Daily Diatribes

Possibly I am pushing it by calling myself a genius. But it sounded a lot better than calling myself a paranoid, delusional hypochondriac, even though that is probably the truer statement. Hey, it’s my blog, I’ll call myself whatever I want!!

Long time readers are familiar with my brand of hypochondria. It revolves around the notion that at any moment, my children are going to keel over and die without warning. Therefore, I am constantly monitoring my offspring for symptoms of dengue fever, hanta virus, listeriosis, coccidia, Lassa fever, epilepsy, Capgras syndrome, sarcoidosis, irritable bowel syndrome, and the ever popular, but no less deadly, leukemia. It has been a joke between Renee and I, long before our relationship blossomed from doctor/patient to doctor/crazed friend who now has your cell phone number, that my children are suffering from chronic, undiagnosed, leukemia.

One memorable April Fool’s Day, I came to the office with MA and told Renee I was pregnant again. She retaliated by looking at MA’s chart and telling me she had leukemia. After they got my heart started again and put the crash cart away, she realized she was dealing with an above average hypochondriac. I like to put my whole heart into whatever I do!! But I don’t like to think of it as hypochondria. I prefer to think of it as VIGILANCE!! I don’t like surprises, especially in the form of death or of the dismemberment of a family member. In keeping with the Boy Scout motto, I want to be prepared. So I am always trying to anticipate their demise, or, better yet, diagnose their fatal disease before they actually succumb to it. I hold advanced degrees from the University of WebMD and also from MayoClinic online. I am rivalled only by Dr. House in terms of my diagnostic abilities!!

Last night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, I became convinced the goddess has osteosarcoma. This is because she has a small bump on the back of her knee. For a normal person, the mind might go:
Hmmm….look….a small bump on the back of my child’s knee….must be a bug bite.
Here’s how my mind works:
Hmmmm….OH MY GOD…. A BUMP ON THE BACK OF MY CHILD’S KNEE…..What are the differential diagnoses???? I need to medicate it now!!! Someone charge the paddles!!!!!!!!! She’s going to DIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Frightening, I know. Trust me, it’s even worse if you live inside the head with all the voices. Right, so a few weeks ago, when I noticed this bump on her knee, my first diagnosis was a staph infection. I treated it with prescription ointment (because naturally I have a stockpile of that stuff!!) and it didn’t get better, but it didn’t get worse. She quit complaining about it and I forgot about it. I suffer from transient hypochondria, complicated by ADD.

Last night, it occurred to me to take another look at the bump. It looked the same. I touched it and mentally charted “a firm nodule located anterior to the distal region subcutaneously luxated in the patellar area” or, in non medical terms, a knot on the back of her knee. I made Stalin look at it and he was appallingly blase about the possiblity of the goddess succumbing to ’smallbumpitis’ and expiring on our bed. He told me to quit worrying about it and sent her off to bed. Cold hearted Jerk!! Reluctantly, I took his advice and put it out of my mind.

But as I drifted off last night, the bump popped into my head and I immediately recognized that it could only be osteosarcoma, a cancerous bone tumor found in young people and young dogs. I tried to hide the knowledge from myself, but it was too late. My Flight or Fight Response had been activated and I was on Full Red Alert. “How could I have overlooked such an obvious diagnosis?” I berated myself repeatedly. How many precious minutes had I shaved from her life by missing a differential??? Dr. House would have never missed something so obvious!!

Here’s another thing about my mental condition: the rational part of me is lucid and aware that the irrational part of me is acting like a complete ninny. That voice tries mightily to smother the other voices but it’s no good. Once I have a cancer diagnosis in my head, I’m like a dog with a bone…and a cancerous bone at that!! Pretty soon, I had no choice but to get out of bed, trudge wearily to the computer, and pull up the WebMD site.

Actually, I googled boils first. This was a mistake because boils are disgusting. The pictures that came up are absolutely indescribable. I am a good diagnostician, but I don’t want to look at icky things. (I absolutely HATE the ads for the craniofacial foundation in my People magazine. I’m telling you, nothing wigs me out more than turning the page and staring into the horribly disfigured face of some poor child in India. It’s very disconcerting to turn the page, expecting to read the rest of the article about Brittany Spears and finding instead that you are staring into the gaping nasal orifices of some poor child.) I don’t do well with visuals. So the boils completely repulsed me; plus, the goddess obviously did not have a boil.

With great trepidation, I googled “osteosarcoma”. Within seconds, I was reassured that the goddess was not suffering from osteosarcoma. And boy, was I glad she didn’t have it because it’s very nasty cancer. A little more research revealed to me that the goddess was, in fact, suffering from….a bump on the leg. There is absolutely no telling what it might be, other than….a bump on the leg. It wasn’t a boil, it wasn’t cancer….whatever it might be, the important part of the story is that it was now after midnight and I was wide awake!! My child was not dying, nor was I sleeping. So I spent the next hour surfing Facebook, posted a reasonably high score on Bejeweled Blitz and finally fell into a deep, untroubled sleep around 1:30 a.m. So what’s the moral of the story boys and girls?? That it’s probably time to increase my psych meds and sever my internet connection!!