Oct 22, 2008

A lil bit of this, and a lil bit of that !!

Well, that's her.
An innocent hypochondriac.
She's not much convinced with the "innocent" part of the tag, but she knows she's a big hypochondriac.

Hypochondriasis means feeling of suffering from a disease, despite the assurance. It is very widely seen among medical students. Almost every medico suffers from this syndrome sometime during the educational process.

It was a beautiful, sunny (Grrr... It was raining terribly) day when she entered the medical school. She had so many dreams(in terms of "being different" from others and earning lots n lots n lots n lots n lots of money) in her eyes.

Such a !#@%$^& crap (as such earning money part was not at all a crap, but it's called so because medicine is not a branch one should pursue with the aim of earning money. It's too noble to think that way - rest of the discussion, in some other post).

It was her first year and whatever 5-10% of mentioned diseases she read, she started illusionizing them to be present in her own body. 
It was Diabetes during the first year.  
She used to drink a lot of water - polydipsia
She used to "freshen up" a lot - polyuria
That's all she knew about diabetes and she had all of em. 
Poor lil girl.
She consulted a senior and the "ever ready to help any-every-whatever-kinda girl" senior brought a new concept to her - Hypochondriasis. Having known about this "medical student's disease", she was pretty much convinced that it was a hypochondria and not a true diabetes. 
Smart girl !! Learnt quickly.

Oh wait, did I just call her "smart"? No, she wasn't.

Because it was her second year then, when she developed "I have some major psychiatric problem". She used to remain very high all the time, talk useless-irrelevant stuff, so was it a mania? At times she became very negative, so how about a depression then? She got a new habit of re-re-re-checking whether she had locked her car or not (she is still suffering from this compulsion), obsessive compulsive disorder? She had a doubt that someone was following her, or conspiring against her, illusion-delusion-hallucination?? And by the end of the year, she was convinced of having a real serious psychiatric problem and thought of consulting a psychiatrist. 

Phew !! And that phase got over too.

It was her third-first year then. And she started getting eye and 
ear problems. When she studied ophthalmology(eye d's), at times she was suffering from squint, and other times errors of refraction. Finally she got her eyes checked and got a new pair of lenses and spectacles. 


Then she switched to ENT (ear, nose throat - actually called otorhinolaryngology), and she consistently suffered from cough and cold(which means running nose, pain in ears), at times she found that she got deviated nasal septum, at times her tonsils would start creating a problem. Consuming capsules was like chewing pea-nuts for her, ofcourse without a prescription. Didn't I mention she'd finished her pharmacology in second year itself? She is still heartily thankful to all those antibiotics and anti-histaminics.


Finally she entered the third-second aka third-due aka final year. And she became a part of the worst sorcery of medical hoodoos. First she suffered from "I've got TB syndrome" which was followed by "Oh no, it's a breast cancer syndrome" which preceded "It's AIDS, my life is ruined, I don't even have a boyfriend yet syndrome". She spent thousands of bucks in consulting plenty of physicians and surgeons, to get all the tests done - Sonography, X-ray, hemogram, tri-dot test.






No, the story does not end here. She just didn't stop it there. She wanted to cross all the baseline levels to be considered as a normal, sane human being. Because the crowning hypochondriac moment was, when she doubted if she was pregnant even without undergoing "the required process".

The last news that I heard of her is, she's started some local "hypochondriac association", ofcourse with the help of some ex-hypochondriacs.

May God bless them !!!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Such a !#@%$^& crap.

Oh. No. No it is not. Not at all. They are the folks that have the energy and dedication to follow their dreams through.... and they are the people who make things happen.

Good to hear the story of the hypochondriac (phew !! hope I spelled it right.) girl. I'm one of the HC on her local club actually. :)

You know her fear right now? Naah. forget it. You pretty much covered it all. :D

Good picture of the diabetic guy. :P

Phoenix said...

gubbi: You have no idea how good it feels to see the same person commenting everytime. I am really grateful to you for readin my posts and commenting (bcz u comment nice stuff) umm , i didnt understand the oh. no. no its not. not at all... to who make things happen wala part... so kindly explain.
rest comment is good. thanks :)

Preeti Shenoy said...

I know some hypochondriacs too. Last pic gave me the creeps--i think its photoshopped.
Cheers
preeti

Phoenix said...

ps: I found the last pic beautiful indeed. I'm not sure if its photoshopped or not, but you get to see such things in real life. I've seen it twice or so, so far.
Anyway cheers to you too.

broca's area said...

when i was in 2nd year used to get chest pains...used to wonder whether it was angina!!..:D...

Phoenix said...

:)
well as i said, every medico passes thru it atleast once. so its ok. :)