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

heart rhythm is impaired. Your body is starved for oxygen, a condition called hypoxia. The brain hatesthis; it degenerates, and so do you. Your family notices changes in personality; you get cranky and irritable and, according to medical texts, you “show poor judgment at work.” 8 Untreated, this can lead to cor pulmonale, a condition that destroys the heart’s right ventricle. You become impotent. You look sort of purple. The veins in your neck pop out, resembling a hangman’s rope. By then, you want to die. Sometimes you do.
    What can be done? First, a doctor will have to determine whether you actually have sleep apnea; some people are just fat, cranky boors with bad judgment. If the diagnosis is sleep apnea, there is an operation called uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (we’ll just call it “Bob”), in which the whole back of your throat is sheared off. Usually this solves the problem. Sometimes it doesn’t. You still snore and choke, only it hurts more because some idiot sheared your throat open.
    Toothache. Get a bunch of dentists together in a room. Get them talking. Then get the hell out of there; there is nothing quite so stultifying as a room full of talking dentists. However, if you leave a tape recorder in the room, you can later fast-forward to the good parts. If he has practiced long enough, every dentist will have a story of a patient who complained of a toothache in the lower jaw. The teeth will look fine. But the patient won’t. He will have clammy skin. The dentist will send him to the emergency room. That is because an emergency room is a better place than a dentist’s office to have a massive coronary.
    At other times, a patient will come in complaining of pain in the molars. An X-ray will reveal an ameloblastoma, a tumor of the bone in the lower jaw, in the wisdom tooth area. This is what is known as an “insidious” tumor. It grows slowly and causes no pain until it is quite large and crowds against the root of a tooth. By that time, the only solution may be removalof all or part of the lower jaw. A prosthesis is inserted. It is usually part metal and part bone shaved from your hip. Depending on the skill of the surgeon, you might look pretty good, or you might look like Grover Cleveland. Cleveland had a jaw tumor; doctors removed a portion of the jaw and replaced it with vulcanized rubber. He was an excellent president but resembled a warthog.
    Stiff Neck. “I probably just slept on it wrong.” Yes, yes. Probably. In the last half century, the simple stiff neck has lost most of its cachet, due to advances in modern medicine. In the absence of other symptoms, waking up with a stiff neck used to be a first sign of polio or tetanus. But these days everyone is inoculated against polio. Also tetanus. You
have
had a tetanus shot, and a booster in the last five years, right? Not sure? You may wish to call your doctor. Ask him. If you sound like Thurston Howell IV, you may be in trouble. Doctors call this initial stage “trismus,” or lockjaw. It will be rapidly followed by a ghastly grin that makes you look like the Joker. Doctors call this “risus sardonicus.” Then your body bends backward, taut, like a crossbow. Doctors call this “opisthotonos.” Doctors have a term for everything. If treatment is delayed, the final symptom can be “cessation of vital signs.” Doctors call this “death.”
    1 Of course, if you are mentally confused, you might not
realize
you are mentally confused. That is the nature of mental confusion. You could be mentally confused right now. You could be thinking you are reading this book, but in fact, you are
remembering
having read this book in your youth. It could be the year 2049 and you are ninety-five years old in a nursing home, rocking back and forth in your own incontinence. If you suspect this may be the case, here is a way to test: Remove your pants. If someone comes to help you, you are