Hyper-chondriac

The frenetic combustion in one's brain that creates external and internal disease and makes one very unpleasant company to family, peers, the medical community and even oneself.

M
ARCH
2002

My hands were itching. After scratching my palms furiously for about an hour, they were still itching, so I drove to the pharmacy and spent thirty bucks on creams, lotions and gels. The trip was a quick one since I knew the exact aisle and shelf of every cream, lotion and gel (and capsule and tablet and cough expectorant). An hour later, my cream/lotion/gel–coated hands continued to itch, so I called a friend. Josh had been living in Los Angeles longer than I and seemed privy to every local specialist, whereas my collection of doctors was scattered between Boston, New York and Southern California. He referred me to his dermatologist, Dr. Tamm.

Dr. Tamm was a stern, bespectacled man of about sixty. He also wore what appeared to be a welder's mask over his thick glasses, apparently so he could see so deeply into peoples' pores that he could make eye contact with the gray matter in their brains.

Here's what I expected to happen in that office visit.

“Hi, my hands itch.”

“Use some of this, son!” Dr. Tamm would reply while removing a tube of extra-strength, prescription-only cortisone cream from his front pocket and tossing it to me.

“Thank you, sir! I will.”

“See Donna on the way out for your billing information.”

This is what actually happened.

“Hi, my hands itch.”

“You seem pretty tense.”

“Actually, I feel pretty relaxed right now.”

“Anything stressful happening in your life at the moment? Did you start a new job? Move? Anything?”

“Well, I'm getting married in a month.”

“Are you nervous about the wedding?”

“Not at all. I knew ten minutes into our first date I was going to marry her.”

“Congratulations.”

“Thanks.”

“How'd you meet?”

“Writing thought-bubbles on a TV show called
Blind Date.
”

“Never seen it.”

“It's like a live comic strip with horny people. I doubt you'd like it.”

“So, I don't think your itching has anything to do with the wedding. Or anything else that's going on in your external surroundings.”

“You know that already? You've spent like forty-five seconds with me.”

“I know, but your energy is overpowering. You're the most uptight, high-strung person I've ever met. The problem isn't in your hands. It's in your head.”

Dr. Tamm probably had a point.

On paper I'm the world's healthiest guy. I eat right, exercise regularly, drink in moderation, have all of the good cholesterol and none of the bad, weigh the same as I did in high school, have ideal blood pressure, am caffeine-free, get plenty of sleep, never smoke and have only missed one day of flossing in the last five years. It's essential that I take tip-top care of myself. Because underneath the wholesome habits and exemplary bodily statistics, I'm an unmitigated, non-synergetic mess.

But my body isn't to blame; it's my mind's fault. I've been attempting to regulate this high-maintenance brain of mine since my first baby aspirin. Some kids had guidance counselors. I had hypnotists. Others cried when they got braces. I had anxiety attacks whenever I saw baked beans. Friends collected baseball cards. I collected doctors' cards. Life just didn't feel right unless something was wrong.

For me there's always been a certain calmness in being in the diagnostic chair; then at least there's a reason for why life isn't as satisfying and perfect as I'd like it to be. Although I usually don't know what I've got until the experts tell me, once they do, I'm psyched—as long as there are pills to swallow, creams to rub and warnings to heed. I'm fully capable of generating a new disease every month. Colitis. Prostatitis. Bronchitis (three times, including one stint on antibiotics in England for fifty-seven consecutive days). Hepatitis (the kind that turns you yellow, not the kind that Tommy Lee gave Pamela Anderson). Bigarexia (yes, there is such a thing). And as soon as I've conquered the ailment du jour, I'll just move on to the next disorder. Hastily. But it took a dermatologist to help me realize that I didn't actually have a collection of diseases—I had just one. Hyper-chondria. A word I've made up for my condition.

Now, before I go any further, let me explain the difference between a hy
po
chondriac (not me) and a hy
per
-chondriac (me). Hypochondria is when you think you're sick but you're really not. The hypochondriac's imaginary symptoms and ailments could theoretically be cured with a variety of placebos—be they Halloween candy, dog kibble or a plastic button from a rugby shirt.

