Tag Archives: cyberchondria

1884 Penny Britannia

Cough, cough, cough . . .

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This is Monday’s post, which I didn’t complete until Tuesday. There should be two Tuesday posts. Or at least, that was the plan. I have just spent the evening wheezing and feeling sorry for myself, so I am now posting the Monday post on Wednesday morning. I may well continue to write the real Tuesday post on Wednesday too. Catching up can be very complicated.

I have a cough. It became a little worse on Saturday night, stabilised for Sunday, then worsened again today. It’s an intermittent dry cough. So far I’ve hovered on the point of having a sore throat but avoided it. I have, however, had a few periods when my head or my neck have felt quite sore, and today I pulled a muscle in the abdomen with the effort of coughing. This was annoying as I was trying to keep everything as gentle as possible, to avoid this.

I’m beginning to think that this might be the “Victorian” disease also known as the “100 day cough”. Though it is delighting the doomsayers that write tabloid headlines it’s just Whooping Cough, as it used to be known in my childhood. As I’m not under six months, or pregnant (despite appearances) I’m unlikely to be in danger, even if I am infected.

But it is most likely that I simply have a cough. I’m prone to coughs in winter. I’m also prone, as we all are if we aren’t careful, to fall victim to cyberchondria or other faulty self-diagnosis. The one I find most interesting is Medical Students’ Disease or Second Year Syndrome. This is where medical students, despite being warned abut the condition, start to believe they have the disease they are studying in class.

I have a tendency not to go to the doctor for a cough if I can help it. They tend to find other faults, or investigate me for things i don’t have. I’m not fond of either. As a result, it’s been about five years since I’ve been to the doctor for a cough. It eventually clears on its own, and life is a lot simpler without a doctor fussing round. They mean well but they are paid for finding stuff wrong with me, and they try their hardest to do their job.

Victoria Bun Penny

The other side of the coin.

Vaguely Medical Monday

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Monday morning, and it’s a nice clean day. The weekend’s rain has washed the streets, the standing water has had time to disperse and there is very little traffic about, as the schools, and the associated parents and teachers, are on holiday. I’ve never understood how school holidays manage to empty the roads so completely, but there’s no point agonising about it – just enjoy it. I left home ten minutes late today but still got to work on time.

The lateness was due to my COVID test. I’d started sneezing over the weekend and had a runny nose, watery eyes, bad throat, fatigue and even a headache. I’m normally tired but it’s very unusual for me to have a headache. I just passed it off as a summer cold and left it at that yesterday. However, in the evening, after seeing there is a new variant, and these are the exact symptoms, I decided I’d better do a test. Then I forgot. This morning, I remembered. It was negative, so it was a summer cold. Magnified by thoughts of COVID, it was, for a short while, important. Now that the result was negative it’s just a summer cold aggravated by a touch of cyberchondria.

However, although I don’t have COVID, and can’t pass it on, which is good, I have killed the planet a little bit more. One swab, one plastic bottle, a plastic pouch of liquid, one plastic testing kit, a plastic ziploc bag for disposal and a bit of packaging, including a desiccant sachet. I don’t know the exact carbon footprint of all that, but it’s come all the way from China by the look of the packaging slip. It’s so easy to use plastic, particularly when, like this, you get sent a pack by the NHS. They sent it before one of my hospital appointments, so I took it as a hint they wanted me to test before I went. On the other hand, I might be wrong, as they didn’t actually send me any information with it.

Photo by ThisIsEngineering on Pexels.com

Day 80

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Has so much of the year gone already? This day Numbering title system is quite depressing. So to cheer things up, let’s watch Italy score a truly excellent try to the backing of Nessun Dorma.

I have, I admit, seen better, but they feature my kids and so (a) are not available on film and (b) I am probably biased.

This evening I watched one of those videos on health and am now convinced I am dying. This is a clear case of cyberchondria. and after a bar of chocolate I feel much better. For those of you who don’t waste time on links, it’s a clever pun on hypochondria, is a real condition and is caused by anxiety at the immense amount of information (and misinformation) about health on the internet.

The best antidote for worry is just to take a look around. Day by day there i more blossom out. White, pale pink, deeper pink and even red, though that is mainly camelias and they are, in general, a bit too showy for my taste. Set against almond, plum and cherry blossom, plus magnolia and even flowering blackcurrant, they are just to big and too red. Quince, which is also out, is red, but is subtler, with smaller flowers. The header picture is a quince.

That is all I have to offer today. I started off with big writing plans for the evening but ended up wasting time. I have sent one submission this month and have another ready to go, so I’m doing Ok, but am conscious that I still have another couple to do before the end of the month if I’m going to keep my numbers up. The numbers are important in themselves, but they are a way to measure whether I am writing enough (because practice makes perfect) ans whether editors think I am making the grade.

I went looking for photos of blossom in March but 2022, 2021 and 2020 have little to offer and in 2019 we had snow in March. These are some bird photographs from March 2018. Have we really done so little in the last four years?

Wren at Rufford Abbey

Nuthatch at Rufford Abbey

Robin - singing

Robin – singing