If only it were so simple--allow people who suffer from fake illnesses to treat themselves to fake cures from New Age quacks. The idea is amusing, but it only works when a) the cure doesn't actually sicken the patient, or b) when the patient isn't truly sick.

I don't think my mom is a true hypochondriac--she doesn't make herself sick by believing she's sick. But she does have this need to believe that if she just changed some little thing about her life, her minor maladies would go away. She is also averse to consulting real doctors, so is always going for chiropractic, reiki, naturopathy, crystal therapy, etc... or switching to complicated diets.

Mostly I think she has attuned herself to any and every little annoyance in her body and the environment and has become incredibly sensitive. It's like if you start hearing a drippy faucet at night, it sounds like Niagra Falls and you won't be able to sleep until you fix it. That's how my mom is with being sensitive to stuff--and it gets worse as time goes on.

Anyway, what really boils my blood is that a few years ago she was experiencing some nasty symptoms, and as usual, instead of going to the regular doctor she went to some quack who told her to put a crystal in her pocket (meanwhile siphoning wads of $$ out of her other pocket). She tried 'crystal therapy' for weeks, getting worse and worse until I flipped out on the phone after hearing her symptoms and said: GET THEE TO AN M.D.!!! Turns out she had a septic infection that was getting worse and worse and was just days away from being life threatening. What she needed were heavy-duty antibiotics--not f---ing crystals!

What drives me crazy is that even after this experience, she is still so reluctant to go to a regular doctor. Also, as she becomes increasingly sensitive to everything, she seeks more quack help and makes more weird dietary changes. Some of it is harmless, and I think that to her a visit to the chiropractor is like a visit to the spa for some other women. However, it's the times when the cure is worse than the 'disease' or when a real disease goes untreated that really scare me.

Keep the hell away from me ........ I deal with lunatics all day.

And guess what, you're gonna die someday from something.

Blood tests, neg (sort of)

Urine, neg

Sonogram, neg

Non contrast CT, neg

Not your lower GI, appendix, gallbladder

We don't know why there's blood in your urine, and we guess that crippling pain and swelling you experience is for no earthly reason we can understand or explain. So go home and take Motrin.

First, thank you for your very reasoned -- and reasonable -- response. I appreciate it a great deal. As for the deleted post, just as well, I guess. They don't do that to mine often enough, I suspect.

I hear you regarding your use of general terms such as "crazy" and "stupid" especially coming from one who is heavily invested in behaviorism, which of course is a perfectly legitimate scientific discipline. However, it has been known to spawn the occasional practitioner who is a very concrete thinker and so incapable of fully empathizing (the title character in the TV show "Bones" would be a good example -- if you were a TV watcher. B.F. Skinner would work since you don't).

I find this to be problematic and, in fact, have most of my life thought of Skinner as someone allowed to remain at large only because he was able to hide behind his value as a scientific researcher, never mind what he did to his daughter (or others we may never learn about, in less dramatic ways).

On the other hand, I acknowlege fully your contention that there are forces (commercial and political) which endeavor at all times to treat us like mushrooms (keep us in the dark and feed us shit). No question about that. And I am well aware of the very negative effects that has on most of us "normals" to some degree or other. I do believe, however, that the average American isn't made as "stupid" by this as one might think. I encounter "normal" people every day who have, in fact, traded being a sucker for something perhaps worse: being a cynic. They don't believe anything they hear, and so block any useful information along with all the dross. Of course you might well contend that is a stupid behavior too, and I'd be hard put to argue the point.

I am one person who believes that with the application of insight and critical thinking, most people could strain out the camels in order to get at the gnats in this spew of information we are deluged with. I feel I succeed at it pretty well and I don't consider myself especially blessed with great intelligence nor even much common sense, compared with many others. I'm often told otherwise, but I think, like "normal", intelligence is pretty relative. And compared with my relatives I'm a freakin' genius. OK, that's cruel, but I'm going to hell anyway according to them, so I'll manage. But these conditions truly are relative. The very concept of "normal" eliminates any single standard as the norm. I do believe in Erich Fromm's concept of normative humanism, but that's behavioral, and the state of the world over the past 25 years (or, if you're old enough to remember the earliest days of TV, then 60 years) may smell funny, but before the current marketing mentality took hold we still had mental illnesses, and hypochondria was one of them -- a very common and difficult one. It was so far from "normal" for any given standard, that it was usually easily recognized. That hasn't changed nor probably even been made any more prevalent by the information explosion. However, that (often spurious) information does give the hypochondriac (as well as the "normal" person) more ammunition to feed his rebuttal of the diagnosis of somataform disease. So we're about halfway together on that, I guess.

You say "Crazy is anything out of the zone of normal and those things give us character, personality and uniqueness and that is what makes us persons." I say what I see on TV is crazy, and that's not character building, but being able to dissect it may be character building. I know any number of people who have eliminated television from their households, primarily to spare their children its influence, but the result is that their children are "characters" but not very normal. It is a difficult balance to achieve, socializing one's kids without having them grow up to believe they can fly or become President or that war is good and they "need" a Sony Playstation to be "normal." The parent's involvement is key here, but I am getting way far afield of the original issue, which is "Are hypochondriacs crazy or stupid?" I would still argue that no, they are not, and if you truly do believe in psychology, which gave birth to behavioral science, then you must also accept the DSM IV diagnoses and work with them, instead of just cherry-picking your science. And in dealing with people who suffer psychological afflictions you aren't going to get far with them by telling them to "Turn off the TV" or that they are crazy or stupid.

Hey, that "secret" about CO2 levels causing anxiety cuts both ways you know. Unconscious hyperventilation in the anxious or panicky patient causes the blowoff of CO2, causing the breathing reflex to be blunted, with the result that the subject feels he cannot breathe, and so tries even harder. This makes the situation worse, until numbness of the extremities, tingling, and carpal and pedal spasm make them think they are having a stroke or going to pass out. This is where the torture really starts. But what you said about a certain airline failing to manage their gasses correctly is true, and it can result in perfectly "normal" people having panic attacks in the air, one of the worst places for it to happen.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. Hopefully this actually adds something to the thread.