Hypochondriac's "Should I Be Freaking Out" Test, featuring Google
Everyone gets sick from time to time, and often times nothing can be done to prevent it. Yet there are those us who know that the only way to avoid the Big One is to maintain hyper-vigilance against illness of any kind. The world deems you a “hypochondriac”, but you know better. You take pride knowing that you are on the vanguard in the war against mystery ailments, the kinds of illnesses that medical science is yet unable to pinpoint with its crude tools and close-minded practitioners. So when, despite all your precautions, you start to feel sick, how do you know whether or not you should be freaking out? For this purpose I have invented this handy test.
Start by figuring out your symptoms. Try to determine the most extreme wording for these symptoms, because otherwise you’ll find a fair amount of results telling you not to worry. If you have a slight headache, search for “migraine”. If you’ve been sitting at a computer all day, and at the end of the day you stood up quickly and all the blood rushed to places at once and you felt a bit dizzy, that’s “vertigo”.
Now do a google search that includes all of these symptoms. Don’t worry if your symptoms occurred at different times, or even on different days. Rest assured that they all have a single mysterious, deadly, underlying cause.
Now, examine the results of your google search. Look primarily for results from major free-medical-reference sites like WrongDiagnosis and MedHelp, or from message boards specializing in mystery ailments and/or autoimmune disorders, like diabetes or MS. Read all of the message board posts in full, making sure to ignore the parts detailing symptoms that you don’t have.
Should you be freaking out yet? The answer is Yes, of course you should be. But the real question is, *how much* should you be freaking out? The one thing that all of these sites have in common is that every symptom is related in some way to cancer. Cancer of all types, shapes, sizes and mortality rates. Got a cold? That’s not a cold, that’s swollen lymph nodes, and you know what that means!
So what you need to determine is the actual probability of you having cancer as opposed to some other, potentially non-terminal illness. Just to make sure that your bases are covered, assume that you have both. But for a deeper, more factually correct analysis, look at the results listings for possible illnesses that match your symptoms. How far down the list is Cancer? If it’s at the bottom of the list, that means the likelihood of you having it is relatively low. You should probably focus on finding results that match a different terminal illness.
But what if it is higher on the list? Uh oh. How can you determine what level of worry you should be experiencing? We can measure that using a technique that I have patented called the HAPE Scale. The HAPE Scale involves answering one simple question: is the Cancer listing ranked above or below the listing for High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema?
High-Altitude Pulmonary Edema is a life-threatening condition where capillaries burst due to lack of oxygen. It can occur at altitudes above 13,000 feet, though it primarily occurs at much higher altitudes, such as that of Mount Everest. Look around you. If you can verify that you are not currently on Mount Everest, then your risk of contracting HAPE is relatively low. If the listing for “Cancer” is ranked less likely than HAPE, you may in fact be in the clear. Let out a sigh of relief. But don’t sigh too loudly, because that sounds an awful lot like wheezing, which is a symptom of pneumonia.
But what if the unthinkable happens, and Cancer is at the top of the list? Go to a doctor immediately. Actually, don’t go to a doctor, go to the emergency room, because This Is An Emergency. If you are a true “hypochondriac”, you have been to the ER before, and they will probably recognize you. Unfortunately, with the medical system being what it is, you are likely to have to wait for quite a while before being seen by a doctor. You can shorten this by screaming “I HAVE CANCER!” at the top of your lungs every couple of minutes as you sit in the waiting room.
By the time you are seen by the doctor, they will probably have heard you from the hallway, so they will be psychologically primed in such a way that they are less likely to dismiss you off the bat. When you do manage to be seen by a doctor, make sure you yell once more “I HAVE CANCER!” directly into his or her face, just so they can know that you are serious about your well-being. This is the best way to achieve results.
If the doctor tells you that don’t have cancer after all, take it as a good sign. After all, no one said that doctors were wrong all the time…just most of the time. And if they tell you not to spend all your time reading about diseases on the Internet, just tell them that this test was not meant to determine whether you were sick, but merely to determine how worried you should be about getting sick. Now that you’ve been to the doctor, you can stop worrying for a few days. So relax, take a deep breath, and hold it while you sprint to your car. These hospitals are absolutely filled with germs.
