The downside of being smart*

I think I may be a hypochondriac**. I have now visited the emergency room twice in two months, both times fully believing in an immanent end to my existence, and both times coming away with a clean bill of health and an expensive lesson about panic attacks. I now have xrays proving that my rapid breathing is not a result of large tumors in my lungs, and an EKG showing that my fast heartbeat is not due to a failing heart.

Yet still, it’s amazing how many diseases one can acquire just by reading about them. For example, during a recent afternoon, I came down with a bad case of hypertension, serious hypoglycemia (or maybe hyperglycemia, or both simultaneously??), and a touch of tuberculosis (the drug-resistant variety, of course). And this doesn’t include my baseline condition of a brain tumor (did my vision just blur a little?), brain infection (ouch!), and type 1 diabetes (it runs in the family, and now it’s come for me at last!).

The truth is that I have a little pain on my left side that comes and goes, likely leftover from a foolishly untreated rib injury I sustained playing soccer a few months back. But it’s taking such a painfully long time to confirm or deny this fact by going through the normal medical channels of scheduling appointments and waiting for results…who knows what diseases I will contract between now and Monday???

*smart = relying on wikipedia for medical advice
**maybe