It’s really quite interesting to chart my progress learning diagnoses. (Or lack thereof.) I only really know a couple diseases, and one or two symptoms of those diseases, so when I come up with some diagnosis for myself, I’m sure it’s about as far from reality as you can get. A couple of examples:

* A couple months ago I woke up with some petechia on my legs. I only knew what petechia was because we had talked about it in regard to meningitis. Later, when meningitis was ruled out, I decided it was some sort of clotting or platelet disorder. I’m still not convinced I don’t have the latter.

* I also had some back pain around my central back muscles last week. This, too, was meningitis of the spinal cord. The fact that I had no other symptoms at all didn’t stop me from making that diagnosis, either.

* I’ve been working out recently, and had a couple of days where I pulled a bunch of muscles. Even though I had forgotten to stretch, in my mind it was far more likely that I had some sort of musculoskeletal protein forming disorder. Maybe stress brought it on or something.

Deep down somewhere, I realize this is all just histrionics . I’m a healthy, young adult, who exercises pretty regularly and tries to eat his vegetables. There is clearly little wrong with me physically. I guess I just think it’d be much more interesting to have meningitis than a backache; much more fascinating to research my musculoskeltal disorder than to stretch better. And all this relates, full circle, to my lack of seriousness for disease . Maybe it’s just human nature. You never appreciate it when you’re healthy, but when you’re feeling lousy with the flu, you promise to be cognizant of your health when you have it back.

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