Mark, I noticed that there were a number of people participating in this forum (like me honestly) who do not have the disease, but were extremely worried about the possibility... which is why i decided to post my response. Rest assured that the majority of the people suffering from this sort of health anxiety (which is exasperated by the wealth and ease of information available on the internet now, also called "symptom surfing" - which is exactly what we are doing here) are not acting out of a need for attention (i believe those who suffer that disorder are known as "malingers") but from a geniune, if irrational, fear.

I liken it to a variant of the "boy who cried wolf" fable, in which the boy is not crying wolf maliciously, but because the boy truly believes he has noticed the wolf's footprints and can hear the wolf's breath, and thus is crying wolf out of a natural survival instinct. Unfortunately, once the townspeople explore the permimeter of the forest and tell the boy that there is no wolf, the boy can't believe it because he knows he saw the footprints and heard the breathing of the wolf. Or did he? And the fear is that one day the wolf will really come, but because he has cried wolf so many times before, his calls will be ignored.

An interesting thing is that even people WITH phsyical illness (a cancer in remission for example) can suffer from hypochondria, and although certainly less irrational than a person with no prior illness, the disorder can be just a debilitating. It is evident in a number of posts here from cancer survivors who have found that they have a constant fear of reccurance, even in the midst of negative tests and scans. So hopefully those links can help not only those who are hypochondriacs without cancer, but for those of you with cancers in remission but who are suffering from the constant and excessive fear of reccurance.

Anyways, best of luck once again to all of you. Life is crazy, but it's good to share the any insight gained from each individuals personal experience with the crazy thing. This was my contribution.