Conversely, placebos don't help hyper-chondriacs because hyper-chondriacs actually are sick. Unlike my
hypo
brethren, when I go to the doctor, I think I have ailment X and I do. The seed of each disease originates in my hyper brain, which subsequently creates a swirl of inner turmoil and turbulence in my body.
¹

I've always been in a rush to do things: I paced in my crib, I barked at my parents to stir my chocolate milk faster, I ran out my walks in Little League. I would also seek revenge on anyone who impeded my path to getting things done quickly. Seemingly every day of my life I've had to restrain myself from punching people in the face. Before I discovered my hyper-chondria, I couldn't even drive more than a mile without honking at someone. And I don't just mean a little tap that says, “Hey…um…excuse me…but the light just changed.” I'm talking about holding down the horn with my forehead while simultaneously giving the other car the finger with both hands. Not only was I rushing through life, I was rushing through life in a combative rage. For the better part of my thirty-eight years, my head felt as if it was inhabited by a pair of destructive heavy-metal bands each occupying a brain hemisphere. And neither of them liked the other.

So when Dr. Tamm had a solution to my itchy palms I was ready for action. He pulled out his free drug company pen with the word “Doxycycline” printed on the side and scribbled something on his pad, then tore the page off and stared at me as I read it aloud.

“Zoloft?”

“I think it'll help.”

“Isn't that for depression? Because I'm not depressed. It's one of the few things that doesn't seem to happen to me.”

“It can be for depression, but it's also used as an anti-anxiety medication.”

He proceeded to tell me that Zoloft was a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor that would help take some of my edge off. Had my friends and family been in the examination room, Dr. Tamm would have undoubtedly been the first dermatologist in history to get a standing ovation.

I needed a wake-up call and it didn't have to be from God or a family intervention or a fellow road-rager teaching me a lesson by shooting me with his assault weapon. Besides, I'd seen those enticing TV commercials for Zoloft where that adorable little circle-creature turns his life around and it looked really appealing. I mean, it totally worked for that little circle-creature.

“Now, there could be side effects such as erection problems, but you let me know if that happens,” warned Dr. Tamm.

“Sure.”

“And I don't want you to discuss today's treatment with anyone. Don't tell your friends, don't tell your family members, don't even tell your fiancée.”

“Why not?”

“It's better if you're not self-conscious about people knowing.”

Keeping secrets from my soon-to-be spouse didn't seem like a good way to start a life together. But Dr. Tamm had seen through me in under a minute, so I figured why not let him push the boundaries of his skin doctor degree. Besides, I was sure my fiancée wouldn't have minded. It's not like Nancy wasn't aware she was about to wed a ragey, sick guy.

The first time Nancy slept over she awoke to me stuffing baby diaper rash ointment into each nostril with a Q-tip—a treatment resulting from three months of mind-numbing dizziness in 1995. Two surgeons were convinced I had a brain tumor; thankfully, a third diagnosed it as nasal polyps. I still required an operation, but not the kind where they cut your skull in half like a cantaloupe.

Then there was the Thanksgiving I flew back east to meet Nancy's mother for the first time. In the middle of dinner I politely asked, “Could you please pass the cranber—AUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!” I then dropped my silverware on the floor and my head on the table and began frantically massaging my left eyelid. It felt as if someone was stabbing my cornea with an ice pick.

This was due to an accident in 1992 with a newspaper. As I frenetically turned to the sports section of
The Boston Globe,
speed-reading each page in a mad rush to check box scores to find out how my fantasy baseball players did, I flipped one of the corners into the center of my left eye. If you think a paper cut on your thumb hurts, try getting one near your optic nerve.

