Free The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. and Death. by Gene Weingarten Page A

serious ailment for which bad breath alone can be the initial sign that something is wrong—though people seldom seek help at this early stage. Who wants to arrive at the doctor complaining that you smell like a septic tank? So you wait. Eventually, you get a persistent earache. Or congestion in one nostril. That’s when you discover you have a squamous cell carcinoma of the throat or sinus. The prognosis often stinks.
    Yawning. One of the great mysteries of medicine is why yawns are contagious. The fact that they are is often cited as evidence that yawning itself is without clinical significance; if it can be induced by mere suggestion, how can it mean anything bad? This is good reasoning, but alas, it is wrong. Paroxysms of yawning or sighing in the absence of real fatigue can be an early sign of encephalitis, or of a tumor or hemorrhage in the central part of the brain. These things push the brain downward, making it ooze through into areas where the brain has no business being, and for some reason this process can induce yawning, sighing, and later, stupor and death. This condition is called a “central herniation,” or an “uncal herniation.” It is very bad. Maybe someone should write a children’s book featuring a character named Uncle Herniation. He would be sort of like Sleepy the Dwarf, only he’d keep getting crushing headaches, spinal fluid would run out of his nose, and in the end he would lapse into a coma and die.
    Nosebleeds. If you go to a doctor complaining of nosebleeds, he will first make vague, discreet inquiries, using big, dignified words like “extrusion,” and it will slowly dawn on you that he is asking you if you pick your nose. The fact is, the capillaries in the nose are a threadwork of vessels easily damaged by, say, a pinkie. 7 After ruling this out, and ruling out obviousother genetic causes you will probably know about—hemophilia, for example—the doctor will begin looking for diseases you don’t know about: These include a series of things with very long names. One is an esoneuroblastoma. Another is a nasopharyngeal angiofibroma. These are nasal tumors, and they tend to debut as nosebleeds.
    If these immediate causes of your nosebleed are eliminated, the doctor will consider systemic causes, diseases that affect your whole body but first show as nosebleeds. One would be an inflammation of the right side of the heart. Or the doctor might suspect Waldenström’s macroglobulinemia, a blood disease that is terrifying not only because it turns you weak, pale, and blind, and then tends to kill you, but because it involves the use of an umlaut, which makes everything sound worse than it is. Try it. Settle a few umlauts atop the most benign thing you can imagine, and watch what happens: Sänta Claüs. The jolly patron of Nazi children.
    But a more likely explanation for nosebleeds would be cirrhosis. You don’t have to be a drunk to get cirrhosis. Liver disease can sneak up on you, and sometimes you can be near death before you notice anything is wrong. One warning signal is that the liver stops doing what it is supposed to do, including helping the body absorb vitamin K, which helps blood to clot. If there isn’t enough, you bleed. It can start with the capillaries in your nose. This is the early stage. Eventually, you cough and vomit up huge gobs of cherry red, clumpy blood the consistency of rice pudding. Sometimes it will be darker and look like chicken livers or coffee grounds. This stage of your disease is called “hematemesis.” People with terminal cirrhosis don’t get invited to many parties.
    Snoring. You snore at night and feel tired during the day. You are a man. You are middle aged. You are at least somewhat overweight. You might have obstructive sleep apnea, a serious sleep disorder in which the pharynx collapses and prevents you from breathing. This can last up to two minutes without waking you. Your