Hanners' characterization feels a bit jarring to me here - she's always had the OCD "quirk" and she's concerned about germs and such, but it feels like fairly large leap to this level of "running around screaming, waving hands in the air like a muppet" hypochondria. Her attitude is just *bugging* me, but I suppose you can't please all of the fans all of the time.
The succesful treatment has obviously done nothing against her anexieties. Her fear of undiscovered illnesses appears weird for someone who doesn´t suffer from hypochondrosis. But to have to life under such fears every day must be terrible.
I think that hypochondria is anything but weird or unusual and fits very naturally with Hanners' other anxieties which center on the fear of germs and not being in control of her environment. It seems to me that it is a very common form of anxiety which lots of people suffer from to some degree.
I do, though I've never had treatment -- aside from going to the doctor to have stuff checked that was then pronounced harmless or where the cause could not be found. And let me tell you, that usually only reassures me pretty briefly. Like Hanners, I worry a lot that the symptoms (and I have lots of actual symptons which persist for a long time without an obvious cause) come from something bad that the doctor just hasn't thought of.
Whenever I read an article on a rare (or any) medical condition in the news, I make a mental check on whether I have any of the symptoms; and often I do, because there are a lot of very unspecific symptoms, like headaches. Just earlier I had to convince myself that I do
not have this really rare type of brain tumor where an almost-embryo with hair and bones grows in your brain (that was on BBC!).
I do not have other anxiety issues or mental illnesses, but I feel very powerless against my body's vulnarability to disease and my own medical inability to detect it (though it's good I didn't choose to become a docter); and I am not the only person I know who has similar issues.