On the Bright Side

It’s good to be a hypochondriac who knows she’s a hypochondriac because when I think I’m dying, I know I’m not, only I don’t.

Almost

I almost forgot what it’s like to have a pit of impending doom in my stomach; almost forgot how unnerving the false sensation of suffocation is; forgot what it’s like to have palms coated in layers of sweat.

I almost forgot. And then I woke up. Literally. I woke up this morning with anxiety like I haven’t had in what feels like forever.

Racing heart. Shortness of breath. Sweaty palms. Clenched jaw. A limitless supply of irrational fears and self-deprecating thoughts. All the usual symptoms are present.

Every minute of this day feels like an hour. Blow-drying my hair, driving to work, riding the elevator, small talk with co-workers: all the things I usually do with relative ease (okay, except the elevator), are suddenly paramount challenges.

My only solace is knowing that there are others out there who feel the same way; knowing that somewhere someone else is sitting at their desk with a pit of doom in their stomach and sweat pouring from their hands; knowing that we are almost through this god damn day...

Next on the List

I've said it before and I'll say it again, aside from being an anxiety-ridden hypochondriac, I'm also a paranoid schizophrenic.

On a good day, I can manage being alone in my house for fifteen minutes. Now that there’s a serial killer loose in my town, I can’t manage taking a crap by myself.

The body of the third victim: five foot tall, 98 pound, nineteen year-old, brown-haired college student Brianna Denison was found less than a mile from my house. Her dead, naked body (I could be making the naked part up) lay rotting, for a week, in a field I can throw a stone at from my back yard.

And sure, I realize there are people out there who’ve lost a daughter and a sister and a friend; my heart truly goes out to them, but let’s be honest, this murder is about me.

The similarities between yours truly and what used to be Brianna Denison are striking. Now given, I do eat and hence weigh about fifty pounds more, but the height, the hair the age, it’s all the same. I’m consumed with the thought that if I unknowingly cross the killer’s path, I’m done.

Hell, I’m terrified to even write about the whole situation; I’ve watched enough movies to know that those who talk about the serial killer quickly become his prey. So here’s to hoping that you really can’t believe everything you see on TV.

You know you're crazy when...

You wake up on a lovely Saturday morning to an intense stabbing sensation in the back of your neck and know immediately what it’s caused by; a throat tumor pushing on your spine.

Where's My Day Off? Er, Happy Valentine's Day!

While I'm no fan of consumer-based holidays (unless of course, I get the day off, which doesn't appear to be the case this February 14th), I'll take any excuse I can get to binge drink, so in that spirit, cheers to the lovely St. Valentine!

Hypo-Logic

I guess I’ve always known I didn’t want children; hell, at age twelve, when the other girls were asking their moms if they could get their ears pierced, I was asking mine if I could get my tubes tied.

The screaming. The drooling. The pooping. The helplessness. The responsibility. Children have always been a turn off. But it wasn’t until recently—thanks in part to The Childless Revolution—that I thought seriously about children, and decided, with some certainty, that they are not in my future.

The sheer prospect of hoarding money solely for myself left me giddy, and dreaming of, gasp, spending it on luxurious vacations and extravagant home remodels, instead of braces for some ingrate teenager, brought me an indescribable feeling of joy. I could finally bask in my selfishness with confidence; children were not for me.

But as I laid in bed last night, with visions of Amsterdam and early retirement dancing through my head, it hit me, I was wrong all along; not about not wanting children; but about the reason why. It wasn’t my inherent selfishness that brought me to the conclusion; it was something much deeper, and it deserves its own run-on sentence:

I think the reason I really don’t want children (aside from all the obvious reasons, i.e. peace, sanity and happiness) is because some subconscious part of my being knows that I have an aggressive form of ovarian cancer; that I will never see thirty, let alone have the opportunity to procreate, and am therefore unknowingly “protecting” myself from more disappointment then my early, painful and unexpected death will bring.

Ahhh, the mind of a hypochondriac.

Forgive me, Father

I’ve committed the ultimate hypochondriac sin; violated the sanctity of all things hypo and chondriac; I’ve watched Grey’s Anatomy. And I haven’t just “watched” Grey’s Anatomy, as in I stumbled across an episode on regular TV and indulged in the morbidity for an hour, no! No, what I did is far worse; I raided the local Blockbuster, and obsessively watched over sixty straight episodes.

And now, thanks to my gluttony, and despite the fact that I had an unremarkable pap smear just under a month ago, I’m wholly convinced that an aggressive form of cancer has infiltrated my female organs.

I blame Richard’s niece, who at seventeen is practically dead from the same affliction, and the Amish girl, who at no more than twenty had a massive tumor protruding from her nether regions.

But the blame does not rest solely on Grey’s shoulders; The Beast is also at fault (as she always is). We all know genetics play a role in one’s health, and guess whose mother had an ovarian cyst the size of a football when she was only a teen. Yep, that would be me. And guess whose brother has a rare form of cancer that only sixteen other people in the United States have. Yep, that would also be me.

Now excuse me while I go finish up season three.

Foot Drop?

Misery loves company, and I’m no exception to the rule, so I thought I'd pass this lovely article on to the rest of the world.

For those of you wise enough not to follow the link, here's a snippet:

The immediate clinical diagnosis was "foot drop," which to a normal person might not sound all that alarming. But to a man with a lifetime of extensive and obsessive medical knowledge, all of it horrifying, it sounded really bad. As I traveled to the neurologist's office, I went over in my mind what I knew to be the possibilities: Foot drop can mean you have diabetes, which was the diagnosis I was hoping for, because foot drop can also mean a stroke, multiple sclerosis, Lou Gehrig's disease or (I swear) leprosy.

Fuck the Patriots

AAA HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!

Fuck you, Tom Brady! And FUCK YOU, Randy Moss! Punk ass little bitches!

Pardon the language, I think I've developed tourette's.