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HYPOCHONDRIAC'S GUIDE
TO SURVIVING THE INTERNET
Life and Death
Feel a crease forming in your right earlobe?
A crease going at least halfway across an earlobe means you have, or are likely to develop, heart disease.
Have you had the hiccups? Nothing serious. Mind you, neurologists know hiccups can accompany a deadly stroke or inoperable tumour in the medulla of the brain. Cardiologists of course don't rule out a heart attack. Nephrologists suspect kidney failure, and you don't want to know what gastroenterologists fear.
Feel an itch? Pruritus, it's actually called. At first it may hit in the feet and lower half of your body - a sign of Hodgkin's disease. If it becomes more generalized now we're talking leukemia. Feel chilly? Fatigue, lack of energy, intolerance of cold temperatures, marked decline in memory and all cognitive functions, weight gain (typically in mid-section of the body) despite a diminishing appetite? check your thyroid.
Pain in the right testicle? Could be cancer, that's the testis that cancer seems to prefer to hit — or maybe your mate has just been out of sight for too long!
Flu-like symptoms but otherwise healthy? Suffer minor trauma, or even a bruise, or abrasion? Do you have a scratch, nick, cut or a small break in your skin (epidermis)? Does the pain one feel out of proportion to the injury. It could be one of your glands, or perhaps Necrotizing Fasciitis caused by Group 'A' Beta-Hemolytic streptococcus. It may only hit one in a million, but it can kill in hours.
Yawning? That can be an early sign of encephalitis, of a tumour, hemorrhage in the central part of the brain. (And there's some risk of familial insomnia, where prions — which are proteins, take up residence in the sleep center of your brain and slowly destroy it.) Very nasty.
The hypochondriac's best friend has always been cancer. Virtually every illness or malady can eventually lead to some form of cancer. As a hypochondriac you can rest assured that at a moment's notice, cancer can come calling. It has given hypochondriacs something to live for.
What is a hypochondriac?The notion is this: a person who imagines himself or herself afflicted by disease in truth is like an obsession.
Hypochondriasis is not a moral weakness, but is a disease.
One theory is that it goes back to infancy. We're in our crib, our diaper is wet, we howl. Mom or dad makes it better. Complaint yields attention, which yields relief.
Who is the inspiration of hypochondriacs? American poet Sara Teasdale. In 1933, a small blood vessel burst in her hand. Sure that this was the embolism she had been expecting, she settled into her bathtub. The coroner said her health had been fine, it was the massive dose of sleeping pills that killed her.
Why is hypochondria on the rise? Medical Technology and the Internet perhaps? Got a hangnail? Check it out. Sure that lump in your throat could be your Adam's apple, but why take a chance? Besides, (mis)information is the engine that drives our economy — witness advertising!
You're doing everyone a favour when you're fully informed!
- Scientific Methods: original advances in medicine were made by people like Louis Pasteur. Those guys used bread, worms and split. These days, scientists work in teams, sponsored by universities, with gigantic grants. They must constantly publish and issue reports — regardless how predictable.
(One widely circulated study actually reported that small thin women tend to live longer than large fat women!)
- WWW You can't be too careful when you check the WWW for medical help! My medical sections get more traffic many days than does the erotic zone!
- Media. The New York Times headlined Cure for Cancer Just Around Corner twenty-eight times since 1990. (In one case the "cure" worked only on mice and the drug in question came from mouse urine. It took two hundred quarts of mouse urine to extract a millionth of an ounce of the drug)
Killer Erections! Men die after using Viagra. It turns out that all the dead men were more than 75 years old. HEADLINE: OLD AGE LINKED TO DEATH RATES! Wow! This is News?
Why are headaches a hypochondriac's best friend? Because headaches have evolved over the ages. In prehistoric times, they were often caused by persons hitting you on the head with the femur of an ox.
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During the Dark Ages, headaches could be traced to being hunted and burned at the stake or hung upside down in dungeons. During the French Revolution, headaches were the result of people having 300 kilograms of hair. In the 1920s, people got them because they drank gin made in toilets from corncobs, maggots and pumpernickel.
Doctors now laugh at such ancient causes - they know headaches can be a signal of cysticercosis, where the brain is infested by the larva of an intestinal tapeworm, Taenia Solium, which can grow to about 20 feet long.
The world sure is full of lot's and lot's other things which may cause bad thinking! Wonderful drugs, food products, chemicals and even pure and natural foods which contain tyramine that can inflict debilitating headaches on the many of the hapless population and even make them appear to be suffering from psychosomatic disorders and/or hypochondriasis.
Don't forget that all the clicking around on the Internet causes carpal tunnel syndrome and the display is likely causing cataracts to grow at this very moment!
| Toolkit to drive a neurotic bonkers: Stroke
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