Editor’s Note – Issue 6, Volume 5, August 2009

Article Category: Editors Note 1 Comment

It’s taken me longer than usual to come up with this month’s Editor’s Note.

It’s not that I haven’t had the time — I’ve had a full month and nearly 40 years worth of material to draw from — it’s just that I haven’t used my time very wisely.

If I had to blame my procrastination on anything, it’d have to be the damned internet. We all know how easily it can suck you into its mind-numbing void. All it takes is one brief downspell for someone to be enveloped in its web-like thingy. A simple google for “boobs” and — poof! — 7 hours of your life have disappeared.

Now, in my defense, it wasn’t from searching for anything salacious that got me so lost. And I’m not one of those celebrity obsessives, bloggers, gamers, Facespacers or news addicts who demands up-to-the-nanosecond feeds to keep functioning. No, what I’ve spent my time on is far more pernicious. I’m talking about self-diagnosis, the bane of every incurable hypochondriac.

I’d been seeing little snowflaky spots in front of my eyes for a few weeks longer than I’d have liked, and though in my heart I knew it was probably due to the infernal heat and the fact that I don’t wear prescription sunglasses, I was pretty positive it was because I had a brain tumor.

Some three weeks later, after checking for symptoms of blindness, I found that I suffered from walking pneumonia, Lou Gehrig’s, arthritis, malaria, the early onset of osteoporosis, meningitis, the Epstein-Barr virus, low-grade autism, lockjaw, neurofibromatosis, lumbago, fallen arches, advanced cardiovascular disease, an early, as yet undetected stage of Alzheimer’s, thrombosis, polio, St. Vitus’ Dance, tennis elbow, leprosy, post-nasal drip and bubonic plague. It seems the only thing I didn’t have was a yeast infection.

As a man trying to support a wife and two young children, I knew all these ailments would cost me a Russian oligarch’s fortune in medical bills.

Luckily, I remembered, I live in the wealthiest, most powerful industrialized nation in the world, and a goodly amount of my taxes have been set aside to pay into an efficient social health care system.

Wait.

I forgot… We don’t have one.

I mean, what the hell kind of crazy idea is that anyhow?

Dr. Editor

(R.I.P.)