Posted May 11, 2008

I am not a hypochondriac. I want make this clear from the beginning.

It's just that if something is wrong with me, not that there is, but the odds are good, then I want it diagnosed by a doctor because only a doctor can guarantee that my complaints, not that I have any, are real and serious enough to get sympathy from my wife, not that she's cold and uncaring, which she isn't.

It's just that anything that might be wrong with me, and I'm sure there's no problem at all, sounds more reassuring coming from a doctor.

This is because all doctors are required to take the Hippocratic Oath. This oath says that doctors will not do any harm to a patient, billing for services excepted.

What Hippocrates, who did not write the oath but is, in fact, a paid celebrity endorser, meant was that anything wrong with a patient sounds more reassuring in Latin.

I don't seek out medical help for sympathy, not that I would turn sympathy down if offered, but for peace of mind.

Certainly all of us would feel better, if we weren't feeling all that well in the first place, knowing that our severe myalgia is treatable with an appropriate regimen of analgesics.

I don't know about you, but that sort of scientific precision is much more comforting to me than some untrained medical wannabe, like my Aunt Ethel, whose diagnosis of my rubella I still believe was a lucky guess, casually telling me to take two aspirin for my sore muscles, something which, by the way, I would never pay anyone but a doctor a hundred bucks for fifteen minutes of her time to tell me.

Plus, frequent visits to the doctor, when not caused by an enlarged prostate, create a certain feeling of comfort that comes from knowing that you and your doctor are on a first-name basis. She calls me Jay and I call her Doctor. (This is actually her first name, according to the directory in her office building, which, my wife thinks thanks to my visits, she probably owns.)

This way I know that if I should get seriously ill, and I have no reason to suspect that this is the case now, though I could be harboring Leptospirosis, which has no symptoms for twenty-six days, I can pick up the phone and get an appointment with my doctor long before my spleen enlarges and, possibly, explodes.

Not taking unnecessary risks is all part of my strategy for feeling healthy. Which is why I never Google the phrase "itis". At least, not frivolously.

I'm not saying the Internet is a cause of illness, though as a frequent user, though certainly not an addict, I do get regular check-ups for Scleral injection. I just think that there is always the possibility of stumbling across a World Wide Web page that perfectly describes how I am feeling, or could be feeling.

As I have discovered, repeatedly, it is virtually impossible to search for "itis" in Google and not come up with a Web page that requires medical attention. Even if I have to read it three times, just to be sure it doesn't apply to me. Which is always a possibility.

On the plus side, the Internet has brought my doctor and me closer together. And now that she is answering my email again I find that I can put my mind to rest many more times a day than I ever could by telephone.

So, in that sense, the Internet is a good thing, despite the risk of median paresthesia.

I shudder to think, only because it's cold in here and not a sign of pyrexia, what my life would be like if I were a hypochondriac. Which is something I try not to dwell on.

The thought of not feeling well is enough to make me sick.