Convinced I'm ill please help

Hello everyone,

I've been reading these forums for weeks and they often comfort me, I was hoping you could comfort me one step further and hear y story.

Four months ago I was happily at the gym burning calories on the treadmill.

Two months ago my mum had her knee replaced for arthritis.

I visited her in hospital and while sat there I could feel my knees start to burn, and this stayed with me for weeks and weeks. I constantly checked them for swelling, touched them for heat etc etc. now I've always had temperamental knees from running a lot but so do most my other runner friends so I put it down to that and carried on.

I'm 24 by the way!

So I got into this cycle of feeling pain in my knees, checking them, rubbing ibuprofin into them.... Constant. I'd wake in the morning feeling fine then within ten mins bam, there it is, a little ache. A friend tried telling me that aches and pains are allowed i'm just
Focusing on it and waiting for it to happen so it does and that I need to stop thinking about it.

To days after I decided that lack of stiffness, swelling, redness, heat, and no loss of mobility meant I probably don't have it, my shoulders started hurting.

I also have a physical job pushing theatre scenery around etc. I finally confessed to my mum (who has it) and she has told me she is 100% sure that I don't. She said apart from her just knowing, it would start in smaller joints. So of course, the last few days I've felt electricity like feelings shooting through my fingers.!

Again, if a friend came to me I would say:
You're stressed out and focusing this anxiety into aches and pains which you have seen your mum have throughout your life. You worry about them and they get worse. You change things like the way they you hold your legs in bed to 'make them better' but really you make them worse.

But I can't believe it when everyone tells me this!!

I've always stretched my fingers after writin or typing or using my phone and I used to okay piano so have always assumed its some kind of repetitive strain when the feel a bit funny (sometimes a bit like an elastic band trying to move my finger! Especially little finger ring finger and index finger)

I had my knees x rayed about six months ago. I asked the doctor if she thought I had arthritis and she said it is unlikely at 24 it's probably ligament weakness and shebcouldnsend me for physio.

Ive an appt on Monday which my mum says I must go to because they will tell me that I do not have it, but I'm do worried they they will I 'm
Worried I won't go!

Half the day I'll convince myself I 'm ok then I panic like, oh my god can stress and anxiety actually cause joint aches though!?! Even though friends and websites tell me it can.

I also have the contraceptive implant in which I'm desperately trying to get taken out as its making me depressed. And I've been having boyfriend troubles and work troubles and feel like everything is out of my control in my life!

Please help me.

EDIT
With regards to my hands my mum says that all my joints would have swollen up by now if I had it. One finger did a few months ago for a day and she said I probably just knocked it and that if I didn't have a mother with it I wouldn't even consider it.! I am just so paranoid I don't know what started first anymore.!!

Post Edited (Fearfulofmybody) : 11/2/2012 4:46:19 AM (GMT-6)

I had a lump in my neck some years ago and it caused me to panic a lot. I finally worked up the courage to go to the doctor. Got a neck scan with contrast. I learned from that experience that "with contrast" means they include a radioactive isotope in the injection that lights up in cancer cells in the picture. Yeah, so I slept on the cancer possibility for a couple of weeks. It freaked me out worse. The result came back and it said no cancer but there was a problem with a/some lymph nodes. So, I proceeded with freaking out. My doctor is a believer in homeopathic therapy and I was all for it. I went to massage therapy for a few months. In that time, I learned my bones were all of of whack..in the wrong place. The problem is that with stress and everything, my muscles were tense and had actually repositioned bones in my body. Not by a lot. But enough. I learned my posture was incorrect. (Yeah, a shocker there. Mom has said it since I was a kid.) And I learned when I am sitting at the computer I wasn't holding my head in the right place. My neck muscles were holding my head in the wrong place -- which caused stress to my neck muscles. The worst offender was how I was driving my car with my head slightly tilted up because it hurt less that way. It's been a few years and I keep applying what I've learned. The pain has gone away for the most part. It flares up when I'm stressing or panicking over something. I would really suggest looking into massage therapy. In my case, that is what cured my swollen neck. I second SC's recommendation to see a doctor and get some tests.

Sandy