Monday, August 8, 2011

Brain Eating Zombie of the Day

Rahul Parikh

The Real Reason Hypochondriacs Drive Doctors Crazy


Knowing what I know now about the nature of hypochondria, all of this was easy to foresee. The mother of this child wanted, desperately, to get her daughter a diagnosis, a grand unifying explanation for what was likely nothing more than a bunch of random ailments strung together. Had I ordered that lab test and given her this false diagnosis of Lyme disease, I would have sentenced her to 6 months of intravenous antibiotics through a surgically placed central line.
That's quite an assumption you're making there. But even so, why don't you treat those random ailments and see what happens?

Dismissing our symptoms is the cause of hypochondria. By not treating our illnesses, we get sicker.
See how that works?