Medic! Medic!

I went to see my doctor today.

I think he’s starting to get sick of me. He’s very patient though.

I have an intense fear of doctors, and anything medical. Getting sick terrifies me. I’d rather avoid it at all costs. So why do I find myself getting sick all the time? I seem to come down with any aliment that I happen to read about.

Take this morning for example. I woke up early. Well, I woke up at 8:30 which is early for me. Hell, any time I get up where lunch isn’t the first meal of the day is early. For some strange reason I feel the back of my head. Maybe it’s part of my morning check-up; I have to make sure everything is in working order before I can start my day. Are my legs still attached? Any aches and pains? Is my head in one piece? Have I turned into a chicken in the night?

In any case, I feel a lump at the base of my skull. Was that lump there before? What is this lump? Is it a lymph gland (just so you don’t start panicking, yes it was.) Is it something worse? Could it be a tumour? Could it be some sort of abnormal growth? Is it the chicken trying to grow out of my skull as it hasn’t been able to take over my body while I sleep?

Convinced I’m dying of some sort of mysterious disease, I make an appointment with my doctor.

To cut a long story short, I have a lymph gland up. It could be from the cut I got from a car accident a few weeks back. It could be that I’m getting a virus. Anyway, it’s completely normal, nothing to worry about. But the problem is I do worry about it. I worry about everything, from the common cold to a sore finger to a strange urge to scratch at the ground and cluck. There’s one simple word for my condition.

Hypochondria.

Well, except for the chicken part. That’s just old fashioned insanity.

I’m reading a book at the moment – Three Men on a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome (yes, this is relevant, just be patient). In it, three men and one dog travel up the Thames in a boat. But the story starts by the three men talking about their various imagined illnesses. The author says that he can’t read about any illness without suffering the very symptoms he reads about. He writes;

“I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch… I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into – some fearful, devastating scourge I know – and, before I had glanced halfway down the list of ‘premonitory symptoms’, it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that is me. Even down to the unnecessary use of the word ‘ailment’.

What is it about knowledge that is so worrying? Most people say they’re afraid of the unknown. But the more we know about things the more afraid we become of them. Especially illnesses. I guess it’s all part of our knowledge about our mortality. We can thank Adam and Eve for that;

Genesis 3:4

“And God said ‘do not eat of the forbidden fruit’. And lo, Adam did taketh an apple. And he did eateth of the apple. And lo, he did realise that he was mortal and that one day he would die. And also he began to choke on the apple.”

Thus, on that faithful day, mankind gained knowledge of his mortality, and learnt the Heimlich manoeuvre. Since then, he has been unable to sneeze without thinking his demise is imminent. And yes, I do mean ‘he’. As radio announcer Richard Glover states, man flu is always the worst sort of flu there is. No one complains about illness and pain more than a man does. Probably because they’ve never had to experience childbirth. (I’ve never tried it myself - being a man also - but I am assured that it’s ‘quite painful’).

But then, men are either 100% well or on death’s door. If they are sick they either hide it or are sick in its most violent form. My father, for example, never gets colds. He has ‘allergies’. And he sticks by this statement, despite the fact that within days the rest of the family has also come down with ‘allergies’. In fact, the rest of the family is often laid up for weeks after catching his ‘allergies’. But when he has a cold… Glasses of ginger beer, dinner in bed, favourite movie, the works. His gratitude is expressed by a weak, fading ‘thank you’ before he slips into unconsciousness (i.e. sleep).

Maybe I’m exaggerating slightly. He doesn’t complain. I, on the other hand, do.

                                                                                   

So I guess I’ll continue this way. Every sniffle will be the wings of angels coming to take me to my rest. Every ache will be Death kicking me in the shin trying to gain my attention. I will be like Jerome K. Jerome (who, incidentally, realised he had every sickness in the book apart from housemaid’s knee, the absence of which he took as a personal insult). Maybe it’s dramatic. But everyone needs a bit of drama. Lets us know we’re still alive.