mr-onion's Diaryland Diary

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Medical Mysteries

I've been sat on the sofa for days trying to feel better after catching the Ebola virus on the serial killer bus to work. Well...I thought it was the Ebola virus but my eyes aren't bleeding and I'm still alive so it's prob'ly just a random STD caught from a passenger handle on the bus.

That's not to say that I'm a hypochondriac - I never fall ill - it'd just be a lot more fun chucking a sicky at work if I could say "I've come down with this pesky virus from the Congo and I'm hemorrhaging from my eyes and mouth and fingers so I can't finish that report today".

So it goes, I've got a fetish about medical ailments.

Funk and Wagnalls Illustrated Medical Encyclopedia: I think my dad picked these up in the 70's from a tv infomercial. He loves to know things that other people couldn't give two figs about; it gives him an edge at Trivial Pursuit I guess. Those vinyl covered encyclopedias were relegated to the basement where my sister and I would "oooh" and "ahhh" at the most disgusting conditions and say to eachother "why couldn't we be born with club foot?". Hunchbacks, elephantiasis, cleft palate, pygmies, hydrocephalous, albinos: it was all a world of wonders for us. I still download pictures of mini tumours with mini teeth off the internet and print them off, marveling at the quirks of evolution.

I once diagnosed my cousin as having a double Y chromosome while I was a teenager. Gerhard lived with our family in Canada for 3 years while he was attending the local technical college. He's from Barbados. He is about 6'-5", looming and a bit insane and I was so certain. I was just waiting for the criminal element in him to surface so I could say "A-ha. The double Y chromosome has doomed another man to a life of deviant behaviour". He never did get his DNA tested.

I have one friend, Stu who is a card-carrying hypochrondriac. And his doctor is one of those "tell me what you want and I'll prescribe it" practitioners. Stu is now on Zoloft, thyroid stimulants and Diazepam daily, supplemented by occasional hallucinogenic anti-anxiety medication. Last week he thought he broke his wrist at a gig and took the day off work to have it looked at for 15 minutes by the doctor and pushed off home. He bought his own elastic bandage to make it look more convincing though.

I may be the only one of my friends who's not on medication; that's just too bad for the people around me then.

At the dawn of Prozac, high school friend Nicole was diagnosed with clinical depression. She was prescribed this shiny new pill to take every day. Nicole wasn't depressed - what she really was was a pathological liar and all she needed was a slap. She went mental on Prozac and started stalking my friend, Brendan. She broke into his apartment and nicked his watch to cuddle with. She faked two pregnancies, 1 miscarriage and 1 abortion: during the first piece of theater she rang me at my boyfriend's place while we were both on acid and told me she was bleeding all over her white carpet. She wanted me to come over but I was too shit scared to leave the house. When I went round the next morning she told me she'd had a miscarriage. I checked all over her bedroom and the carpet was spotless - Mizz Crazy claimed she'd cleaned up all the blood overnight. After many episodes like this, her making all sorts of wild claims about being beaten up "sob - the bruises are all internal!" I told her to piss off.

The update came one month later: she'd run away from home, lived in the mechanical room of her college for a month, and gotten herself pregnant by some cult member.

I like to watch the documentaries about exotic pathologies on tv but don't exactly want to be in their path.

6:42 p.m. - 2004-10-28

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