The
Hypochondriac’s
Guide to Life.
and
Death.
GENE WEINGARTEN
With an Introduction by Dave Barry
Illustrations by Bob Staake
A FIRESIDE BOOK
PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY
FIRESIDE
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
Copyright © 1998 by Gene Weingarten
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
First Fireside Edition 2001
FIRESIDE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Robert Bull Design
Manufactured in the United States of America
3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Simon & Schuster edition as follows:
Weingarten, Gene.
The hypochondriac’s handbook : a slightly hysterical guide to life and death / Gene Weingarten : with an introduction by Dave Barry.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-684-85648-3
eISBN: 978-1-451-60324-8
ISBN-10: 0-684-85648-4
1.Hypochondria—Humor. I. Title.
PN6231.H96W45 1998
818′.5407—dc21 98-19532
CIP
The photograph on page 28 is from French’s Index of Differential Diagnosis (thirteenth edition), edited by Ian A. D. Bouchier, Harold Ellis, and Peter R. Fleming, and is reproduced by permission of Butterworth-Heinemann and the editors.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the many physicians who generously shared with me their valuable time and formidable talents despite the fact that 1 ) there was no fee involved, and 2) they were forewarned that this book was going to be an irresponsible, alarmist work of pseudoliterature that would relentlessly make fun of doctors. In short, these people exhibited either uncommonly bad judgment or uncommonly good nature, or both. Unless otherwise noted, they all practice in the Washington, D.C., area:
Israel Alter; Hal Blumenfeld (New Haven, Conn.); William Bond; Stephen Elgin; Henry Fox; Bruce Kressel; Susan Lacks; Michael D. Levitt (Minneapolis, Minn.); Steven Nadler (Snowmass Milage, Coló.); Bruce Orkin; Arnold Ratner; Anthony Reder (Chicago, Ill.); Jonathan Sackier; Marvin Schuster; Alan Singer; Mark Smith; Michael Stanton; Karen Stark (Scottsdale, Ariz.); Robert Stavis (Bryn Mawr, Pa.); Louis Steinberg; Robert Tanenberg; Martin Wolfe; and Lorenz Zimmerman. In particular, I would like to thank Drs. Mitchell Dunn and Louis Y. Korman, who provided invaluable assistance even though, as my personal physicians, they understood better than anyone else the many dark and alarming pathologies of the author. They are terrific doctors, and nice guys. I hereby urge all readers to contract serious, lingering diseases and move to Washington for the honor of being treated by them.
None of these doctors is responsible for any errors of fact contained herein. Any errors of fact contained herein are the fault of, and the sole legal responsibility of, The Error Monster.
I thank my editor at Simon & Schuster, David Rosenthal, who encouraged me to belly up to that thin line dividing the daring from the tasteless, and then gleefully booted my arse right over it. Thanks also to David’s assistant, Zoe Wolff, who at twenty-five provides both her boss and me with at least a modicum of maturity and common sense. For his loyalty, enthusiasm, and wisdom I thank my agent, Al Hart, who somehow capably negotiates the complex world of modern publishing while writing all his correspondence on a typewriter. (With carbons.) For their exceptional research assistance, I thank Bobbye Pratt and Michael Farquhar of The Washington Post. For their counsel I thank Libby Burger of Glen Mills, Pennsylvania; Joel Achenbach, David Streitfeld, and Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post; and Philip Brooker and Tom Shroder of The Miami Herald. I am grateful to Donald Graham and Leonard Downie Jr., publisher and executive editor of The Washington Post, for permitting one of their editors to write a book like this despite the disrepute it will surely visit upon a great newspaper.
I am particularly indebted to my friend Pat Myers, the World’s Funniest Copy Editor, who singlehandedly prevented everyone from discovering what a careless, intellectually shiftless illiterate I am. Pat edited every page of the book, except thsi one.
Finally, I thank my friend Dave Barry, who gave me no assistance whatsoever except in the sense of providing me, through his work, a flawless template for timing, setup, structure, syntax, voice, emphasis, cadence, and word selection, not to mention providing a specific prototype for virtually every joke contained in these pages. I hereby forgive Dave for shamelessly imitating my style all these many years.
To my rib
Contents
Introduction by Dave Barry
CHAPTER 1:
Are You a Hypochondriac?
CHAPTER 2:
Relax, Hypochondria Never Killed Anyone. Oh, Wait. Yes, It Did.
CHAPTER 3:
The Mind of the Hypochondriac
CHAPTER 4:
How Your Doctor Can Kill You
CHAPTER 5:
Man. Woman. Birth. Death. Infirmity.
CHAPTER 6:
Hypochondria and Me
CHAPTER 7:
Hiccups Can Mean Cancer
CHAPTER 8:
Headaches: Don’t Worry, They’re All in Your Head
CHAPTER 9:
Interpreting DocSpeak (Hint: “Good” Means “Bad”)
CHAPTER 10:
Maybe Its Just Nerves (Uh-Oh)
CHAPTER 11:
Infarction—Isn’t That a Funny Word? Hahahahaha Thud.
