Friday, September 28, 2007

The Most Depressing Thing You Will Read Today (But People Still Keep Watching...)

It all started with ER and General Hospital, then Scrubs, then House, then Grey's Anatomy, and lord knows how many more there are to come. Why are people so obsessed with medical dramas? Frankly, every time I watch one I start to wonder what bizarre tumours and diseases are lurking inside me, undiscovered until a part of my stomach or brain spontaneously combusts, thus turning me into one of the poor patients on the show. I think about death: when will I die? Will I have a heart attack? Will it be nice and quick? Or perhaps I will experience the slow, sometimes pleasant but often terrifying and utterly sickening to those around me death of the self: Alzheimer's. (only of course, to forget about it 5 min later.) Will I ever become a parapalegic? Or maybe I will have a brain tumor, thus forcing me to choose between an operation that could save my life and the risk of losing my entire personality. Is everything I've known and cherished in my entire life really that easy to chemically erase? Everyone thinks "it can't happen to me" but it could all change in a second. Before you know it, you could be a vegetable, or worse...no, I don't even want to think about it.

I guess the general populace watches shows like these because they make their own day to day problems seem trivial in the face of cancer and heart problems. Meanwhile, the personal issues of the characters on the show are far more interesting than everyone else's. There's also probably the ability to relate, to a certain extent, I mean, there are a hell of a lot of doctors and interns around, right? I enjoy these shows to a certain extent, but as you can see from my last paragraph, I can only do so in limited quantities before I start getting depressed, paranoid, and even more of a hypochondriac. Because really, this shit is happenning to thousands of people every day. And what if the brilliant Dr. House wasn't in charge of my case? I could be done.

But steps can be taken to avoid this. (Isn't it funny how everything in life just seems to tie together?) Today I scheduled the second installement of my HPV vaccination, and felt very mature (I refuse to use "grown-up" as an adjective but we all know that's really what I'm implying) because theyre sending me the bill directly and I have to submit it to my insurance provider. Once I figure out exactly how this system works (and maybe once I turn 18, just to be safe privacy-wise) I'll probably take up some new, healthy habits. (And no repeats of last weekend...ever...) Because really, it could happen to you.

And on a final note: if I ever am completley incoherent and strapped to a wheel chair, or stuck in dementia-land, etc. etc. I have one request: Please, put some cyanide in my soup and D-N-FUCKING-R!!!!!!!!!!!!

2 comments:

gbz said...

I don't think this is depressing...all the negativity seems to be in your head. Real depressing would be if you'd actually died.

Juicy said...

that's the point...it could totally happen, and death is the last thing to fear. Worse, i could suffer severe, unalterable brain damage....think about it, one day were all out driving, and the next morning we wake up in the ER and your legs got severed off in the collision, or the gas tank exploded so half my face is burned off....it happens to people every day, we might aswell be next. and after that, our lives would consist of 95% hell