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

take it lightly. They worry, waiting for the next development, on pins and needles.
    Itching. Doctors call this “pruritus,” which makes it sound vaguely dirty and exciting. Alas, it is just itching. When itching is localized, the diagnosis is relatively simple. Seborrhea, psoriasis, dermatitis, athlete’s foot, ringworm, scabies, lice. 3 It is when itching is generalized that all sorts of possibilities arise. If it is centered in the feet or the lower half of the body, it can be one of the first signs of Hodgkin’s disease, a potentially fatal cancer of the lymphatic system. Generalized itching can signal a form of leukemia. It can be the very first symptom of lung cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, orprostate cancer. It is almost always the first symptom of Hanot’s cirrhosis, a life-threatening liver disease of middle-aged women. And then there is mycosis fungoides, the final ring of itching hell.
    Mycosis fungoides is a rare, galloping skin tumor. It starts with itching; you ignore it. Then, sometimes, years go by symptom-free. Then the itching returns with a vengeance. Then your body erupts into patchy discolorations. You resemble a dalmatian. Then the discolorations spread. You resemble a guernsey cow. Then the tumors become what the medical books describe as “tomatolike.” Then things start getting
really
ugly …
    Déjà Vu. We are all familiar with this peculiar existential phenomenon. Suddenly, irrationally, we feel we are experiencing an event, or hearing a conversation, that we have experienced before. There is another, similar condition, called “jamais vu,” in which the opposite occurs: You suddenly feel that familiar surroundings are foreign to you; you might not even recognize your spouse. Cool. Weird. Potentially deadly. Neurologists have discovered that déjà vu and jamais vu can be early signs of a tumor or hemorrhage in the temporal lobe of the cerebral cortex.
    Troubled by these mental hiccups? Look for additional subtle signs of temporal lobe abnormalities. One would be seizures. If you frequently find yourself waking up on the floor at work in a pool of urine, with a gnawed pencil in your teeth, and people standing around trying to look calm, you may have a problem here. 4
    Flushed Face. People sometimes get red in the face. This can be caused by exertion or emotion, or by profound embarrassment, such as when you are at a podium to address a national group of educators and you suddenly realize that the big exuberant German shepherd you were petting a few minutes before has nosed you in the lap so enthusiastically that you have an enormous frothy wet spot on the portion of your beige silk dress roughly corresponding to your own personal groin, not that this ever happened to anyone I know. 5 Flushing can also be caused by drinking alcohol. Sometimes this is normal, but sometimes flushing after drinking alcohol is an early warning sign of carcinoid syndrome, in which tumors invade the lining of the stomach; this alcohol-induced facial flushing can precede the diagnosis by fifteen years! By that time, tumors have often spread to the liver or bone or another system. You have fire-hose diarrhea. Your heart walls thicken. You get short of breath. Then short of time.
    Hoarseness. This is how lung cancer sometimes shows up for the first time; the tumor invades the laryngeal nerve and you suddenly sound like Vito Corleone.
    Lipstick on Your Teeth. Yes, this is potentially serious. The canny internist will not discount this symptom. It suggests dry mucous membranes. If it tends to happen on one side of your mouth only, it could be due to a tumor of cranial nerve VII, which supplies the salivary glands. But the same eye would probably also be dry. If your entire mouth is dry and you are not taking any drugs that dry you out, this could be an early indication of Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that generally affects menopausal or