The eye guy in the emergency room said that I'd scratched my cornea. I was given an eye patch and told to rest both eyes for the next seventy-two hours. As I sat in my dark bedroom, I remember being happy thinking that my life was technically getting a little better since every minute—every second, in fact—my eye was allegedly repairing itself. As much as the hyper-chondriac likes to rush, waiting to heal is equally satisfying. During the follow-up visit, the patch was removed and I was given special drops to put into my eye should the shooting pains return. And if I didn't have the drops, I was told to massage my closed lid for twenty minutes—which Nancy's mom was about to witness on our first Thanksgiving together.

Then there were my numerous colon checkups and blood tests, my bouts with vertigo, the time I required oxygen on a flight back from New York, and the Fourth of July my left arm went numb. Point being, Nancy was accustomed to seeing me at less than full strength. She understood my ailments; perhaps because a thirty-two-ounce bottle of Arizona Iced Tea once slipped out of her cart at Trader Joe's and landed on her foot, causing her to faint. And there was the time she had red spots on her ankles and went to the doctor thinking it was Kaposi's sarcoma. It turned out to be flea bites from her friend's cat. Sometimes I think the only reason Nancy married me is to feel normal in comparison.

 

I waited at the pharmacy for my Zoloft prescription for nearly an hour. How long does it take to throw thirty pills into a bottle with a cotton ball? The place was empty and I was the only customer! This was bullshit. Hurry up! I'm just one serotonin-not-being-blocked away from snapping! After ten minutes of glaring at the pharmacist, I sat down in the waiting area and watched MSNBC on the ancient RCA that's supposed to make not-being-helped entertaining. They were doing a story about a giant tortoise named Harriet who was collected by Charles Darwin in 1835, and was about to celebrate her 172nd birthday. Harriet had lived through the Civil War, Van Gogh shooting himself, the Panama Canal construction, Prohibition, Jackie Robinson's Major League debut, the moon landing and the final episode of
Friends.
As I watched stock footage of the oldest living animal in the world, I couldn't help noticing that she was moving really, really slowly. Maybe that's why she
was
the oldest living animal in the world. You don't hear about cheetahs or baboons living even a fraction of that. They're way too hyper. It hit me that all animals who have long life spans have one thing in common: they take their time. I mean, elephants may appear to be grossly overweight, but they don't rush and they can live to be seventy. And camels, cool and composed, can easily live to fifty. On the other hand, kangaroos are bouncing off the walls all day. Average life expectancy: nine. I had to be less like a marsupial and more like Harriet. In a scant forty-five minutes, my Zoloft was ready.

But on the way home, I thought the hell with Harriet and started having doubts about being a Zoloftian. I'd always believed that people who were on prescription medication were taking the easy way out. They wanted a quick fix. They were lazy. Weak. They weren't really interested in digging deeper and solving their ills; they just wanted to throw a drop cloth over them. They wanted magic. On the other hand, since our new insurance graciously charged ten bucks for a month's supply of drugs, if I threw them all away, I'd only be out the equivalent of a large tube of Neosporin.

I sat in my kitchen looking at the bottle. After about five minutes of staring, I summoned up the courage to remove the childproof cap, exposing two and a half dozen little blue pills—each of which actually had the word “Zoloft” embossed on it. Which made me even more paranoid. What if you were at a restaurant and you pulled one of them out and someone asked, “What's that?” And you lied and said, “A vitamin.” And then this person asked, “What vitamin is blue?” And you'd answer, “Vitamin B…that's what the B stands for, y'know, ‘blue.'” Meanwhile, the guy sitting on the other side of you has been looking over your shoulder with his laser-corrected eyes and has just read the word “Zoloft” on the pill as if it's the lead story in
USA Today.
Then he immediately mouths the word “Zoloft” to everyone else at the table and pretty soon everyone you know thinks you're depressed or a basket case. Then you have to send out a mass e-mail explaining that you're not depressed, just a piñata filled with angst and panic and an assortment of other things that aren't good for you and that these pills just might help you relax and have better relations with people and they shouldn't judge you and you'd like to peek inside
their
medicine cabinets and you bet even if they're not taking any meds they at least have NyQuil!