Member-only story
I Used to be a Hypochondriac; Now I Just Worry That Everyone is Going to Kill Themselves
Though it sounds like an odd thing to say in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, I miss the days of my quaint, eccentric, good ol’ fashioned hypochondria. I miss bothering my octogenarian GP for an HIV test (at age 25) because I had unprotected sex in college and I had convinced myself that the warts on my feet were some kind of indicator that I had acquired the HIV.
He pursed his lips as he tied the rubber strip around my gaunt left arm and rubbed my non-bicep with an alcohol swab.
“You understand that I’m only doing this because I know you won’t leave me alone until I do it, right?”
“Yes,” I said, looking directly into his watery, ancient eyes. “Yes I do.”
I didn’t, though. I didn’t understand anything. I’m nearly forty now, and I still don’t.
I do understand that I miss scurrying to WebMD at the onset of every tickle or twitch, of obsessing over lists of cancer symptoms, of flaunting my insurance card at the front desk of the casino-like dermatologist’s waiting room to have some mole or pedunculated verruca vulgaris dug out, excised, lanced, or otherwise filleted from the surface of my trembling olive skin. Or the roof of my mouth, or my lip. In my early twenties, I acquired some odd bubble…