Friday 8 June 2007

The Authentic Hypochondriac

Hypochondria - an excessive preoccupation with health and diseases, is more of a
state of mind or a phobia than a psychological disorder. While Hypochondriacs there
are many, not all are authentic. Here is a checklist of Authentic Hypochondriacs:

1. You are not, I repeat, NOT an authentic hypochondriac if you are not obsessed/
preoccupied with the fact that there are germs everywhere, on every surface,
including the buttons on the elevator, on the towel, on the spoon, even on packed
tissues.

2. You are not an authentic hypochondriac if you do not wash your hands at least,
at least 6 times a day with an antiseptic/ antibacterial soap.

3. If you do not fret about a centimetre of a dry patch on the skin, a little more
than usual hair on the comb, or if you forgot to drink 1.5 - 2 ltrs of water in a
day (and you actually make menatal records of water consumed).

4. Just stop reading if you do not link any weird aches and pains to life altering/
extinguishing diseases such as cancer (throat, skin, blood, lung, anything!), TB,
liver cirrhosis, tumours and what have you.

5. If you do not quickly examine plates and glasses examined at the table at
restaurants, cafeterias, water coolers, et al...

6. If you can simply not let anything keep you from reading the tiniest bit of
reasearch data/ feature/ cover story related to health issues. YOU JUST HAVE TO READ 
IT!

2 comments:

crackfire said...

I satisfy 2 and 5 guess that makes me one third hypochondriac.

Anonymous said...

boy..can i relate to that or can i relate to that! btw i finally went to get a heart checkup a few days back..the doc reccomended an ecg and later said i was absolutely normal..i was overjoyed and my worried finally left me!!! for about half an hour....when i got felt a little niggle under my left rib..not a painful feeling..not even uncomfortable..just a tickly twitchy feeling...i think im going to go in for indepth investigations.......(panjak)