COVID-19 AND THE HYPOCHONDRIAC
How many times in a day can one person Google, “Do I have COVID-19”?
I’ve been a bit of a hypochondriac for years, and I blame it on having spent more than a decade as a funeral director, as well as having a natural propensity to think the worst. I’m the person who knows a thousand ways to die; I Google my symptoms and turn up in Emergency convinced I’m about to have an aortic aneurism. The last time I did that, the attending doctor told me my aorta was perfect, but I had a mass that required urgent investigation. As I wasn’t prepared for that sort of news, I laughed, then cried, then Googled the worst it could be, then cried some more and eventually had surgery and survived. After that episode, I gave up Googling symptoms because I never wanted to hear bad news like that again. These days, I focus on wondering when Day Tenwill fall following a necessary visit to the supermarket. Day Ten is the day experts tell us we’ll experience the first symptoms following contact with COVID-19, with the disease taking hold on Day Fourteen. So far, I’ve had half a dozen Day Tens, which generally follow a Night Nine of restless sleep and the occasional snore. The latter naturally leads to waking up with a bit of a raw throat, which terrifies the life out of me and has me checking my temperature all day. I’ve also found that filling the car with Glen-20 ethanol spray after a supermarket visit can also lead to a sore throat! Eventually, I realise I haven’t caught COVID-19, and I berate myself for being an idiot – until next time. Following that, I further berate myself for being so ridiculously self absorbed while thousands are actually dying around the world.
I don’t mean to sound trite, but perhaps it would be handy if COVID-19 had the symptoms (but not the outcome) of the Bubonic Plague. Shortly after infection in the 14th century, you broke out in spots while tumours the size of apples grew in your groin, armpits or neck and eventually oozed enough pus and blood that you knew you had something hideous and probably fatal. (Ironically, that disease also originated in the Far East.) It wasn’t a disease that snuck up on you in an airport, a cruise ship or a coffee lounge while you were blissfully unaware of anything other than going about your everyday business – instead, it kicked the door down from the outset and let you know it was there. This current plague is too similar to the onset of a cold, tonsillitis or the flu for my liking, and it feeds the Elbit that lives in every hypochondriac (including me). As if hospital emergency departments didn’t have enough to handle on a daily basis, they now have to deal with people who Google their symptoms during a global pandemic and think the worst!
As a means of trying not to imagine the worst, I now keep to mainstream media sources and read all the bits that tell me how to keep myself and my family safe. Naturally, that forces me to over-think such things as how long the virus lives on certain surfaces and how to know if the person who vacated the post office before me left any infected droplets in the air (the guide says they last for three hours). The face mask gives me some comfort at times like that, until I realise it wasn’t touching my face all the way around. Could something have somersaulted a couple of times in the confines of the post office and then launched itself up under the gap in my face mask? I realise that I have to start planning a better way to keep those droplets at bay, and at this point I have to confess I considered the use of masking tape … until I pulled it out of the drawer and saw Product of China written on it! That’s when I tell myself I’m being stupid, pull up my socks and channel all of that selfish worry elsewhere, which in our home means I direct my infection concerns at Mum and Ol’ 76’s instead. Sadly, that tends to run its course fairly quickly, and it’s now got to a point that if I go anywhere near either of them with a can of Glen-20, said can will end up as a permanent fixture somewhere within my bodily workings. Now, if either of them have an innocent little cough, they give me the look before I can jump to my feet and race to the first aid cabinet for the paracetamol. I would fetch a thermometer, but those handy indicators of impending illness were banned by Ol’ 76 over a decade ago after an incident during which I maintain I was right – he definitely did have a temperature!
Ol’ 76 and I had the flu on that particular occasion, and we were on the tail end of it. As I had been improving faster than him, I suggested I should check his temperature in case he’d had a relapse. I can still see myself standing in the bathroom flicking the mercury into life as he instructed me from the bedroom to step away from the thermometer. I can also see me at that moment when I flicked the thermometer and the hand basin at the same time and ended up stabbing myself in the back of my free hand with the thing. I also remember that Duh! moment when the radiologist showed me all 43 pieces of glass and the bulb embedded in my hand some weeks later. Every time I look at the back of my left hand, I continue to be amazed at how much younger it looks than the right, but taking something the size of a milk bottle top out of it will do that. Pandemics and hypochondria have thus never been good bedfellows, and in recognising that, I have made myself a promise; I won’t worry about COVID-19 as long as the three of us never leave the house again and nobody ever visits. As I only promised myself that a few minutes ago, it’s currently working beautifully ………
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Elbit vs. COVID-19 