Emetophobia mum life

Being a mum a wife a friend a family member of someone with emetophobia.

What is emetophobia?

Extreme fear of vomiting/vomit.

Living day to day with emetophobia and what it looks and feels like

After you've woken up from probably not the soundest sleep you've had, starting the day with breakfast. This is when you find out if anyone feels poorly? Are they hungry? Why aren't they hungry? What are they having for breakfast? What if they don't or can't finish their breakfast?

Fine, breakfast is eaten. Next hurdle is getting your child to school. Always wondering if they feel ok in the car and not getting travel sick. But taking them to school, somewhere we have no control over hand washing. Who they are mixing with? What they are putting in their mouth? Or even touching? Has anyone been sick in their class lately?

Receiving emails from the school and first thoughts being, 'oh no, what's going around now? Making it through a school or nursery day. Then picking them up wondering if they've come out of school just tired or if they look a bit off colour... Ok offer a snack. Surely if they eat this fine then they aren't going to be sick?

So making it through the day till dinner feels like a massive uphill battle. Then as bed time approaches, massive anxiety hits. Why is bedtime always sooo much worse for us emetaphobic people? Is it because it's dark? Quiet? Nowhere to run and hide? Listening out for a cough or a whimper every single night. Terrified to go to bed yourself in case you have a bad night. This is just a small example of how my day to day goes. 

Until a group message happens the dreaded 'my child has been sick' no matter how much you try and not, everything in your head always leads back to it being a bug. Have I washed their hands enough today? What if we all get it? The utter panic of waiting for time to pass past those hours of catching 'it' our minds are in overdrive. Can't get it out our head, over analysing it, talking about it over and over again. The brain doesn't switch off.

Then you wake up and have to go through the same thing every day.

It doesn't stop there, it doesn't leave.

Checking food through so its thoroughly cooked, not getting too drunk on a night out, avoiding people and places just in case, anxiety when a common cold is in the mix, travelling in the car with anyone, disinfecting, sanitising constantly, looking for reassurance, over eating fear, visiting hospitals.

And then there's Nat - also suffering with emetophobia. It really is like me and Hannah were meant to find each other - we are the same in so many ways and we understand each other completely. 

No one exactly enjoys being sick, but for me and Hannah (and many others!!) it is the worst possible thing that could happen to us. You can imagine how that is for me as a Nurse!!

I can remember as a Student Nurse making bargains with the other students and healthcare assistants on the wards I was on that I would deal with all of the poo and feeding if they could do the sick... One placement was particularly bad, they had norovirus for 11 weeks straight as every time they re-opened the ward they would get another patient admitted with sickness and diarrhoea. I remember washing my hands obsessively and causing dermatitis to my hands, they were so red it looked like I had two red gloves on. 

I am lucky that my husband is a Paramedic, and able to deal with any sickness in our family and does support me with my phobia. Although unless you have lived through it, you can't understand it. 

I was terrified of becoming pregnant and having to deal with morning sickness - however I thank my lucky stars that I did not have any morning sickness with either of my pregnancies. 

I have a rare form of blood cancer, whereby I make too many platelets due to a genetic mutation in my bone marrow - this means I have had 8 years of treatment and my initial thought was... Am I going to vomit as a side effect of treatment? 

We are so thankful to our friends and family for being understanding and helping us live each day as well as we can whilst having this constant anxiety hanging over us. Hannah was lucky enough to have friends come over and watch her little ones when they had a bug last year - this is true friendship.

We are going on a course in November together in an effort to start getting to the bottom of our phobia, and start working on coping strategies - we will keep you posted!!