Monday, February 5, 2007

Medical Student Hypochondria

For those of you who don't know, there is an actual medical term called "Medical Student Hypochondria" (personally one of my favorite psych terms right up there with "word salad"). The stats say that anywhere from 75 to 90% of medical students are afflicted with this condition at one point or another during their medical careers. And of course, being the worrier that I am, am of no exception.

Losely defined, a medical student hears about a disease, convinces themselves that they have it no matter how rare it may be (ie "Why yes, I do feel like I may be getting Dengue Fever despite the fact that I haven't been hanging out with mosquitos in Southeast Asia."), until another disease comes along to take the place of that one (ie "What was I thinking? Of course it is not that, my leg pain is obviously due to some kind of osteosarcoma"). Some of my personal "favorites" that I have diagnosed myself with thus far are TB, spontaneous pneumothorax (okay, read about this one and you'll see how absurd it is -- and I have actually tried to listen to my own chest with my own stethoscope to rule it out), and pretty much every lymphoma/leukemia out there ("obviously its a cancer and not the 4.5 hours of sleep I got last night that is making me so tired").

So anyways, back to my point. So this morning as I was nursing my ginger ale (somehow still dehydrated and nauseous from this past weekend's activities), I felt like everything on which the doctor lecturing was somehow directed at me. We were talking of all things after a weekend of Super Bowl food and alcohol consumption -- nutrition and hyperlipidemia (facey word for high cholesterol). As we rattled off the risk factors including lack of exercise (check), binge drinking (check), and fatty foods (check), I swear I felt to start get an unusual pain in my heart that seemed to be radiating down my left arm.

Now mind you, I am only 24, and 24 year olds dont' get heart attacks, right?........well, that's what I thought until we got to the next lecture. Then our resident started talking about a form of hyperlipidemia that gives people heart attacks in their early 20s. That was pretty much the go ahead to place a major crack in the dam holding back all of the crazies in my head....

When was the last time I had my cholesterol checked? Have I ever had my cholesterol checked?? Okay, no one in my family has high cholesterol, but what if somehow it went unnoticed until it strikes me??? Oh lord, what if this is the big one?? Jesus, Mr. Rogers, and the Croc Hunter, what are you all doing here ?!?!?

Okay, needless to say I did not bite the big one, and somehow my heart pain magically disappeared by the time lecture had ended -- but it was a scary 5 minutes nonethless for your average paraonid med student. Following my "ordeal" of the day, I realized i obviously need to take some "drastic" measures. So, I went to Subway, and got a delicious sub with 6 grams of fat or less --- because after all, I am apparently high risk. ;-)


P.S. I was informed over the weekend that my blog is spreading around and has surpassed my expected readership of 1 person. Thanks, and I hope not to disappoint too much..ha.

2 comments:

Zimmy said...

Hi! I'm a facebook stalker and found your website. Now I'll have something else to keep me occupied when I don't want to do work!

Janet said...

ummm, I have a new rule: no reading Bill's blog in class. You see, the necessity of this rule became quite obvious to me when i spontaneously burst out laughing in the middle of my Remedies class today and was forced to pretend i was having some sort of bizarre coughing attack to cover up the obvious fact that i was not paying a lick of attention.