UPFRONT: LAST WEEK, I came down with swine flu. You know, fatigue, fever, aches and pains, your common-or-garden porcine pointers. I knew at once my time was up. "My time is up," I told the Beyoncé. "I've got swine flu." He barely looked up from his newspaper. "Swine flu? Then we'd better get you to the doctor."
Hmmm. Talk about calling my hypochondriacal bluff. I’m not saying I was ready to retract – I did after all, find myself a little on the tired side and felt, if not quite feverish, most definitely warmish. But while pressing an effete hand to my brow and assuring the breakfasting Beyoncé that he will have to go on without me is one thing, attempting same in a doctor’s consulting room is another beast entirely. Even in the throes of my possibly imaginary illness, I granted the likelihood that I was wrong, and that any self-respecting medical professional would laugh in my drama-queen face. Though I conceded that there was a good chance I did not have swine flu after all, somewhere in my fevered brain I still entertained the possibility.
Because truth be told, I have long lived on the borders of hypochondriasis without taking the final grand leap into basket case. It’s not that I’m always convinced I’m dying, I’m just constantly open to the possibility. As a child, I was sure the very act of sighing was evidence of my failing breath, that a shudder was a sure sign of pneumonia, and heartburn most likely a cardiac arrest. As I grew, the gamut of possible diseases grew too, and I was forced to continuously update my symptoms to keep up. Of course, my continued and astonishing presence on the planet worked solidly against theories of my impending doom, and by the time I made it to adulthood despite my litany of symptoms, I was ready to concede that some of it might be in my head. Particularly when I found out there was a word for such health phobias as mine, a specifically defined condition that, once diagnosed, put all the other alleged conditions on a whole new footing: hypochondria. It’s like the diagnosis is the cure.
Yet it was only when I came face to face with fully-fledged, doctor-stalking, emergency room-resident hypochondriacs that I realised how far I still had to go to make it into the ranks of serious hypochondriasis. Frankly, my own sick fantasies paled by comparison.
I once had, for example, a boyfriend with the kind of hypochondriacal conviction that took him all the way to hospital emergency rooms on more than one occasion, which was often triggered, it must be added, by some alleged misdemeanour on my part. On one particular occasion I got home to find 15 missed calls and messages of rising hysteria describing his symptoms, his trip to the hospital alone and unaccompanied, his agonising wait for death and the deflated final message when he’d been given the all-clear by some no-nonsense nurse. If nothing else, he did display a stirring kind of self-belief that put my own tentative suspicions in the ha’penny place.
I’m not dismissing his sufferings: the man was clearly in a pain no less real for being largely imagined. And while I would contend that in this particular case, the hypochondria was exacerbated by his tendency towards high drama, I can relate to the trigger at least.
The fact is, the modern technological age has not done either of us any favours, Google being the acknowledged enemy – or facilitating faux-friend – of hypochondriacs everywhere. Now all that is required once I feel a symptom coming on – a twitch, an ache, a ragged breath – is to venture online to be deluged with all manner of possible causes. To prove this point, I immediately Googled muscle pain and with one simple click return found it’s a symptom of lupus, mixed connective tissue disease, fibromyalgia, polymyalgia rheumatica, polymyositis, dermatomyositis, and Lyme disease. GAH! Without even knowing what they are, I can feel their multi-syllabic embrace.
Faced with such an array of seductive sicknesses, who would blame any rational mind from making the leap into illness? After all, some of the greatest brains in history have had their hypochondriacal day, and that was even before the world wide web stepped in to increase their options. Rumour has it Charles Darwin was constantly convinced he was croaking it, while Florence Nightingale was so sure that she was at death’s door on her return from the Crimean War, she immediately took to her bed. That was in 1857, though her worst fears were only confirmed 53 years later, when she finally did kick the bucket in 1910. Poet Sara Teasdale was a little less fortunate: when a blood vessel in her hand ruptured, this high profile hypochondriac was so sure it was the Grim Reaper coming knocking that she called his bluff and overdosed on sleeping pills.
Who could blame her? After all, Darwin, Nightingale and even Teasdale were on to something: they did all die in the end. So shouldn’t we hypochondriacs be considered, rather than deranged drama queens, prescient pragmatists ahead of our time?
The Beyoncé rattles his newspaper. He is right. I do not have a psychic gift. Nor, as it happens, do I have swine flu. What I have, instead, is a column. But, judging by the ache in my wrist after typing the bloody thing, it could very well be Carnevale-Canun-Mendoza syndrome, a ganglion cyst, lead poisoning, rheumatic fever, or gout . . . fionamccann@irishtimes.com