CHAPTER 12:
Are You an Alcoholic?
CHAPTER 13:
Tumor. Rhymes with “Humor.”
CHAPTER 14:
Ulcers and Other Visceral Fears
CHAPTER 15:
Are You Too Fat? Yes. (I Mean, Look at You.)
CHAPTER 16:
Snap, Crackle, and Plop (Minor Aches and Pains That Can Kill You)
CHAPTER 17:
Why You Should Not Smoke
CHAPTER 18:
Pregnant? That’s Wonderful! Don’t Read This!
CHAPTER 19:
Things That Can Take Out an Eye
CHAPTER 20:
Oh, Crap (Diagnosis by the Process of Elimination)
THE FINAL CHAPTER:
Is Death a Laughing Matter? Of Corpse Not.
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
by Dave Barry
What kind of person a person is Gene Weingarten?
That is not an easy question to answer.
No, wait, I just realized that it’s actually a very easy question to answer. Gene Weingarten is a weird kind of person.
For example, there was the incident with the tropical fish. This happened back when Gene was my boss at The Miami Herald’s Sunday magazine, Tropic. We were working on a project called the Tropic Hunt, which was a reader-participation stunt we had dreamed up, in which thousands of our readers would be driving all over south Florida trying to solve a giant, complex puzzle so they could win Valuable Prizes.
To solve one very small part of the hunt, the readers had to count the number of advertisements in Tropic for (why not?) fish cemeteries. We created two ads for competing fish cemeteries, one of which boasted that it offered cremation services. To illustrate this feature—bear in mind that this was a very small, inconsequential
part of the overall project—Gene spent a day obtaining a rental tuxedo and a tropical fish, and then getting himself professionally photographed as a fish-cemetery funeral director. He was holding a small tropical fish in one hand and—with a look of sadness and solemn dignity—setting fire to it with a Bic lighter.
Granted, it was a dead fish.
But still.
It was during the planning stages for this same hunt that Gene called me up one night and we had this conversation:
Gene: I ordered fifty thousand candy canes.
Me: Fifty thousand? Candy canes?
(I should note here that, up to this point in the hunt planning, there had never been any discussion of candy canes.)
Gene: Yes! But they’re not regular candy canes!
Me: They’re not?
Gene: No! They LOOK like regular candy canes, but they taste orange!
Me: They taste orange?
Gene: Yes! They have an orange taste!
Me: Huh!
Gene: So, we can use them to make a really, really clever puzzle!
Me: Huh!
Gene: Yes!
(Here there was a thoughtful pause.)
Me: So, how exactly would this puzzle work?
Gene: I have no idea!
And he didn’t, either. But for the next several weeks, he did have fifty thousand red-and-white (but orange-flavored) candy canes in his living room, along with several dozen traffic barricades (don’t ask). He did, ultimately, find a use for the candy canes.
But still.
Did I mention the time that the group of high-level executives from corporate headquarters came to get a briefing from Gene on his operation? No? OK, here’s what happened; A squadron of serious suit-wearing corporate visitors were going around The Miami Herald, getting overviews from the various department heads on the various department operations. When they got to the Tropic offices, there was Gene, standing at the conference table, looking the way he usually looks when he is dressed for work, which is the way other men look when they are going to a Halloween party as Harpo Marx.
So Gene, who of course had never read the memo informing him that he was supposed to be giving an overview, started telling the suits about the story he happened to be working on at the moment. This was a cover story Tropic was running about a man who tracked hurricanes. To illustrate this story, Gene had a photographer shoot the man hanging from a tree limb, like this:
The gimmick was that the magazine would print the photograph sideways, so it would look as though the man’s body was being held horizontal by a tremendous wind, like this:
Gene was going to explain this idea to the suits, but it occurred to him that it would be easier just to show them the photograph. So he called over to the art director, Philip Brooker: “Philip, show them the picture of the guy getting blown.”
Now, OK, this was an embarrassing mistake, but totally understandable. The suits were pretty cool about it; some of them even chuckled politely. Then they were ready for Gene to continue with his overview.
The problem was, Gene had decided that “Show them the picture of the guy getting blown” was the funniest single line ever delivered in the history of human comedy. He collapsed, facedown, on the conference table, quaking with laughter. The entire room waited patiently for him to finish; finally he pulled himself together and rose back up to face the suits, only to be once again overcome by the life-threatening humor of the situation. And so, back down onto the table he went.
Again, the room waited; again, Gene came back up; again, he went back down, quivering and weeping. The table was now sporting an expanding puddle of drool. Gene went down and came up several more times, like one of those drinking-bird toys. Finally, he came up, and the suits were … gone. That was their entire management briefing on the operation of Tropic magazine.
Why am I telling you these stories? Because when you read this book, at some point—a fairly early point, I am betting—you’re going to say, “What kind of lunatic wrote this?”
The answer, as I hope I’ve shown, is: A genuine lunatic. An honest lunatic. Ask the many people who know and love Gene Weingarten if they think he is sane, and they will say, laughingly: “No!” And then, after reflecting for a moment, they will say, seriously: “No.”
