Read Online The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. and Death. by Gene Weingarten - Free Book Online Page A

just like a cold. This is relatively rare, though terrorist states like Iraq are experimenting with it as a biological weapon. They are planning to use it against citizens of decadent Western regimes, in cities and towns very much like yours. A doomsday scenario? Yes. Far-fetched? Hardly. The armed services have begun a program to inoculate soldiers against airborne anthrax. When inhaled, anthrax resembles the flu for a day or two, and then you feel pretty good, as if your cold has waned. Three days pass. Then you start hacking uncontrollably, you perspire like a federal witness against the mob, and finally you turn as blue as Cookie Monster. It is nearly 100 percent fatal.
    Ringing in the Ears. This is called “tinnitus.” Most people experience tinnitus at one time or another, usually as a high-pitched whine, but sometimes as a buzzing, whooshing, or clanging. Usually it is harmless. Sometimes the sounds can be heard by the doctor when she places a stethoscope to your ear, and this generally means it is no cause for alarm. It is when you are hearing the sounds and she is not that she 2 begins to get concerned. Other possibilities open up, some harmless, some worrisome. It can mean Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear. That would be comparatively good news; Ménière’s disease is usually controllable by medication. Tinnitus can also sometimes signal multiple sclerosis, or it can accompany the first appearance of a growth on the brain stem or auditory nerve known as a “schwannoma.” A schwannoma is not usually malignant, but it is not entirely harmless, either; sometimes, when it is surgically removed, facial nerves are damaged and you wind up with a perpetual snotty look on your face, like a French wine connoisseur who has been asked to evaluate Yoo-Hoo. A schwannoma also presents the practitioner with a diagnostic dilemma; How do you deliver the news to a patient that he has a tumor with a name that sounds as if you are calling him a penis-head? Come to think of it, perhaps that is why it is named a schwannoma. Maybe doctors are learning to give silly-sounding names to terrifying things to ease the tension of the diagnosis. Maybe soon they will rename a heart attack a “spankadoodle.”
    Cold Sores and Fever Blisters. That eruption on your lip or gums probably means a minor attack from the herpes simplex virus. No big deal. Keep it clean. Use a mouthwash. It will go away, unless it is the initial presentation of pemphigus vulgaris, a disease that is even worse than it sounds. Pemphigus begins as mouth blisters—weeping, bleeding, painful,funky-smelling sores that spread to the skin of your scalp and elsewhere. Pemphigus can be treated and controlled but seldom is cured outright. One of the better experimental treatments involves injections of gold. It is expensive.
    Pins and Needles. You say, “My foot fell asleep.” Your doctor says, “You have experienced a transient episode of paresthesia.” Either way, you are standing there on two feet, but one feels like a shillelagh being nibbled by carpenter ants. The usual explanation is that you sat wrong, compressing a nerve. And that’s probably what happened, unless your pins and needles are the deceptively lilting overture of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a mysterious, terrifying disorder of the peripheral nerves. It starts in the foot, with sensations indistinguishable from ordinary pins and needles. Then it rapidly distinguishes itself, in the sense that a letter from the Unabomber rapidly distinguishes itself from the rest of the mail. The pins and needles will give way to profound muscle weakness. You can’t lift an arm; sometimes you can’t even breathe without the help of a respirator. Your brain is fine but your body is a dull lump of useless protoplasm—sort of the opposite of Vanna White. Most people eventually recover. From then on, whenever their foot falls asleep, they do not