Posted by Racer on October 27, 2000, at 17:04:19
In reply to Re: Ted, posted by coral on October 27, 2000, at 15:01:47
I don't like spiders and snakes...
OK, it's only the spiders that really freak me out. Bugs of all kinds, actually. As for lobsters, I figure eating them with drawn butter is good revenge for their cousins scaring me so much -- as well as being delicious...
As for the phobia of having your blood pressure taken, you're trying to start too high up the ladder if you're thinking of taking it at home. Borrow a cuff, but only a cuff. Wear the cuff for a few days. Pump it up a little, and wear it some more. Don't pump it up all the way, just enough to feel some pressure. Once you get desensitized to wearing a pumped cuff, you're probably on the way to the point you can practice taking your own BP, which you should do in a doctor's office, with a nurse or someone to supervise -- not at home alone.
That sort of phobia is the worst! Mine is certain diagnostic tests. Two things terrify me: cancer, and infertility. The latter is likely, so it's one of those fears that has a good basis in fact. The former is obviously scary, and many of my paternal relatives have died of it. Scares the hell out of me, and since my favorite maternal great aunt died a few years ago from cancer found only days before her death, I'm terrified of x-rays. Talk about ironic, the fear of having an x-ray show cancer is expressed in part by a fear of having the x-ray damage my reproductive capacity! It hits two birds with one stone!
Then there's the dentist... I still can't watch Laurence Olivier in anything, he just creeps me out too much after Marathon Man...
poster:Racer
thread:1623
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20001011/msgs/1716.html