The more you know...

I've had a cold for almost 3 weeks, accompanied by swollen lymph nodes, intermittent sinus pain and almost constant fatigue. Colds are supposed to last one week, or seven days. It has been well over two weeks, and I'm feeling almost worse than I did when this whole thing started. Some days my cold symptoms are very minor, but the swollen lymph nodes have been persistent.

Unfortunately I have a slight penchant for paranoia, especially when it comes to being sick. Headache? Brain tumor. Neck pain and a slight fever? Meningitis. Swollen lymph nodes? Lymphoma or a benign growth at best. Stomach pain? Appendicitis. You get the idea.

I'm pretty sure I am a little more overly concerned about my physical well-being than the average person. Maybe it's because I tend to be a little bit unlucky (broken bones, two orthopedic surgeries, post-surgical infection, but that's another post altogether), or maybe I just spend too much time thinking about myself. I think my discovery of Google about 10 years ago has only fueled this paranoia, as the Internet's answer to every search for a set of symptoms seems to be "you'll probably die young, writhing in pain".

My PhD program is located at a medical school, and some of the material and classes are medically oriented (some of my classes are in the medical school curriculum). Every time I hear or learn about a new disease I make sure I don't have it. So far I haven't self-diagnosed myself with anything awfully terrible, that is, until this lymph node thing. A visit to student health is probably in my near future, but I'm pretty sure they get their fair share of "I learned about this disease...".

So today is spent wishing I was more ignorant, because sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.