Any other people looking to pursue a career in medicine? I’m desperate to be a doctor, but I’m awfully worried my illness will hinder my opportunities! d a i s y

Anybody here worried about this bill that just passed? My OCD is firing up again. I’m a community college student here in California who is about to turn 26 this mid November, which means I’m going to be booted off of my father’s health insurance as the law requires. And right now, my mental health (OCD that I’m trying to get diagnosed, anxiety, depression, PTSD that I’m trying to get diagnosed) is the worst that it’s probably ever been!!! And I don’t see it getting miraculously better anytime soon, these conditions are definitely chronic and will be following me for the rest of my life due to my long history of them (never got formal help until I was 16 though). I’ve been battling this stuff since I was just a little girl in the 2000s. After I turn 26 this year, I was just planning to enroll in Medicaid (Medi-Cal) when the time came so I could focus on continuing my schooling and treating my severe mental health issues along the way. I was actually feeling hopeful for once about my life. It’s going to be absolutely devastating if I lose healthcare coverage just because I won’t be able to bypass the red tape being put into place and meet those rigid requirements that the bill is going to require. There is only so much I can handle at one time due to my disabilities. I admire people who can do so many things at once (work a job, go to school, take care of children, etc.), but it’s just not me. It’s a miracle after everything, that I’m even in school and doing okay with it (4.0 GPA). I’m even enrolled in my school’s DSPS (program for disabled students). There has to be something that can be done. Losing my access to psych meds and therapy is going to make my life so much harder than it already is. It could probably even straight up kill me, which would be devastating for my family to have see me pass so horribly. Whether it’s from untreated mental illnesses or from the simple fact that I could get sick and die from whatever else due to not being able to access healthcare. Sorry for the long post. But I seriously cannot be alone in this right now…

You can laugh at the title if you want, it’s objectively pretty funny. Hi guys, this is my first time on this app and I mostly just wanted to see if anyone out there is in the same boat as me or works in health care and is dealing with this. I haven’t told anyone what’s going on. I’m in my 4th year of medical school and In the past year I’ve developed what I think is pretty bad health OCD. Now health anxiety is a really common thing for medical students to have, I know that. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that the constant lymph node checking, self diagnosing & examining and reassurance seeking could have definitely had crossed the line into compulsions. Both my parents are cancer survivors which is what originally made me want to become a doctor but now every single physical sensation I have sends me into hours or days of rumination that I or someone I love has stage 4 terminal cancer. I spent an entire vacation with my boyfriend having a silent panic attack and convincing myself that he was dying of pancreatic cancer when he just had food poisoning and was fine days later. I had a complete mental breakdown and told myself I had lymphoma for weeks when I realized I could feel some of my own perfectly normal lymph nodes in my neck. My logical brain knows this is completely ridiculous but the emotional brain will not shut the hell up. It seems cruel that I made it this far only to feel like my own damn brain is betraying my ability to think through health situations clearly. I’m determined to get my symptoms under control before I graduate in a year as I don’t want this to affect patient care. Just wanted to get this off my chest and see if anyone else out there in health care is struggling too.

Anyone willing to share there health ocd story with me? I’m really struggling with mine and would like to relate to someone and maybe talk about it. Thanks in advance. I’m new here.