‘6 months to live’ — or so says George Clooney

Feeling a bit anxious about your health this year? — don’t worry, worry. At least that’s what George Clooney from ER would say. Medical dramas redundantly feature two types of patients. Patient-one: A veteran of a chronic disease with realistic and dim expectations for anything medically positive in their future. But then something happens … they run a test that no other doctor had thought of before and an exciting new reason for medical hope is on the way, or doctor or nurse engages in a emotional conversation with the hopeless patient, and they start to see some light. Patient-two: A broken leg, a stomach ache, a fainting episode, or injuries from a mindless car accident. Each of these characters start-off with no reason for worry, so they don’t. Big mistake! The broken leg is bone cancer, the stomach ache is pancreatic cancer, the fainting episode is heart failure, and the car accident is Alzheimer’s.

So what’s the problem with this? It teaches us that if we assume our symptom is serious then our personal story will follow that of character-one … if we assume our symptom is nothing, our fate is now bound to character-two. So is hypochondria a reliably superstitious way to avoid a stark medical diagnosis? Probably not. So would it medically doom a Greys Anatomy script writer to let a patients broken leg be just that once in a while? Maybe … only a full-body MRI — before and after writing — with contrast — could say for sure …