I Play a Doctor on TV

 

I may have a slight tendency to be a hypochondriac.  Now I am saying only slight because I don’t actually do anything about my belief I am desperately ill, except for telling Kevin about it.  This may be a mistake, however, because he believes I am a raving mad hypochondriac. 

I am only slightly one because I limit my symptoms to tastes in my mouth.  Sometimes I think I get funny tastes in my mouth that means something is wrong somewhere else and my taste is being affected.  I know that I have seen this as a symptom of a stroke or something on television.  Therefore, you see, my tiny paranoia is not my fault.  It is the fault of numerous hours of ER, Private Practice, House, Grey’s Anatomy, and an occasional St. Elsewhere.  Now do not try and put this back on me for wasting my time watching these television shows.  If I had not watched them, I would have no idea that I have a problem because of the funny tastes in my mouth.  See?  I may have saved my own life.

Except for the fact that I will never go to the doctor and ask about these funny tastes in my mouth.  I generally get them in the middle of the night when I haven’t eaten anything for a while or while I am brushing my teeth when I think my children have sprayed my toothbrush with something.  Except I just got a new toothbrush to make sure that was the problem and now I am tasting it again.  Except that I go the new toothbrush five days ago so my kids could have done something to it again, but I got after them pretty good after the last incident that they all swore they didn’t do so maybe it really is just in my head.  This is why I never go to the doctor with these problems.  There is no way I am going to tell someone who may possibly have the ability to send me to a mental institution for 72 hour surveillance that I am having a weird taste in my mouth and what the possible causes could be.

So now I am sharing with you the fact that I sometimes get weird tastes in my mouth and I worry about it for at least five minutes when it happens.  It happens generally 2-3 times a week so I am losing fifteen minutes a week.  This is about 550 minutes a year or a little over nine hours.  I figure I have nine hours a year to be worried about this so I’m not going to do anything about it.  I mean, I already admitted to wasting hundreds of hours with TV so this is nothing.

Thank you, I feel much better.  I’m going to go to Hulu.com now and watch the Grey’s Anatomy episode I missed last week.  After I brush my teeth.