The sickly symptoms of self-diagnosis
16th October, 2006
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My head throbbed with a persistent, sharp pain and I was seriously tempted to call work and say I had taken to my bed. Instead, cursed by an upbringing that dictated you had to be in your death throes before you could take sick leave, I eased my feet onto the carpet and shuffled to the bathroom. I felt as if I had the mother of all hangovers, which was disturbing as the previous evening I had consumed a solitary glass of light beer and gone to bed early.
My arms and legs ached, which I recognised as a classic flu symptom. I'm doomed, I thought. I've managed to get the flu twice in a month. And then I remembered that the previous day, I had spent the morning talking to a personal trainer who had insisted on giving me a free workout. At one point, as he pulled and stretched my limbs, I recalled that my big toe had been level with my ear and I had fully expected my leg to snap off. That, I thought, would account for the back pain and the front pain and the arm, leg and neck pain. So I went to work and spent the day moaning and complaining, still feeling dreadful and receiving as much sympathy as I lavished on others when they did the same, which amounted to a total of three grunts and a perfunctory nod. My wife and I attended a friend's party that evening where I consumed half a glass of wine and two glasses of mineral water, a sign that something was seriously amiss. We went home and I had not been in bed ten minutes when I started to shake. I wasn't shivering, I was shaking like a Salvation Army tambourine on a street corner on a Sunday night. This subsided after a few minutes and I drifted off to sleep, awakening not half-an-hour later with a start. I was drenched. The sheets were so wet I thought for one dreadful moment I'd suffered an attack of incontinence. Wonderful, I thought. I have turned into a bedwetter. Bring on the rubber sheets and the walking frame. Then I realised the pillowcase was also wet. I'd been sweating so much in my sleep that the bedclothes were sodden. I groaned, rolled over and started to shake again and then sweat. I was so wet that finally I got up, grabbed some beach towels and crawled back to bed cocooned within their folds. There was something familiar about these symptoms and, as I lay in the dark, teeth chattering like castanets, I recalled what it was. Malaria! I had malaria. We'd been travelling in Indonesia three weeks before and I had deliberately not taken anti-malarial drugs as I knew from a previous trip that they made me even more psychotic than normal. I have had a less than perfect record with self-diagnosis over the years, having assessed myself as suffering everything from blackwater fever to leprosy. I checked the incubation period of malaria on the Internet which confirmed I was a candidate. It was, I knew, incurable and recurrent. I was to spend the rest of my years shaking and shuddering and sweating. It could also, in extreme cases, be fatal and still accounted for a large number of deaths in Third World countries. I informed my wife that I had the shakes and she diagnosed alcoholic withdrawal.
"Very funny. I could have malaria. It can kill," I said, hoping this would trigger an outpouring of sympathy and compassion.
I sweated and shook for two days and finally went to the doctor.
"It's malaria," I said, with the same conviction I had employed after Internet-diagnosing blackwater fever and leprosy; for I subscribe to the belief that if you are going to have a disease, it might as well be exotic.
Mum always wanted me to be a doctor. It's probably just as well that I chose sociology. |
