Within seconds, I was crying and grasping for breath on the floor. It had probably already spread to my heart and lungs by now. I had hours to live.
Hey, I heard your doctor is a hypochondriac. He is a friend of a friend of mine, so I happen to know this as an unquestionable fact. I thought you should know. Outlandish, you say? Let me explain.
One night after Larry David and I both had bad shows, we went back to his apartment to give each other a comic pep talk, which consisted of who could feel less doomed by finding the most fault with the audience and who had the worst spot.
Some women take to mothering the way some take to medicine or painting. It is in them. I wasn't one of those mothers.
By Angela Haupt for U.S. News Health Headache? It must be a brain tumor. Bruise on your leg? Leukemia. Slightly nauseous? Either cancer or a heart...
You can't seriously try to take away sugar. That magical dust that dries up tears? How are we supposed to pass down our legacy of emotional eating if we can't train our children?
When a woman feels sick, it rarely interferes with her lifestyle. She prepares dinner, does laundry, takes a few minutes to throw up, then car pools. It's what her mother and grandmother did.
What I've learned is that the most precious thing about marriage is that it gives you a witness. Somebody to keep you in check when you're veering into madness.
A physician will consider many variables such as a person's age, past history, associated medical problems and symptoms. The Internet is impersonal and does not currently take these other factors into account.
In The Hypochondriacs: Nine Tormented Lives, Brian Dillon goes into gory detail in describing the afflictions -- or presumed afflictions -- gripping the nonet.
As a physician, I fear missing a serious illness in somebody who happens to be hypochondriacal. The best approach has been to take complaints seriously, do a complete history and physical, and allow plenty of time for discussion.
In the midst of a heat wave, I found myself wandering through the Brooklyn streets Sunday in a rage thinking "Why are all these people smiling? Don't they know there's a plague on??"
When does an occasional tendency towards being hypochondriacal become a problem that needs attention?
"Well Enough Alone: A Cultural History of My Hypochondria" (Riverhead Books. 256 pages. $23.95), by Jennifer Traig: In our current age of anxiety, med...
