I've been feeling really tired lately. I could attribute this to a lack of reasonable sleeping patterns and the need for a serious vacation (just two more weeks, whoo!) Or I could do the fashionable thing and blame it on a made-up disease. I have lots to choose from now. One of my favorites is Morgellons where evil carpet fibers are attacking you. But there are many other fake things I could have. T-virus. Bone-itis. Cabin Fever. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Krippin Virus. Fibromyalgia. Celiac sprue. FOCUS: What is your favorite fictitious disease? Have you or anyone you known ever had a fictitious disease? How are you/they coping?
Fuck you Frylock, I'm claiming hate crime on the basis of disease. The docs can't tell me what I have except that it lives within the realm of fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue. Yeah, there was some conjecture that it was mythical until some test results came back to tell me my cortisol and melatonin levels are way the fuck out of whack... like double the high level which is, itself, double the target level. Sure there's a ton of bullshit medical conditions out there. The thing is, though, medical science can't tell us everything about the body or how it works. In many areas, especially chemically, it's still a case of "if I push x, I get y" without understanding what it does to z. How about some differentiation for commonly over diagnosed or misdiagnosed conditions? As for how I'm coping? Marginally at best. I'm sick of spending money on specialists that end up not working, or to be told that they're out of ideas. The fatigue and sleep issues are under relative control through medication, but it's stopgap. There's no answers to the pain as yet, except pain medication and I'll be fucked if I'm going to do that. It all just masks the symptoms - not address the problem. Until medical knowledge gets better, I think I'm relegated to willpower. It's managed to get me this far.
HIV/AIDS. Also, if it was a real disease, could you successfully treat it with beetroot and garlic, hmmm? Actually, my favourite fictional disease, vampirism, is almost real. From Wikipedia: Porphyrias primarily affect the skin, causing photosensitivity, necrosis of the skin and gums ... brown teeth that fluoresce in ultraviolet light... The pain, burning, swelling and itching that occur in erythropoietic porphyrias generally require avoidance of bright sunlight. Most kinds of sunscreen are not effective... Blood transfusion is occasionally used to suppress innate heme production... So, to my mind, the real question is: once you have used garlic to cure your AIDS, will it also keep you safe from vampires?
Some of my favourites: The Heebie-Jeebies Dance Fever Brain Clouding Eyes in Wrong Sockets Restless Leg Syndrome (it isn't real and you fucking know it) Wrist Cancer Asian print-themed tattoos Cooties Vaginal Sealing Big Pox Oxygen Allergy Ghost Limbs I had Cooties for three years, thanks to a playground collision that left six dead. It took a lot of antibiotics and a little comb to get rid of them, but I'm a fighter.
If only we could transpose those symptoms with Slack Jaw Syndrome, we could make the perfect woman...
I hate the overuse of ADD, Asbergers to essentially explain active kids that the parents/teachers don't want to discipline and social awkwardness. Sure, there are probably a few that actually have it but now it is the catch all for anybody who doesn't fit into some little box of what is "normal". Plus the throngs that want to self diagnose themselves with such things because, for reasons that I can't explain, some people want to have a "disease" or "condition" or "syndrome". Whether it is because they relish the attention brought by it or because it gives them an excuse not to change their behavior, I don't know. People be crazy, man.
I think those are most likely to be boy "diseases", so I was trying to generalize. In this instance, we don't have the market on crazy. Everybody covered that with the fibro and CFS.
Who knew there were so many doctors on the board. Focus: Schizophrenia. It's all in your head. Addiction. He'll, even the disease itself tells you it's not real and that you don't have it. "Old football injury" syndrome. Medical term for "you're old and out of shape.". Usually self-diagnosed.
I agree ADHD and ASDs have been over (and often mis) diagnosed, but the real tragedy of this is that it trivializes the disorders for those who actually have them. It took a long time, a lot of doctors visits, and finally an extensive psychological evaluation by a neuropsychologist before my daughter was finally diagnosed with Asperger's (after being misdiagnosed with bi polar II and being medicated for it).
Another debatable one amongst society: Munchausen's Syndrome a.k.a "WAH WAH!!! PAY ATTENTION TO ME, THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE!!!" Disease. Nett calls it "Grind Syndrome" I believe. Others You've contracted over the years: Clothingaphobia Water on the brain Combination skin Fear Love Jones Sex Addiction The Blues Chapped Ass Feelin' Meh Liking the movie "Eurotrip" Shitty DNA Cankles Selective Hearing "Just Resting My Eyes" ..and as said before, peanut allergies. When I was a kid not too long ago, every goddamn kid in my school brought peanut butter sandwiches to school and not ONCE.....EVER (both my school had over 1000 students) did some kid fall down seizuring while red spots broke out on his face like Flesh-Eating Disease. Exactly when did children start becoming Bubble Babies? I blame the rise of Coldplay. To everyone: everything can kill you at anytime it feels like it, so don't live your life. And don't let your kid eat peanut butter (which is awesome) because we'll expel them after they've surely killed every single child in the school with that sandwich of death they're harbouring in a simple brown paper bag.
The EpiPen has been around since the 80s, the use of epinephrine has been around since the early 1900s. What happened to kids with allergies when they were your age is they spent most of their childhood indoors or in the hospital and probably died from anaphylactic shock. You were probably joking (hopefully, you're not that stupid right?), but allergies were mentioned a few times in this thread so I wanted to clear up any misconceptions for the idiots out there.
I know allergies are real, and I know they have always been around. So no, I'm not a moron. Kids also didn't spend their lives indoors then. The only thing people feared in the 1980's were strangers, Detroit, and the clown doll from Poltergeist. There was just no stink made about it. I'm sure kids always have been allergic to peanuts, but now peanuts are treated like the worst thing that ever existed next to carbs thanks to fearmongering campaigns, so you can see why it's frustrating to me.
Allergies: Peanut or tree nut (like pistachios) drive me crazy. Mostly, because of what was mentioned here before about them not being around years ago, and now every elementary school class has one or two kids with it. I think part of that can be attributed to the fact that those kids didn't get out much years ago or just died. Part of it is over-reaction or over-diagnosis, imho. But, a friend of mine is physician. He suggested that part of the increase may be based on the fact that more premature babies are surviving. Babies have survived born at 21-22 weeks. That's 15-16 weeks early. Those are rare, for sure. But even being born 3-4 weeks early, means some lack of development. Some people think that immune system development is retarded by failing to reach the full gestational period. Focus: Sadly, I am afflicted with a disease that people tell me is fictitious, but I know I have it. I have tried to get special funding from the government, a close parking space, and special treatment from women with large breasts. But, apparently, small cox is not recognized as a legitimate ailment.
Even though AA helps keep me sober and has laid a foundation for my recovery I still can't accept that I have a disease called addiction. I think part of this belief is that I want to accept responsibility for my actions and I know that I am an addict. This is not a popular opinion to bring up in AA meetings. I feel that as long as I talk about how it relates to me and only me then I can believe whatever the hell I want.