Nikki Barajas

By: Cameron Mebane

Angela "Nikki" Barajas, Humble sophomore, described herself as a hypochondriac. She said that she wakes up nightly thinking that she is going die and that when most people get a pain, they just assume they hurt themselves somehow. Nikki’s “mind immediately goes to the worst possible situations like “Oh, God, I’m going to have a heart attack…”

Nikki thinks that being a hypochondriac started during an incident when she was 13 years old. She said that one night she couldn’t breathe and started having panic attacks weekly. She went to the doctor and they prescribed some anti-anxiety medicine that didn’t seem to help. Nikki never went to therapy for being a hypochondriac and has tried to keep it a secret.

She reads the labels on all medicines and worries about all of the side effects. She is worried that some medicines that she has taken will have latent side effects. One of her past medications has a side effect of a stroke before the age of 20 and Nikki turns 20 in two months. She goes to the doctor “quite frequently, usually up to 5 to 10 times a year.”

She said that being a hypochondriac has “plagued” her for about six years. She has a fear in the back of her mind that one day, something will really be wrong and people will assume that she is just a hypochondriac.