Hantavirus. Flesh-eating disease. Rabies.
Name an incredibly rare, swiftly fatal disease, and I’ve had it—at least in my head, between 1 and 4 a.m., when even the urgent care center that could possibly reassure me that I didn’t was closed.
I’ve never had Ebola, but that’s only because it’s hard to imagine you may be slightly hemorrhaging from your eyeballs. Either you are or you aren’t, which makes Ebola one of my favorite diseases. Instead, I have a particular fondness for fatal diseases that share almost every symptom with a bad day at work:
- Exhaustion
- Mental confusion
- Inability to tolerate bright lights
I suspect I’m not the only one. Here’s my quick quiz to see if you too are a cyberchondriac:
- When you wake up with a crick in your neck, you google meningitis.
- You’ve been on drug-resistant TB alert ever since that dumb guy got on the plane.
- You knew when Sanjay Gupta visited that swine flu–infested Mexican hospital he’d come back with it. You had the sudden urge to scream—horror-movie-style—at the TV: Nooooo, Sanjay! Don’t. Go. Into. The. Stairwell!
Some (like, say, my husband, or that Oxford hotline nurse who took my hantavirus-scare call after my cat dropped a mouse on my face) would say I’m crazy. I think I’m a proactive patient. Is anyone with me?
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Comments (6)
I am with you! Every time I get an ache, I run to my computer to see if it is a sign of swine flu. Everyone thinks I am nuts. I wish I’d just catch it already and get it over with. The suspense is killing me!
Every time I eat a banana I think I have Monkeypox! ha. But seriously, it is strange how easy it is to get yourself worked up over a supposed “condition” before a doctor advises you that you think too much.
Why didn’t the Oxford Hot Line nurse advise you of the 1,000 other diseases you can contract from a dead mouse in your face?
Just in case it happens again.
I never feel sick, but I never feel well. I’m always searching online for the cause of this chronic general malaise. The symptoms: aphasia, agraphia, apraxia—the inabilities to speak, write, and move, respectively. Lethargy, sluggishness, anxiety, etc. Best I can figure it, my problems, and probably yours, stem from sleep apnea or a related nocturnal disorder. You don’t know you have it because your sleeping at the time, or you think you are, or should be. There’s a clue in the chronic night terrors, the hypochondria in the bowels of the night. The fear, the paranoia over your health, the reaching out blindly for answers in the dark. Do you snore? Does your spouse, like clockwork?
Did you ever turn on the TV at 3 a.m. and see the guy with the greasy little ’stache shilling pills that will help you void better, detoxify your body and thus miraculously improve you overall well-being? Maybe he’s right; maybe you’re actually sitting on the answer!
Or the late-night radio guy pushing vitamin D as the ultimate panacea? Who knows?
Lisa,
it’s congenital. It’s from your great grandma, T, who throughout her life thought she was dying of something terrible -and finally succumbed to age at 95.
Oh please the disease is only the beginning for me. After my initial (and fatal) self diagnosis I am told by my Dr. that my malady is easily curable by a prescription. Good news right? So then I log on to the internet only to find out that in fact it is the cure that will kill me! For example – if you experience severe stomach pain it could a sign of a life threatening condition and you are advised to call your Dr. …but how can I do that? I am already in the bathroom doubled over in cyberchondriatic pain! And then there is the tingling in my extremities. I am quite certain it is irreversible neurological damage! Then I remember that I have not picked up the prescription yet.