I learned I was a hypochondriac way before I could spell it. Terrified in my fourth grade Biology class, I trembled as I opened the textbook to one color illustration after another. All that hideous red stuff was actually lurking in my little body... and it could all just collapse at any moment. It was enough to make anyone sick.
When I heard that someone was ailing, or had died, I hesitated to hear the cause, lest I contract the malady in the mere telling. I would insist on seeing a physician. "Doctor, I think I have mononucleosis," I whined. "Do you have swollen glands?" "No." "Then you are fine." "Maybe I have rheumatic fever," to which he replied, "You don't even have a fever." I could not be dissuaded; "Maybe I have hypertension?" "That disease has no outward symptoms." "See, I knew I was sick!" "Have a lollipop and relax." I was eleven.
I was told repeatedly that I was as healthy as a horse. What did that mean? Were all horses healthy? Maybe there were sickly ones who also had no symptoms until the final moment? And then they'd shoot them.
Eventually, I accepted that a headache wasn't necessarily the first sign of a brain tumor, and a little chest pain probably wasn't a heart attack, but the result of a pepperoni pizza. But the fear was always there, as omnipresent as... GERMS.
Going for my annual checkup still gives me palpitations. I pray for weeks. I bring talismans from my departed relatives, wear beads blessed by the Dalai Lama, and hold a healing prayer book from the Kabbalah. As I stand before the physician looking as pale as Morticia Addams, I am sure anemia will be the snap diagnosis.
Why do they always choose a niece of Dr. Mengele to operate the mammography machine? I am convinced she's seen something alarming on my x-rays until, what seems like 100 years later, I get a clean bill of health from the doctor.
My hypervigilance reached new heights, and I was getting vertigo from it. I read everything I can about preventive medicine and belong to various medical websites. My mailbox is jammed with JAMA, the Harvard Health Letter and one from Mayo Clinic... it's the only thing with mayo on it that I'll touch. At my son's medical school graduation, they asked the doctors to rise and take the Hippocratic Oath. I felt an elbow from my son, who whispered, "Get up, you know more than I do."
A few years ago, I heard about a doctor from UCLA who went into private practice. He has a limited number of patients, and gives them complete access and attention; a new concept in medicine. With health care what it is today, I needed someone to guide me through the morass of paperwork, specialists and diseases du jour, and of course, someone to lie next to me in the MRI machine. This gifted practitioner has been with our family for over five years, and helped my parents, children and grandchildren through major and minor medical events. It appears that hypochondria is genetic.
I went into a decline for a week when I heard that someone who "never had a sick day in his life" dropped dead--and the last time I saw him he was running the track at UCLA like the Winged Victory. My tension has eased, but the neurosis remains; every ache is suspect... there is no such thing as "mild discomfort." For me, the most terrifying words in the English language are still: "There's something going around."
I am convinced that my first defense against the dreaded plagues that plague me is still the best: eat the right things and not too much of them, keep your body fit, and, oh yes, be prepared for anything. My medicine chest is congested. My hall closet is practically a Sav-On. I am ready for everything from a paper cut to bird flu. I've got a myriad of remedies; from NyQuil to ipecac, Prilosec to Dramamine. I bought a box of EpiPens in case someone got a bee sting at my garden party--I simply couldn't bear having a guest go into anaphylactic shock and fall into the rose beds. The good news is that I end up throwing these things out because their expiration date thankfully precedes my own.
Leading the healthy life has paid off; I am as healthy as a horse. Actually, I think I'm getting a little hoarse. Better pop a zinc... you can't be too careful.