MY HEALTH ANXIETY HAS COST ME MORE THAN £6,000 – BUT I DON’T REGRET IT
It was a normal morning four years ago, in 2022. I was doing my make-up in my bedroom mirror when I saw a mole near the crease of my armpit.
My first instinct was panic. Had it always looked like this? Was it normal?
Immediately, I assumed I had skin cancer and started to catastrophise. I told myself the mole had changed months ago and I had missed it. I was convinced I had cancer and that it had spread.
I called my GP straight away, but was told an appointment could take weeks. My head spinning with ‘what ifs’, I booked an appointment with a private dermatologist for the following day.
It cost £500, but I didn’t care. If it stopped these feelings of intense doom, it was worth it.
I suffered from severe health anxiety for four years up until 2025 – and spent over £6,000 on supplements, medications, scans and appointments to diagnose illnesses I thought I had (and to prevent illnesses I worried I could get).
It’s safe to say the quality of my life really suffered.
It started in September 2021 when I was pregnant with my second child and I developed a pain in the side of my breast. Immediately, I assumed it was cancer – it was just the first thought that came into my mind. I don’t know why.
This fear intensified during my 12-week scan, when the midwife said she saw a shadow in my womb and brought in a colleague in to look at it.
The midwife eventually explained it was a scar on my placenta and nothing to worry about – but it was too late, I was already spiralling. Once again, I thought I had cancer; this time, in my womb.
I spent the rest of my pregnancy getting two scans a week – each costing £60 – to see if the private clinicians could spot the same shadow. I couldn’t even be happy when they told me the baby was healthy; I just wanted to know if they could see any shadows.
It started to take over my life. The shadow was all I could think about and it completely took the joy out of my pregnancy. My partner, friends and family were reassuring; but I hid how many scans I had from them, so they didn’t know how big the problem really was.
My worries eased after I’d given birth – but that was because, with my health anxiety, I could only focus on one thing at a time. So when I found another problem – such as my mole – I immediately forgot about the previous one.
When the private dermatologist looked at the mole under a microscope and told me it was fine, I left the clinic feeling lighter than air – but soon doubt started to creep back in. What if he’d looked at it wrong? What if he’d misdiagnosed me?
10 days later I went to my GP. She was clear she agreed with the dermatologist – that it was not cancerous – but because I was so anxious and had rung her about three times, she put me on a two-week cancer waiting list.
I remained convinced I had skin cancer until the NHS checked me over, and when they also said I was fine, I finally felt free of that particular concern.
But I couldn’t stop diagnosing myself with every cancer going. I assumed a headache was a brain tumour and I had three appointments at a private clinic, at £60 each. I found a mark on the roof of my mouth and was sure I had mouth cancer, so I paid £110 for a dentist to check. I would spend up to and over £40 a time on as many multivitamins as I could get – I used to Google ‘what would prevent cancer?’, and buy whatever the internet told me about.
Family members were starting to lose sympathy. I would ask for reassurance from my mum, and you could hear in her voice that she was fed up with me. So I would go to a lot of these appointments in secret.
Being so stressed about my health even begun to make me actually ill. I would be run down all the time – and then worry about being run down. It dominated all aspects of my life; it was really isolating, and I became really lonely, unable to even text my friends back because I was feeling anxious so much.
The spiral of doom was unending, especially as I had to pay for things on credit cards and go into my overdraft, which also stressed me out – but I couldn’t stop.
One of the biggest sums of money I parted with collectively was when I was pregnant with my third baby in 2024. I was having scans twice a week from six weeks, at £60 per scan again, to make sure he was OK and still moving. I only stopped at about six months when I could feel him moving.
I was the manager of a dental practice at this point and would sit in front of a computer all the time, so I was able to research and fuel my worries.
I was so unhappy. Normal life was passing me by, I wasn’t present for my children. I was a mess.
In January 2025 I started making flower boxes after watching a video on TikTok as a hobby to occupy my mind. I posted them on Facebook and got a good reaction; suddenly, I was making 20 bouquets a day.
In a way, I swapped one obsession with another, but at least it was a much better one. At last, I was doing something other than stressing about my health.
In October 2025, I made the decision to quit my job and start floristry full time. I opened my own shop a few months later and I’ve never looked back.
I still get the occasional flare-up of health anxiety, but I don’t get panic attacks any more. I feel amazing. I’m so busy with flowers and having something to focus on has completely changed my life. I simply don’t have time to stress about my health anymore.
When I look back on those four years, I feel guilt towards the people around me who were trying to support me. What they were saying was right, but I never listened to them.
But I don’t regret the money I spent. Getting those instant reassurances were exactly what I needed at the time and I would have been so much worse without them.
The best thing is that I’ve got a new life and a new focus now. And that’s worth more than anything.
*As told to Charlotte Owen
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2026-07-19T13:43:44Z