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

say. Then he would instruct me to stop that infernal tooth chattering. To the best of my recollection, Dr. Katzev’s diagnosis was always the same: I had a “bug” that was “going around.”
    (I would not have been surprised if years later Dr. Katzev achieved fame in one of those news stories you see from time to time where some kindly family physician, beloved by his patients, is discovered to be a refrigerator repairman.)
    Dr. Katzev viewed all complaints skeptically. He did not cotton to drug therapy or fancy diagnostic tools. Mostly he used a stethoscope and one of those triangular reflex hammers. One day when I was seventeen, I went to Dr. Katzev complaining of a pain in the eye. He said, “If I hit you on the elbow with my hammer, your eye won’t hurt so much.”
    Dr. Katzev urged me to keep an eye on the eye and see whatdeveloped. I tried, though it became increasingly hard through the slime that was oozing over my eyeball. I continued watching carefully as a red rash developed around the eye, expanding into a weird, angry blotch that bisected my forehead right at the midline and ran down the center of my nose, veering off at a ninetydegree angle across my cheek. I looked like the victim of some sort of peculiar windburn, as if Ïwere Mort—that character from
Bazooka Joe
comics who wears a turtleneck up over his mouth—and had driven the autobahn at 120 miles an hour with my head half out the window.
    Reluctantly—no doubt suspecting that he was shamefully overreacting—Dr. Katzev finally sent me to a specialist, from whom I learned I had a serious viral disease called herpes zoster ophthalmicus. It attacks the nerves in your face around the eye. After the doctor told me his diagnosis, and that herpes zoster ophthalmicus usually clears up on its own, he went into another room and told my parents the same thing, adding something he hadn’t thought wise to share with me: that herpes zoster ophthalmicus has been known to cause blindness, and there was no surefire way to prevent this.
    So then my parents had to make a decision. On the one hand, being Jewish, they believed in the Talmudic principle of truth telling. On the other hand, being Jewish, they believed it is a mortal sin to cause one’s son to worry. They decided to compromise.
    Me: So I guess everything is going to be OK!
    Them: Yes! Absolutely!
    My Mother:
(whispering to my father in Yiddish)
Unless he goes blind like a burrowing rodent, the poor, sweet dumpling.
    Me:
(to my father)
What did she say?
    My Father: How do I know? I’m half deaf.
    I recovered fine. If anything, the experience reinforced in me an appreciation of Dr. Katzev’s laissez-faire medical philosophy. The disease
had
cleared up, on its own.
    Then, in 1974, Dr. Katzev died of a cold.
    I had loved and respected Dr. Katzev; he had always seemed wise and kind and indestructible, and in a generic, no-frills sort ofway he had been a terrific family doctor. He cared about his patients. His death—caused by neglecting his sniffles and coughs until they turned into congestive heart failure 4 —made me aware of the importance of vigilance in maintaining good health.
Profoundly
aware.
    I was twenty-three. Around that time I developed a pain in my jaw. I went to see a doctor. The doctor was stymied. Thinking aloud, he made an observation. It wasn’t a diagnosis; he was simply making pleasant conversation, sharing his knowledge. He should writhe in hell for all eternity. What he said was that he had just read about a study of soldiers in World War I. If they came under hostile fire, they had been trained to fling themselves forward into a prone position, with their rifles flat out in front of them, at arm’s length. Sometimes, a soldier’s chin would come down on his rifle stock. And about a year later, this soldier would begin to experience undifferentiated pain in his jaw, not dissimilar to mine. Soon after that, his