Hypochondria

I read Teri Garr's account of the onset of her MS in People magazine, and thought, "Wow, maybe THAT'S why I wake up with those weird muscle issues."

I drink 10 glasses of Diet Coke and have to run to the bathroom in the middle of a staff meeting an hour later and think, "Maybe I'm becoming incontinent."

And then, on Monday, I woke up on Monday with the measles.

I think that it's all stress-related, and that probably some truly sick part of me, deep in my subconsciousness, reasons that, if I have the measles, I will have to be quarantined, so no need to deal with all of the gnatty little projects going on at work! Hooray!

But, really, I do have these crazy red spots all over my abdomen, and I don't know what the heck they are, and I think that these really are probably stress-related. Minnams pointed out that I often develop weird skin reactions, like the giant mass that developed on my chin last spring, right before I started my new job here. And then they disappear, as mysteriously as they arrive, and all is well, but boy is it scary and gross while they're still insisting on populating my body. At least my measles-infested abdomen is well-hidden.

I'm not, by any stretch, the worst hypochondriac I know, and I rarely actually go to the doctor (although I may call my sister who's a pediatrician, who sometimes plants additional crazy ideas in my head: "You know, there's some whooping cough going around.") or stay home sick because of my imagined ailments. But these imaginary things still nag at me, and -- even worse -- make me worry that by thinking that it wouldn't actually be such a bad thing to have the measles, I'm tempting fate in a huge way.

This all goes back to the spring of 1986, which should surprise no one who knows me: I can trace pretty much every weird neurosis to something from my childhood (count your lucky stars you were spared a proper Halloween entry this year).

I really, really hated going to confession as a kid; even though I was a relatively good, nerdy kid, I was horrified at going to tell the priest that I called my sister a name or I fibbed about eating that brownie or whatever. I just got incredibly anxious about it. So right before Easter, my Catholic school was having a Penance service (note to the uninitiated: penance/reconciliation/confession are interchangeable terms for this practice) during the schoolday, and it was mandatory. And the night before, I went to bed thinking, "Wow, I wish I would get sick so I didn't have to go to confession tomorrow."

My eighth grade teacher Sister Beverly liked to say gleefully, "God got you!" (which: what?!); and boy, did God get me on this one. I woke up the next day sick, sick, sick. Stomach flu like I'd never had; couldn't keep anything down for literally a week; literally CRAWLING to the bathroom because I was too weak to walk. My sister's boyfriend brought me this pink bunny rabbit with an Easter egg on its tummy that squeaked, and I immediately threw up all over it. It was a bad, bad thing.

So I know that the stomach virus wasn't a case of hypochondria, and that in reality I probably wasn't cursed by God -- although a tiny part of me doesn't quite believe it -- but it haunts me, and it fills me with fear and dread every time I wish or imagine sickness upon myself as a way of getting out of something I don't want to do.

And that, one day, I really will wake up with the measles.