Too much for your own good.

I love the fact that the profession I’m in allows me to be on the cutting edge of science. That being said, I hate where I work because it allows me to be on the cutting edge of science, dealing with diseases that I’ve never heard of, but now I think I have every other day. 

I’m not a hypochondriac. I’ve never been. But, there are times that I have to write about all the signs and symptoms of a particular disease, and instantly, I have one or two of the signs and symptoms. 

Now, I’ve heard that this is common place for a lot of people in different medical professions. I know people who take psychology classes and come out self-diagnosed with OCD, depression, or even better, the ones that come out self-diagnosed as being schizophrenic. 
“I swear Ash, it makes complete sense now. Sometimes I see dots, especially after looking at a bright light, or when people take pictures of me. It’s a hallucination! I’m schizophrenic!”
No, darling, you’re not… but, go ahead and see if you can self-prescribe yourself some lithium for that now.

I think the people who should self-diagnose should only be the people who can self-prescribe.

That being said. I recently wrote a piece where one of the lines was something like this (please, FDA, note that I do not in anyway condone my next sentence, it’s just for show.) “PNH can cause liver damage, which may feel like you are experiencing stomach pain.”

That sentence is now screaming in my head, after a weekend of a lot of drinking, and having horrible stomach pains 2 days later. Maybe I’m overreacting, or maybe I’m self-diagnosing myself… not with PNH… just with liver damage. I don’t think drinking can cause PNH, in fact, I’m relatively certain it can’t. (Then again, no research has been done in this arena, so this is simply speculation.)

But see! I have to write about horrible disorders, and ultimately think I have one!

Maybe I’ll make one of the characters in my novel have one. Then, I can at least allow the incredible amount of information I had to learn for this piece I’m working on, not go completely to waste. Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it may be interesting to try something like that. Whenever I learn way, way, way, too much about any kind of disease, I should make one of my characters have it. Then all my learning will never be in vain. As it is, my novel is helping my environmental and genetic knowledge not be learned in vain, so perhaps I ought to do the same with the things I learn at work. 

So…

Maybe knowing too much is really for your own good.

Then again, this is all just science… which is nothing more than theory… because tomorrow someone could come out with a paper that proves that drinking can cause orphan diseases to occur.

I think I’d freak out, then go ask to be tested for PNH.