An apple a day may keep the doctor away, but for a hypochondriac, it doesn’t fall far from the tree. I was once asked if I was a doctor or nurse because of my wealth of medical knowledge I was sharing with a random stranger. I answered, “No, just a hypochondriac.”
When I was a child and had pleurisy, I rolled around on the bed screaming, “I’m too young to die,” while my poor mother was on the phone trying to reach the doctor. Here sympathetic response to me was, “No you’re not. Now be quiet!” I didn’t. Die that is.
My son, throughout his childhood and teens, was convinced he had every illness he heard about. I only got worse once he got online in his preteens. Granted, he did have some mysterious ailments, some of whom we still can’t figure out, and he’s twenty-eight. My guess is most are caused by anxiety from being born into a family with weird dark humor, and to a hypochondriac mother.
Frequent stomach aches? I worried they were from parasites picked up on our several trips to San Miguel de Allende, where I allowed him to eat street tacos. From carts on the actual street.
Fecal tests proved my theory wrong. You would think having to do a fecal test would cure anyone from hypochondria, but you would be wrong.
We did eventually discover that he’s dylexic. When I asked him to read road signs for me when we were traveling, he answered, “Sure, ask the dyslexic kid to read.” Fortunately he inherited the dark humor, too.
When his foster brother called me to tell me, in a completely calm voice, that Blake had his eye split open, I thought he was joking. They liked playing pranks on me.
Turns out he had been elbowed in the eye while playing pick-up basketball, and indeed, his eyebrow was split wide open and blood was pouring out. It was the example I’d always waited on to prove to my son the old “Don’t cry wolf” adage.
When he was in high school, I got a phone call to my work from the police. My son was in a friend’s car going to lunch, when the car spun out and off the road. The policeman assured me the boys were okay, but asked if I wanted my son to go to the hospital to get checked out.
He said Blake didn’t think he needed to go. I told the police officer, after I talked with Blake to make sure he was okay, that my son was a hypochondriac, and that if there was the slightest chance he thought he should go to the hospital, he most definitely would insist on going.
After college I met him at the emergency room when, at work, he went blind to everything in the middle of his computer. He had peripheral vision, but the center was a big, black circle. He was literally staring into the abyss.
He was, of course, convinced it was a brain tumor. For once, neither of us googled the symptoms. There wasn’t time and it was too scary.
However, in our usual silliness, when he was taken to get the MRI, I texted a pic of me in his hospital bed to my sister before I told her what was happening. She was furious. She shares the family dark sense of humor, but not so much when we scare her.
Before he went for the MRI, we were joking about how he could quit his job he didn’t like if he was only able to see a black hole in the middle of the computer. The making light of darkness is also a family tradition.
For proof, read the articles I wrote about my hospital and physical therapy inpatient stays after breaking both my ankles this past summer. Nurses came to my room wanting to know where the party was, because my family and I were laughting so hard they could hear us down the hall.
Same when I had a lumpectomy years ago. Nurses were bringing other hospital staff in to hear our stand-up, or in my case, lay-down comedy routines. Something about hospitals brings out the clown in me and my family.
When my mother was getting surgery on her neck, she had gotten a fresh pedicure, just as I did right before I broke both ankles. Her’s was premeditated.
We were commenting on it when they came to wheel her to surgery. My sister, Elaine, who insists I also point out is “the funny one,” said, “The bright red polish will make it easier for us to find you by your toe tag if you die.”
We all cracked up, except my Dad who may or may not have done his standard repressed, grim grin. He’d learned to put up with our dark humor. The attendants gave nervous chuckles along with a horrified looks.
Yes, she is the same sister who didn’t appreciate my hospital bed humor later. Maybe she really is the actual funny one and I just like to flatter myself.
As a result of my son’s brain scan MRI during that ER visit four years ago, we found out he was tumor free, and instead was having an atypical migraine. The hole in his vision was considered an “aura” in migraine terminology. The fact that his migraine was “atypical” appeased his hypochondria that day.
Nevertheless, he continues to think every headache, twinge, forgetfulness, fogginess, fatigue, ADD, and difficulty reading, in spite of him being dyslexic, points to, you guessed it, a brain tumor.
This is in spite of the fact that he had COVID in January 2021, and currently has nearly every symptom of Long COVID, which includes headaches, forgetfulness, fogginess, attention deficit, and difficulty reading. Granted, having additional reading difficulties when you’re already dyslexic is a bummer, but it’s not a sign of a brain tumor.
When he recently got new health insurance, he texted he was going to a neurologist and requesting another brain scan.
I asked in text, “Do you need me to come with you to get the MRI?”
He texted back, “No it’s okay. We probably waited too long to catch it if it’s cancer. lol”
My answer, “Dude.”
His answer, “True.”
Did I mention we’re both most likely ADD? Self-diagnosed, of course, as the best hypochondriacs are. Shortly after our texts, I was on Facebook, where they now tempt you with cute little movies they put together of memories that you can share.
One came up titled, “Blake through the years.” What a joy for a mother to watch, as my son grew from freshman college student to grown man at age 28 in the span of a Facebook video. In a mist of nostalgia, I sent it it him.
His response? “Why are you sending a Memorial video of me?”
That wasn’t the intent, but hey, maybe that’ll cure the hypochondria.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Stuart Timms on Unsplash
