“I’ve already planned my escape route for when they tell me that its cancer.” I just kind of blurt this out nonchalantly over some watered down twofers and half priced appetizers. She pauses momentarily just like she always does, then her mouth stops chewing and the single tortilla chip she was drudging the spinach and artichoke dip with drops anchor. And then just as swiftly as she stopped her movements resume as she attempts to speak with her mouthful. “Rell eff you…” She pauses for a second holding one finger in the air as she swallows. “…kick the can, can I have your Mac Book?” When it was Tuberculosis she had requested my TV. And when it was Lymphoma she had demanded my living room furniture. Cerebrospinal Meningitis, my car and when Lupus reared its ugly head she just had to have my digital camera. If the ongoing manifestations of my Hypochondria were to ever suddenly become a reality she would certainly save me most of the trouble of ever having to draft a will. “This time.” I tell her, “This time I’m not going to tell anyone that I am dying.”

“But you just told me.”

“Well you don’t count really, because you’re like the one person I know who wouldn’t treat me any differently whether dying or alive. Other people, they’d employ an exaggerated sympathy, you know, like they’d nauseate me with their obligatory kindness and compassion. But not you, you’d make fun of the wigs I’m gonna buy when all of my hair falls out.”

Over the course of time I’ve really grown fond of these flash in the pan media driven pandemics that spring up every five or six years. With no Five O’clock news or media outlet to help promote hysteria during the dark ages its no wonder the bubonic plague lasted for so long. These pandemics offer a refreshing alternative to the usual ailments trumped up by my hypochondria. I recall stepping on a dead bird one summer while mowing the lawn. I was wearing flip-flops and I remember feeling the bird’s innards ooze up and onto the side of my foot, it had been killed by a cat and its remains desecrated by my foot and lawnmower. Other than this feeling momentarily unpleasant I never gave it a second thought after washing my foot in the kitchen sink. Then a week later I was out to happy hour sitting at a bar nursing a Grolsch. While waiting for some friends to meet me the news anchor on the TV introduced me to Avian or what was more commonly known as the bird flu. Although I never took the time to research how it’s actually contracted or spreads, by catching bits and pieces of the near never ending frenzy of news reports on it I did know this:

First that it comes with an array of symptoms including:
Fever, Sore throat, Cough, Headache, and Aching muscles.

Secondly, that it’s really popular in Asia.

And third, that it’s being compared to the Spanish Flu, which killed around 50 million people.

I managed to ride that one out for about a month before I became overwhelmingly concerned with the fact that I might have come down with a sudden case of Field’s disease. But this season’s must have ailment has to be the H1N1, much better known by it’s street name, the Swine flu, just another member of the influenza family. People, well people like me just go ape shit over words like, “strain” and “outbreak”. My Doctor loves me, and I don’t trust him but my insurance company hates us both. Because while he’s currently treating me for, Von Hippel-Lindau disease, Crohn’s disease, and Camp Sickness he’s managed to treat himself to a nice water front piece of property. What he should be treating is my Hypochondria, well that or the possibility that any given day my liver or kidneys may fail me as a result of the amount of drugs they’ve been forced to endure. I’ve become a close friend to the family of my Pharmacist, I fill around thirty prescriptions a month and have an application on my smartphone called, “Pill Planner o=o” which alerts me when to take which pill. I lean back in the booth and polish off the remains of my drink and light up a cigarette. My expressionless friend, she says to me, “You know you really should take better care of yourself, even though most of your sickness is up in your head.” I smirk through smoke as the waitress approaches, her face wearing more contempt than the usual nine to five scowl. “Sir I’m sorry but there’s no smoking in this establishment, you’re gonna have to put that out.” Her voice is country and raspy and I take a mental note to research mental disorders, see if maybe there are any out there that cause selective hearing, some offshoot of Attention Deficit Disorder. But for now I simply stare up at the waitress with a blank expression on my face and say, “But I’m dying”.

-by
justin Starr****