For the past 10 days, I’ve awakened to my own mad mutterings of a number—“one hundred twenty-five thousand”—repeated over and over. And all night long, that number has intruded in my dreams, and all day long, formed the backdrop to errands, walks, conversations. That’s a roundup of the figure on a bill that dropped into my MyChart account late last month for an emergency ablation for palpitations in August: “Amount Due on 11/28/21: $124,323.06.” When I saw the bill, I repalpitated on the spot. Trouble is, the billing company is a separate entity from the Manhattan emergency room where I was treated, and further, the number on the bill is for a call center, which is itself separate from the billing company, which is in Boston, so there was no one I could actually talk to about the bill. When I made a second call to the call center to see if my inquiry could be expedited because I was afraid the trauma of owing that sum was going to send me back into a-fib, and that I would be afrai...
In my adult life, I’ve mostly followed, without examination, the rule that four-letter words were the “bad” ones and should be eschewed. But I’ve begun to realize that five-letter words, at least when you’re making mini crosswords, can be villains too. A year or so ago, I started constructing 5X5 crosswords for a friend who was recovering from heart surgery and, I presumed, needed entertainment as she convalesced. I solved the Wordle and used that word as the anchor each day. I have a couple of cruciverbalist apps that suggest five-letter candidates to fill gaps. But lately I’ve found myself wallowing in unacceptable suggestions, ones that would fail the so-called breakfast test of crossword construction, words or names people can’t face before their first cup of coffee. For example: Adolf, bimbo, boner, bowel, dildo, enema, farts, feces, gonad, G-spot, hymen, kegel, labia, mucus, Nazis, ozena (disease of the nose in which the bony ridges and mucous membranes waste away), pe...
The trouble with hypochondria is that your wildest fears are confirmed randomly and just frequently enough to keep your anxiety going. In animal studies, this so-called intermittent reinforcement—rewards at irregular intervals—is powerfully addictive. I’m addicted to hypochondria as a result of the fact that occasionally a condition I’ve worried about actually turns out to be real. I fight this hypochondria, but truthfully I’d like to move into my doctor’s office so that she could monitor me continuously throughout the day. I try to be brave and soldier on against my crazy fears. But sometimes this backfires. A few weeks ago, I felt a peculiar flutter in the left side of my chest. My chest often flutters—anxiety, panic attacks, a sloppy tricuspid—but this time I happened to be wearing my daughter’s Apple Watch. She had bought it on a whim a year ago and then gave it to me so I could count steps. It didn’t work for counting steps, but I was still hopeful I could find some use for ...
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