that was. That was very interesting, actually,
Speaker 2: how how fast the tone of the whole thing changed.
Speaker 3: It is interesting.
Speaker 1: My my little one, who's now nine, has a an
Speaker 1: autoimmune disease of her bones. And when we first got diagnosed,
Speaker 1: because you know here too in America, wherever you're at,
Speaker 1: it's like it takes weeks to get doctor's appointments and
Speaker 1: it's always I couldn't believe what happened when like she
Speaker 1: went for knee pain and then it was like she
Speaker 1: got I brought her to the local place to get
Speaker 1: the X ray. Within twenty four hours, I got a
Speaker 1: phone call for them. They said, come back, we want
Speaker 1: to do our other leg And then I got a
Speaker 1: phone call from my pediatrician and they were like, we
Speaker 1: made an appointment for you at eight o'clock in the
Speaker 1: morning to see the children's hospital specialist. Like, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of funny when there's like really emergencies, how fast
Speaker 1: it can move.
Speaker 3: I've never experienced that.
Speaker 2: Besides that, no, it sounds very similar, absolutely. And what
Speaker 2: was funny as well is that after the diagnosis is
Speaker 2: all complete and I'd started treatment, and I was copied
Speaker 2: in on all of the letters that the different doctors
Speaker 2: were exchanging, and I got this c seed version of
Speaker 2: a letter that the cancer specialist had sent to the GP,
Speaker 2: and it was congratulating him on how quickly he'd like
Speaker 2: escalated everything because he'd done it like way ahead of
Speaker 2: the sort of NHS benchmark for this and all this
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and you're saying like this is all
Speaker 2: like testament to your good judgment and like well done,
Speaker 2: everyone involved work really well. And I remember reading this
Speaker 2: At the time, I was very like teenage and zelkey
Speaker 2: about the whole cancer thing, and I was like, why
Speaker 2: is he getting like special praise for ruining my life?
Speaker 2: But obviously that's not quite how it was. And now
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful that that doctor did that, But at
Speaker 2: the time that was my reaction.
Speaker 3: Oh man, I totally get that.
Speaker 1: So but aside from this book that you have that,
Speaker 1: it's just it's awesome by the way I think it's
Speaker 1: it's I think it could like so many people could
Speaker 1: relate to it, and I think that a lot of
Speaker 1: people don't talk about it as much. But everybody you
Speaker 1: know is always freaking out about something, and the Google
Speaker 1: thing is real, right, But aside from that, you have
Speaker 1: this podcast that's called She Done It?
Speaker 3: How did you? What made you decide to start that?
Speaker 2: So? She Done It is about what's called Golden Age
Speaker 2: detective fiction, which is detective fiction published roughly between the
Speaker 2: end of the First World War and the start of
Speaker 2: the second, where there was this golden age, this incredible
Speaker 2: proliferation and popularity for what we now call like the
Speaker 2: classic crime novel, the traditional Who Done It? The Agatha Christie,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. And I just always loved those books.
Speaker 2: But the more I sort of learned about them, and
Speaker 2: the more I read beyond the famous popular Agatha Christie ones,
Speaker 2: the more I realized that there were dozens, if not
Speaker 2: hundreds of authors writing this stuff at this time, and
Speaker 2: they were doing things like incorporating real life cases from
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and a few decades earlier into their fiction.
Speaker 2: And then this fiction was being read by hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people, the majority of them women, and it
Speaker 2: started to seem to me like this was a really
Speaker 2: interesting piece of social history, This was really interesting force
Speaker 2: of popular culture that ended up in a lot of
Speaker 2: people's lives. And of course we still read a lot
Speaker 2: of those books today, they still get made into films
Speaker 2: and TV shows. So I really just wanted an excuse
Speaker 2: to find out more about this and learn, I suppose,
Speaker 2: And so yeah, that's why I started it. And I've
Speaker 2: been going five years in counting now, and people say
Speaker 2: to me, like, isn't this just incredible niche? You talk
Speaker 2: about these books mostly from Britain, although there are some
Speaker 2: writers from other countries as well. Write you talk about
Speaker 2: these writers that wrote in this very specific niche and
Speaker 2: this very specific little piece of time, And it's true.
Speaker 2: But I've been doing an episode every other week for
Speaker 2: five years and I still feel like I have only
Speaker 2: just scratched the surface of all it has to tell me.
Speaker 2: And also one of those writers is one of the
Speaker 2: best selling novelists of all time, who's ever lived, Agatha Christie.
Speaker 2: So I don't feel like it's that limited as a
Speaker 2: scope of a project, really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's the whole point of podcast because otherwise
Speaker 1: you could just listen. I mean, before a podcast, it
Speaker 1: was like there's radio shows or TV shows and they're
Speaker 1: more general usually, And that's what's cool because really, if
Speaker 1: you're interested in anything in the world and you just
Speaker 1: go on the podcast app and search for it, like
Speaker 1: some podcasts is going to pop up that you would
Speaker 1: whether it's taking care of plants or looking at.
Speaker 3: True crime or whatever.
Speaker 1: Like there's there's something for everyone, and I think that's
Speaker 1: cool that you have your own thing, you know, and
Speaker 1: there's stuff an interest.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what's been really interesting about it is that
Speaker 2: I didn't start it with any prospect of it being
Speaker 2: like a work project. Really, it was very much just
Speaker 2: a hobby thing. I was making podcasts professionally for other companies,
Speaker 2: mostly about current affairs and politics because that was my
Speaker 2: journalistic background. So this was like my fun side project,
Speaker 2: and thousands of people started turning up and listening to it,
Speaker 2: to the point where I was like, oh, maybe this
Speaker 2: is actually something that people other than me just care about.
