WELL ENOUGH ALONE: A Cultural History of My Hypochondria
Jennifer Traig
Riverhead Books
Memoir
Hardcover: 9781594489914
Paperback: 9781594483806
Jennifer Traig was pretty sure she had cancer. Also, lupus, tuberculosis and kidney failure. And herpes, rickets and Lyme disease. Plus, she might have had a heart attack somewhere along the way. As a hypochondriac, Traig is constantly convincing herself that she has been stricken with all kinds of illnesses; the symptoms are real, but the results are always negative. Or, almost always. She does have obsessive compulsive disorder and irritable bowel syndrome. She suffered from an actual eating disorder and, she will tell you, has frizzy hair.
While hypochondriacs exist only as the butt of bad jokes for most of us, Traig's latest memoir, WELL ENOUGH ALONE, explores the disorder in a personal and compelling way. Traig is often the butt of her own jokes, but this book makes it clear that hypochondria is no laughing matter.
Traig explains that hypochondria doesn't generally manifest until adulthood, yet she had signs of it as a child. In second grade she was worried about brain aneurysms, not to mention contaminated school lunches and injury from risky playground equipment. Her family seemed to be full of hypochondriacs, some of them genuinely sick, and her parents’ medical professions also gave her fuel for the fire. She soon figured out that doctors worked hard and fussed over the sick, who got to rest and be pampered. Being sick, she reasoned, was the better deal. As she got older, the worry turned into real hypochondria, and she often found herself in the doctor’s office with lists of pains and symptoms, rashes and spots.
Her teenage years were consumed with OCD and her eating disorder, and this seemed to keep the hypochondria at bay. But it resurfaced in college, and she began to self-medicate. She also started working in medical offices that, instead of worsening her hypochondria, actually soothed it; she found that having some control in a medical environment, even if it was just organizing patient files, helped her feel more in control over her symptoms. Still, her college years (and they are many, as she earned a PhD in literature) were ones of poor nutrition, alcohol and non-prescribed prescription drugs as well as angst at literary theories like deconstructionism. None of this sounds quite funny, but truly, Traig has a way of making it so.
Because the market has been flooded with horrible childhood memoirs, Traig's is refreshing. She doesn't lay blame (except with her genetic pool), and her tone is good-natured and self-mocking. She is a charming narrator, and her supporting cast --- her raucous and kind family and strung-out friends --- are interesting as well. From her unorthodox teaching methods as a grad student to her love of 1970s drug company marketing practices, Traig expands her story beyond her body yet is able to tie it all in to make a cohesive whole. She explains hypochondria clearly but without dull medical technical details, and is sensitive enough to make sure that the readers are laughing with her and not at hypochondriacs in general.
The book also includes some oddly hypnotic and beautifully graphic Victorian portraits of patients with conditions like Lupus Erythematosus, Molluscum Fibrosum and Rhinoscleroma. The appendix is full of gems such as “handy phrases for the hypochondriac traveler as translated somewhat unreliably on my computer,” “diseases that would make nice names if they meant something else” and “hypochondria haiku.”
WELL ENOUGH ALONE is funny and surprisingly sweet. A bit unfocused at times, it is a good book overall and gets better as it goes along.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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