Hypochondria: An
Inside Look
Posted by: Gina MartÃ
By WOODY ALLEN
Published: January 12, 2013
MAUMONT
WHEN The New York Times called, inquiring if I
might pen a few words “from the horse’s mouth” about hypochondria, I confess I
was taken aback. What light could I possibly shed on this type of crackpot
behavior since, contrary to popular belief, I am not a hypochondriac but a
totally different genus of crackpot?
What I am is an alarmist, which is in the same
ballpark as the hypochondriac or, should I say, the same emergency room. Still
there is a fundamental difference. I don’t experience imaginary maladies — my
maladies are real.
What distinguishes my hysteria is that at the
appearance of the mildest symptom, let’s say chapped lips, I instantly leap to
the conclusion that the chapped lips indicate a brain tumor. Or maybe lung
cancer. In one instance I thought it was Mad Cow.
The point is, I am always certain I’ve come down
with something life threatening. It matters little that few people are ever
found dead of chapped lips. Every minor ache or pain sends me to a doctor’s
office in need of reassurance that my latest allergy will not require a heart
transplant, or that I have misdiagnosed my hives and it’s not possible for a
human being to contract elm blight.
Unfortunately, my wife bears the brunt of these
pathological dramas. Like the time I awoke at 3 a.m. with a spot on my neck
that to me clearly had the earmarks of a melanoma. That it turned out to be a
hickey was confirmed only later at the hospital after much wailing and gnashing
of teeth. Sitting at an ungodly hour in the emergency room where my wife tried
to talk me down, I was making my way through the five stages of grief and was
up to either “denial” or “bargaining” when a young resident fixed me with a
rather supercilious eye and said sarcastically, “Your hickey is benign.”
But why should I live in such constant terror? I
take great care of myself. I have a personal trainer who has me up to 50
push-ups a month, and combined with my knee bends and situps, I can now press
the 100-pound barbell over my head with only minimal tearing of my stomach
wall. I never smoke and I watch what I eat, carefully avoiding any foods that
give pleasure. (Basically, I adhere to the Mediterranean diet of olive oil,
nuts, figs and goat cheese, and except for the occasional impulse to become a
rug salesman, it works.) In addition to yearly physicals I get all available
vaccines and inoculations, making me immune to everything from Whipple’s
disease to the Andromeda strain.
As far as vitamins go, if I take a few with each
meal, over time I can usually get in quite a lot before the latest study
confirms they’re worthless. Regarding medications, I’m flexible but prudent
because while it’s true antibiotics kill bad bacteria, I’m always afraid they’ll
kill my good bacteria, not to mention my pheromones, and then I won’t give off
any sexual vibes in a crowded elevator.
It’s also true that when I leave the house to go
for a stroll in Central Park or to Starbucks for a latte I might just pick up a
quick cardiogram or CT scan prophylactically. My wife calls this nonsense and
says that in the end it’s all genetic. My parents both lived to ripe old ages
but absolutely refused to pass their genes to me as they believed an
inheritance often spoils the child.
Even when the results of my yearly checkup show
perfect health, how can I relax knowing that the minute I leave the doctor’s
office something may start growing in me and, by the time a full year rolls
around, my chest X-ray will look like a Jackson Pollock? Incidentally, this
relentless preoccupation with health has made me quite the amateur medical
expert. Not that I don’t make an occasional mistake — but what doctor doesn’t?
For example, I once convinced a woman who experienced a mild ringing in her ears
that she had the flesh-eating bacteria, and another time I pronounced a man
dead who had simply dozed off in a chair.
But what’s this obsession with personal
vulnerability? When I panic over symptoms that require no more than an aspirin
or a little calamine lotion, what is it I’m really frightened of? My best guess
is dying. I have always had an animal fear of death, a fate I rank second only
to having to sit through a rock concert. My wife tries to be consoling about
mortality and assures me that death is a natural part of life, and that we all
die sooner or later. Oddly this news, whispered into my ear at 3 a.m., causes
me to leap screaming from the bed, snap on every light in the house and play my
recording of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” at top volume till the sun comes
up.
I sometimes imagine that death might be more
tolerable if I passed away in my sleep, although the reality is, no form of
dying is acceptable to me with the possible exception of being kicked to death
by a pair of scantily clad cocktail waitresses.
Perhaps if I were a religious person, which I am
not, although I sometimes do have the intimation that we all may be part of
something larger — like a Ponzi scheme. A great Spanish philosopher wrote that
all humans long for “the eternal persistence of consciousness.” Not an easy
state to maintain, especially when you’re dining with people who keep talking
about their children.
And yet, there are worse things than death. Many
of them playing at a theater near you. For instance, I would not like to
survive a stroke and for the rest of my life talk out of the side of my mouth
like a racetrack tout. I would also not like to go into a coma, to lie in a
hospital bed where I’m not dead but can’t even blink my eyes and signal the
nurse to switch the channel from Fox News. And incidentally, who’s to say the
nurse isn’t one of those angel of death crazies who hates to see people suffer
and fills my intravenous glucose bag with Exxon regular.
Worse than death, too, is to be on life support
listening to my loved ones in a heated debate over whether to terminate me and
hear my wife say, “I think we can pull the plug, it’s been 15 minutes and we’ll
be late for our dinner reservation.”
What worries me most is winding up a vegetable —
any vegetable, and that includes corn, which under happier circumstances I
rather like. And yet is it really so great to live forever? Sometimes in the
news I see features about certain tall people who reside in snow-capped regions
where a whole village population lives to 140 or so. Of course all they ever
eat is yogurt, and when they finally do die they are not embalmed but
pasteurized. And don’t forget these healthy people walk everyplace because try
getting a cab in the Himalayas. I mean do I really want to pass my days in some
remote place where the main entertainment is seeing which guy in town can lift
the ox highest with his bare hands?
Summing up, there are two distinct groups,
hypochondriacs and alarmists. Both suffer in their own ways, and traits of one
group may overlap the other, but whether you’re a hypochondriac or an alarmist,
at this point in time, either is probably better than being a Republican.
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