Speaker 2: And now the podcast is distributed by the BBC, Like
Speaker 2: it's it's really kind of found an audience in a
Speaker 2: way that I did not predict.
Speaker 1: See, I would predict that because I think my mom
Speaker 1: actually just wrote an article on my website about this
Speaker 1: fascination with like the true crime mystery thing with women.
Speaker 1: It's like very strong and the true Crime podcast and all.
Speaker 1: There's like a certain age group of women that are
Speaker 1: into it, and my mom is in her she's in
Speaker 1: her mid sixties, and she was talking about like reading
Speaker 1: all those types of books when she was younger and
Speaker 1: how it kind of transformed into, you know, being obsessed
Speaker 1: with murders today and stuff like that, because it's just
Speaker 1: like a thing women like whether it's like maybe they're
Speaker 1: just it's the same. It's it's almost kind of same
Speaker 1: as health anxiety in a way that there's this there's
Speaker 1: this anxiety of like something really bad happening and you
Speaker 1: hear it happen to other people and that gives you
Speaker 1: some kind of interest and also just like maybe not
Speaker 1: having just like a more normal life and it being
Speaker 1: a little boring and like wanting to read stuff that's
Speaker 1: a little bit more dramatic and exciting. So I think
Speaker 1: it's I think it's awesome what you're doing.
Speaker 2: Oh thank you. Yeah, I really enjoy it, and it's
Speaker 2: it's really it's really interesting and endlessly fascinating to be
Speaker 2: how many other people enjoy it as well.
Speaker 1: Besides your book and your podcast and you have another
Speaker 1: book to what's your other book called.
Speaker 2: My first book was called The Way to the Sea
Speaker 2: that came out in twenty nineteen, and that is the
Speaker 2: subtitle of it is The Forgotten Histories of the Thames Estuary.
Speaker 2: So it's a very different kind of book, same nonfiction
Speaker 2: type genre, but it's a memoir about sailing and growing
Speaker 2: up in this particular part of the UK around the Thames,
Speaker 2: because I had this somewhat unusual situation where my parents
Speaker 2: are from South Africa and they came to the UK
Speaker 2: in the early eighties on a boat that they built themselves.
Speaker 2: They sailed from South from Cape Town to England and
Speaker 2: that's kind of how our family exists in the way
Speaker 2: that it does.
Speaker 3: So that's so cool.
Speaker 1: It's like such a unique experience to grow up and
Speaker 1: having done that and your parents do and that stuff
Speaker 1: was really or.
Speaker 2: And it's very strange. I mean, my sister and I've
Speaker 2: talked about this a lot that when we were growing up,
Speaker 2: we just thought that everybody's parents had a boat and
Speaker 2: just like went places in it whenever they felt like it,
Speaker 2: and in the way that you do when you're a child,
Speaker 2: whatever you're used to is what's normal. And it was
Speaker 2: quite a lot later and we're like, oh, this is
Speaker 2: not normal. This is not normal that. I mean, my
Speaker 2: retired parents are still like scooting about the world in
Speaker 2: their boat. They've you know, recently just come back from Canada.
Speaker 2: All this kind of stuff, you know, crossing the Atlantic
Speaker 2: is not something they're afraid of.
Speaker 3: That's that's so cool. It's like really cool.
Speaker 1: It's just so much different than how I grew up with,
Speaker 1: like in my suburbs of New Jersey.
Speaker 3: It's just it's it's really cool.
Speaker 1: I love that everything, like your two different books are
Speaker 1: completely opposite subjects, and then your podcast too. I just
Speaker 1: love that you're into all these different things. It's really neat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I try and see it as a
Speaker 2: as a virtue rather than a limitation. But yes, it
Speaker 2: is true that I tend to have these very discreet
Speaker 2: and obsessive interests in something, and then once I've produced
Speaker 2: the thing that I want to produce about it, whether
Speaker 2: it's a book or whatever, then I'm done with it.
Speaker 2: That's everything I have to say on that subject. Move
Speaker 2: on to a new thing. I don't understand people who
Speaker 2: like keep revisiting the same thing.
Speaker 1: And so what is next for you? Like, are you
Speaker 1: working on anything new?
Speaker 2: I am working on a possible idea for a new book, which,
Speaker 2: in a great departure from me, is actually hopefully going
Speaker 2: to be related to the same kind of stuff I
Speaker 2: discuss on my podcast, So rather than being a completely
Speaker 2: new subject, hopefully it's going to draw on some of
Speaker 2: the research I've done for that, so it'll be about
Speaker 2: women and crime and the detective fiction from the early
Speaker 2: twentieth century.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Is there anywhere you want to say that people could
Speaker 1: reach you?
Speaker 3: Or obviously they.
Speaker 1: Could find your podcast just on wherever you can get podcasts, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or if you go to my website is Caroline
Speaker 2: Crampton dot com and that has links out to the
Speaker 2: various different things.
Speaker 3: All right, awesome, Well.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being here. It was really great.
Speaker 2: It was great to talk to you. Thank you so
Speaker 2: much for having me.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Mother Nos Death. As a reminder,
Speaker 1: my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
Speaker 1: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
Speaker 1: I am not a doctor and I have not diagnosed
Speaker 1: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
Speaker 1: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
Speaker 1: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
Speaker 1: on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
Speaker 1: healthier decisions regarding their life and well being. Always remember
Speaker 1: that science is changing every day and the opinions expressed
Speaker 1: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
Speaker 1: subjects at the time of public. If you are having
Speaker 1: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
Speaker 1: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
Speaker 1: care center, emergency room or hospital. Please rate, review, and
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