fretting

The past several days I have walked around the house in sorrow, just wanting to pick up the phone and call Mother and tell her how rotten I feel that she died. After pondering what would happen if I fell ill and was gone in 6 months, I convinced myself that I have cancer. Sleepless nights with access to heavy medical textbooks with color photos does not help the situation. Timmy would never know me, Charlie and Maggie might have vague recollections of a mother, and Will and Mary would forever be angry with me that I died. I would never be able to move to Maine, never try to shear a sheep, never grow my own veggies, and never see my children grow up.

Tim says all this fretting is perfectly normal, but I am going to the doctor anyway.

It certainly doesn't help to come across articles like this one that say:

"US researchers... found the more children couples had, the worse their health and the more likely they were to die early."