That’s why Gene is the perfect person to write this book. He is not some Johnny-come-lately who is just now adopting hypochondria as a way to sell books. Gene is the most sincere, most dedicated, hardest-working hypochondriac it has ever been my privilege to know. When he tells you all the really awful things that can happen to your body—that could be happening to your body right now!—he’s not just spewing empty words. He’s spewing words about problems that he has spent countless hours convincing himself that he, personally, is suffering from. In the more than fifteen years that I’ve known him, he, personally, has had more fatal diseases than the entire Indian subcontinent.
I have, on several occasions, turned to Gene for medical advice, and he has never failed to come up with the most depressing possible diagnosis. For example, two years ago I suffered a head injury while playing Lazer Tag with my son. For the next few days, all I wanted to do was sleep. This was starting to make me nervous, so finally I called Gene, who, unlike the so-called “medical profession.” is instantly accessible and always willing to take on a new case, no matter how complex, over the phone. I described my symptoms to him, and he said: “I’ll get back to you.”
He spent several hours doing research—Gene has an extensive medical library—then called me back to let me know that I should get a CAT scan, because I was probably going to die. I’m sure that he suspected this from the first, but he is far too responsible to venture an opinion without knowing the whole story.
As it happened, I did not die. In fact, after talking to Gene, I felt better; I always do. In a way, it’s good to know the worst thing that can happen. That’s why this book is useful, maybe even therapeutic. Reading it is like going on the Space Mountain ride at Disney World: You experience terror, yes, but when it’s over, you’re thrilled to still be alive.
Not that you necessarily will be.
Are You a Hypochondriac?
We must begin by abandoning antiquated, stigmatizing notions about the hypochondriac, a person who imagines himself afflicted by disease. Like alcoholism, hypochondria is not the hypochondriac’s “fault,” or a moral weakness, but a disease.
Hmm.
To hypochondriacs, I offer reassurance: We are no longer living in an era when every little symptom signaled the onset of some dreadful condition with a goofy name, like “consumption” or “whooping cough” or “St. Vitus’s dance,” disorders that meant you would spend the remainder of your tragically truncated life drooling out your viscera into slop buckets. Today illnesses have really hip names like “astroblastoma,” and you drool out your viscera into state-of-the-art, hypoallergenic, FDA-approved polypropylene “viscera receptacles.”
Just kidding, hypochondriacs! Good Lord, get a grip. Lookout the window. Do you see tumbrels in the streets? Nowadays, nearly everything is curable. Magazines are filled with ads for cancer support groups and “empowerment seminars,” with pictures of survivors who are reassuring you that one can go on to have a normal, disease-free life. Typically, these people are wearing wigs that fit like yarmulkes.
Do you suffer from hypochondria? We are all susceptible to it—it is part of our survival instinct, imprinted in our brains from infancy. We are in our crib and our diaper is wet, so we howl and thrash and whimper, and pretty soon someone comes to help us. It is our mom. She coos to us sympathetically and slathers our behind with products that make us smell like the sitting room of a nineteenth-century San Francisco bordello. An important behavioral arc has been established: Complaint brings attention; attention brings relief.
(The more loving and attentive your mom is, the more likely you are to become a hypochondriac. This is simple anthropology. Remember Binti the gorilla, the ape whose maternal instincts were so s
trong she rescued an injured child? It is a little-known fact that Binti’s children are sniveling pantywaists. While the other young zoo gorillas are engaged in ordinary gorilla activities such as pleasuring themselves in front of kindergarten classes and consuming one another’s lice, Binti’s kids are off in a corner, fretfully examining their armpits for lumps.)
As he leaves infancy, of course, the developing hypochondriac must refine the nature of his tantrums. Adults cannot continue to demand attention by fussing and mewling and smearing their excreta everywhere, unless they are professional athletes. And so the hypochondriac learns the art of suffering in silence—courageous silence, deafening silence, valiant, stolid, stoic, selfless, resolute, gloomy, lip-trembling silence, until you have to strangle him to death with the drawstring of his bathrobe.
It is easy to make fun of hypochondriacs. The hypochondriac is at war with his own body. The ordinary person will notice a slight spastic tugging on his eyelid, that rhythmic twitching we all feel from time to time, and go, “Hmm.”
That doesn’t happen with the hypochondriac. A hypochondriac would not go “Hmm” unless you told him there was a new fatal disease whose first symptom is the inability to say “Hmm.” Then he would say “Hmm” 1,723 times a day until he got laryngitis and could no longer say “Hmm” which would of course constitute proof he is dying.
No, if a hypochondriac gets an eyelid tic, his mind will instantly race through everything he knows about twitching—health textbooks he has read and articles he has downloaded from arcane medical databases—and he will eventually focus on the most frightening evidence he can think of, no matter how dubious its authority, such as the scene in the movie Airplane! in which Leslie Nielsen, playing a doctor, describes the symptoms of fatal food poisoning, which begins with twitching, and the pilot, played by Peter Graves, dies farting.
So the hypochondriac will know he has been poisoned. He will call the Poison Control Center.
The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. and Death. Page 1