In Which I Give Way to Worry
There’s no hypochondriasis over here. If anything, I under-appreciate possible symptoms of illness and injury, and visit the doctor only when needs must. Do I protest too much? Am I trying to convince myself that this bout of health-related anxiety is okay simply because it’s rare?
Or maybe any kind of anxiety is par for this particular global course. How could we not see doom and gloom around every corner? So if this little overgrowth of bacteria and parade of white blood cells is causing me angst, I shouldn’t be surprised. Despite my relentless optimism it can’t be all good news all the time.
Once you know people who have died from things that seemed like no big deal at the outset, you may be predisposed to worry when you have those same mild symptoms. And once you’ve reached that age at which it’s quite obvious that you have more years behind you than ahead of you? Well.
There’s a funny thing that happens in the modern age. You deposit fluids and swab cavities and get nearly immediate results. No explanations, mind you, just a digital message with mysterious information.
And then you Google those results to infinity and beyond, but honestly, Google has no idea whether your symptoms indicate the barest of infections, easily cleared with antibiotics, or are the harbingers of doom. Well, maybe not doom. Then again, as long as we’re giving full reign to the imagination, why not? Doom is crawling all around us, unrelenting.
In the olden days (a phrase I’ve come to love, because how can my youth be so olden?) a doctor would call you on the yellow landline hung in the corner of the kitchen and let you know what was what. Or at least invite you in for a chat.
The internet has, as usual, made everything both simpler and more confusing. I can look up symptoms ‘til the cows come home and learn exactly nothing about my (likely minor) diagnosis. And so I chat with a lovely guy, part of the doctor’s ‘care team’. (Can I call them MY care team? I feel, as I age, that I might need a whole platoon.)
And then? I wait. To be told that there’s nothing terribly wrong, and that sneaking paranoia does not presage the beginning of the end, but is merely the result of living in an era of disaster.
The antibiotics were terrible, but then the cure is often worse than the original malady; in illness, love, finances…
TL;DR: I had a mild infection and nothing else.
And so I’m back to my Pollyanna ways. Nothing will ever kill me!