Susie Essman on Love, Life and Comedy

I'm perimenopausal, and I know that I am because I have the symptoms and I know I have the symptoms because I spend 80 percent of my free time checking out the myriad medical sites online. I spend the other 20 percent looking for lumps.

I feel so blessed to live in an age where medical information is available on the internet. Internet info is a hypochondriac's dream and a doctor's worst nightmare. I spend a lot of time on these websites checking symptoms for illnesses and conditions I'm certain I have. So far, this month alone, I've had Lyme disease, hysterical blindness, and an enlarged prostate. Whenever someone I know, or someone I know knows someone who has an illness -- minor, major, or terminal -- I immediately assume I have it too and plan accordingly. Much to my delight and chagrin, almost all of the commercials on TV these days are for some kind of pharmaceutical treatment for diseases I've never heard of but am sure I've contracted. One after another, fifteen-, thirty-, and sixty-second spots for pills and ointments that must be taken at your own risk. I know I'm not alone in this. Otherwise there wouldn't be so many commercials for this stuff. I've even thought of starting a symptoms checkers support group. I'll call it Dead by Tuesday Anonymous.

The beauty of the internet is that there are so many choices. There's WebMD, MayoClinic.com., MedicineLine.com, Medicine.net...Plus hundreds of specialty sites, too numerous to mention. Let's say I go on WebMD to check a symptom of a disease that I suspect I have, and they inform me that I'm in good health and have nothing to worry about. Needless to say, that prognosis doesn't sit well with me, so I can simply dismiss it and check out the other sites until I find one with an outcome that pleases me, one, that if not fatal, will certainly be very dramatic. The sheer volume of medical websites gives me hope that somewhere, somehow, I can find a site that lists my symptoms and will reinforce my belief that I have something that I most probably don't have a chance in hell of having. A lot of symptoms are universal. So many diseases have symptoms I can easily have. Fatigue. Who's not fatigued? Lethargy? Isn't she the twin sister of lazy? Or bloating? I'm bloated twenty-nine out of thirty-one days of the month! And you can fake yourself out on some symptoms and convince yourself that you have them even when you don't. Dizziness, for example. Dizzy is my middle name. I can easily convince myself that I felt dizzy because I lifted my head up too quickly the other day.

I don't mean to trivialize the pain and suffering of people who are really sick, and it's not that I really want to be sick, but the hypochondria is something that is out of my control. Illness is frightening. If I gain weight I'm convinced it's because I have a tumor growing inside of me that weighs a few pounds. If I lose weight, it's because the tumor is causing a diminished appetite. I can't win. To ease my fears I tell myself that if I'm vigilant about my health, then I'll remain healthy. But there is anecdotal evidence everywhere I turn that proves that this approach doesn't necessarily work.

Honestly, I'm not that bad, comparatively speaking. I've got a few friends that are pathological hypochondriacs. They make me seem like the bastion of mental health. Their hypochondria colors every moment of their lives, whereas mine simply informs it. You can see the movement behind their eyes the moment someone sneezes in their presence. By the time the sneezer says, "Excuse me," they've already been on the phone with the Centers for Disease Control, three immediate family members, and the head obituary writer for the New York Times. The gripping fear makes them incapable of really being a friend, because when you tell them about something wrong with you, all they're really thinking about is whether or not it's going to happen to them. They ask you about your symptoms as though they're being empathetic, but their motives are so transparent.

We all play these games. You hear that a friend has lung cancer and know that they're a smoker. That's an easy one because the cause and effect are so clear. But then another friend has lung cancer and they're not a smoker. Now we're into different territory. Is there a family history? Were they exposed to asbestos? Secondhand smoke? Do they live near a power plant? Did they ever spend a summer with Erin Brockovich? And when there doesn't appear to be any reason for them to have gotten lung cancer, when it's random and arbitrary, then that is proof positive that I, and my severely hypochondriacal friends, must have cancer too.

I grew up in a household that loved disease. Not like, loved. Sound weird? My father was a doctor and made a living off it, and my mother, according to her self-diagnosis, has been dying since 1963. My father always had medical paraphernalia around the house, syringes and tubes of blood in the refrigerator, and promotional items from drug companies in drawers and cabinets. I remember the pad next to the phone for writing down messages was in the shape of a colon. I'm not kidding. Disease was discussed at the dinner table with regularity. Between the soup and salad we usually had botulism, stroke, and retinitis pigmentosa. Someone in the family or extended family always had something.

For as long as I could remember, each of my parents would pull me aside, individually, to tell me that the other one was deathly ill and dying and then they'd go for a million tests, which they loved, and then there'd be nothing wrong. It was kind of a wish and a fear all rolled up in one.

For example, my mother would pull me aside and say, "I think Daddy has a brain tumor." And then he'd have tests tests tests and there would be nothing wrong. Or my father would say to me, "I think your mother has rickets," and then she'd have tests tests tests and there'd be nothing wrong. It was nutty. Maybe they needed the distraction from the realities of life, I don't know. My father did ultimately get cancer for real and died in 2001, but my mother is still frequently telling me that she's about to die. She's eighty-three, and while she's not in perfect health, she's nowhere near death. She's got lots of aches and pains and trouble with her eyes and ears, but none of her maladies are life threatening. Still, she told me just a few weeks ago that she'll be dead within a few months.

"Really? What from?" I asked.

"Oh, lots of things."

"Name one."

"Well, I've got a heart murmur."

"I've never heard of anyone dying of a heart murmur. And besides, you've had it for years."

"Well, I could drop dead of an aneurism."

"Yeah, well, so could I!"

So you see, I come by my own issues honestly. I get my mammograms and sonograms and pap smears and blood workups and even the dreaded colonoscopy on a regular basis, and I have the dermatologist check my moles and everything is just finefinefine and then I read about some flesh-eating supervirus and I'm instantly convinced that I contracted it on my way home from my checkup. How the hell am I supposed to protect myself from that kind of deadly scourge? By eating more broccoli? You have no idea how much broccoli I already eat, and carrots and beets and even kale, and I don't think a trans fat or anything with corn syrup has crossed these lips in a very long time. I wash my hands frequently, not sick OCDishy frequently, although some non-vigilant types may think so, but I can't deny that antibacterial hand lotion and I have become the best of friends.

Copyright © 2009 by Esswoman Productions, Inc.