We must be a city of hypochondriacs
We must be a city of hypochondriacs. The question 'Haegideera?' (How are you, in Kannada) is actually considered an open invitation to take you on a grand tour of your acquaintance's Wonderful World of Diseases.
Strangely, the moans don't emanate from the muffler-wrapped mama-mami, who pound the pavement, rivaling the milkman on his early morning rounds. The young and seemingly able-bodied laptop-lugging techie, the gym rat and the paintbrush-wielding artist have their favourite medical lore u2013 a slipped disc here, a torn ligament there, and aches and pains everywhere. Just tell someone you haven't met in a while that they are looking marvellous, and you will see that they are seriously annoyed.
"You didn't know of the near prolapse of my L5-S1, did you?" retorted a college pal I hadn't met in years when I complimented him on looking remarkably fit. "I had to lose 10 kilos because my spinal neurosurgeon ordered me to," he continued in an aggrieved tone, but brightened up visibly when I told him that the badshah of the box office, SRK, had a similar problem not too long ago. "I'm sure those of us who lead stressful lives are prone to such things," he finished with a self-satisfied sigh.
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Another friend, whose pit stop is the local pharmacy, is convinced she is menopausal (at 33) or has polycystic ovarian disease, which she spends endless hours "researching" on the Net, much to the dismay of her GP, who is growing rather tired of pitting his hard-won medical knowledge against her equally hard-earned hypochondria.
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Her idea of keeping in touch with her pals is to forward us e-mails that warn us of the dire medical consequences of using deodorants or wearing high heels!
Numb and tingling arms, a heart that throbs and breath that comes in short spurts are proof enough, not of high-voltage romance, but of some lurking, unidentifiable disease for which medical science is yet to find a cure.
As we continue to trawl the Net to self-diagnose and self-medicate our ailments, why are we surprised when the check-in executive at the corporate hospital wants to know if we'd like an A/c deluxe suite that has a fridge and a flatscreen TV while we wait for the super specialist to set up his laptop and give us a slideshow on the benefits of quick-fix surgery vs tried and tested bed rest?
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