12/07/2010
Teenager faints at the sight of a doctor
by Hannah McLaverty-Williamson
A school girl is using hypnotherapy to battle a rare condition which makes her faint whenever she sees a doctor.
Jenny Carroll's bizarre phobia was triggered when she woke up during an operation and since the traumatic experience, the fourteen year old has suffered blackouts, every time she comes into contact with doctors.
Even the sight of anything medical is enough to cause Jenny to faint and she even keeled over when she saw doctors on television's Holby City. She also collapsed during a road safety lesson at school, when car accidents were discussed.
Jenny from Portlethen, Aberdeenshire, told The Scottish Sun: "I experience real fear, it's absolute panic. It's an automatic reaction and it's without warning. Everything goes black and I wake on the floor.
"I can't even get in the door of a hospital without blacking out. It's made my life really difficult," she added.
Jenny had surgery for the condition glue ear when she was a child, but during the procedure her anaesthetic wore off.
"When she came back down the corridor she was standing up on the trolley screaming. She was frightened and from that moment on she had these blackouts. She was traumatised," her mum Lesley explained.
Jenny was eventually diagnosed with reflexhypoxia, a rare condition in which sufferers have panic attacks, which stops oxygen getting to the brain.
In an effort to overcome the problem, Lesley has been taking her daughter for hypnotherapy sessions. During the sessions, Jenny is taught how to calm herself down using breathing techniques and self-hypnosis.
The sessions have proved so successful, the teenager has coped with a trip to the dentist to have braces fitted.
"This fear will always be with me, but I can control it. That feels like a miracle," Jenny said.
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