Oh no, I have Alien Hand Syndrome!

I'm writing this post in the middle of a webinar, which shows you exactly how exciting this webinar is. The webinar is from my health insurance company. I'm taking it because I just absolutely love my health insurance company and will do anything it asks of me.

That, and they're giving me fifty bucks to do it. I'll do anything for fifty bucks. Well, maybe not anything. But I am easily bribed, which would make me the perfect mayor of Detroit.

Because it's from my health insurance company, the webinar is (trying to) load my brain with health information. I'd tell you what that information is but I've been spending the entire time either playing cribbage or writing this blog post. HAHA! Take that insurance company!

From what I can tell, however, it's a series of suggestions on healthy living or, in short: "Don't eat too much and get some exercise because we're sick of paying boatloads of money to keep all of you fat, lazy slobs alive."

Still, I find that it's wise to avoid listening to such things, not because most of it makes me want to say "DUH" repeatedly, but because I'm really paranoid, and any health information will only increase my paranoia. Increasing my paranoia level only increases my stress level, which decreases my health level and thereby makes me more prone to health problems, which would lead to more trips to the hospital. So, by not listening to the webinar I'm listening to, I'm actually saving the health insurance company money. (Oh well, there's a down side to everything.)

I have long been paranoid about my health. Once I read about aneurysms, and for the longest time every headache I had was followed immediately by this: OHMYGOD IS MY BRAIN GONNA EXPLODE???!!? It's here I might note that I used to get frequent headaches, so much of my life was painful and paranoid.

Then there was the time I had that case of heartburn or, according to my paranoid brain, a MASSIVE HEART ATTACK!!

And obviously, every time I do what anybody says without thinking I worry that I've developed Jumping Frenchman of Maine Disorder.

This was made worse in a previous life when I wrote about health care for a living, and spent much of my waking life thinking of diseases like diabetes (my foot's asleep ... I'M DIABETIC!) and cancer (tumors are ravaging my body right now!) and abdominal aortic aneurysms (sakes alive, do I have to worry about that one, too?).

So any time I'd hear about some sort of disease or condition I'd go over the symptoms in my head, then wonder whether I have any of them. I'd spend the next few days worried about the prospect of having that condition, never mind that I didn't actually have any of the symptoms to begin with. The disease existed, and therefore there was a possibility that I could get it and thus a reason for me to worry.

Eventually, in every case, the side of my brain that controls reason and intelligence beats the paranoid part of my brain with a big-ass encyclopedia and I realize how silly all this is -- especially because the day will come when I'll have a real symptom of a real disease. If I keep letting my paranoid self control my thoughts, the day I do develop Cotard Delusion I won't believe myself, and then I'll go throughout the rest of my life thinking I have no arms.




Happy Thursday! Now head on over to humor-blogs.com.