Invent a Disease

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

People sometimes claim that doctors or drug companies just invent new diseases. Now it’s your turn!

Carpool Tunnel Syndrome: A fear of being in close quarters with loud, screaming children.

Tackycardia: Elevated heart rate caused by carnivals, theme restaurants and country fairs.

Irritable Vowel Syndrome: Angry Canadians addressing your false claim they say “aboot” instead of “about”.

Guestritis: Irritation caused by people who outstay their welcome at your house, cottage, chalet or elsewhere.

Surely you can do better?

2

How about a fictional injury based on a fictional disease?

Andromeda Strain - a back injury caused by lifting your telescope out of the back of the car.

3

That’s pretty good. I am going to further extend the category to phrases.

“GERD Intentions”: careleessly eating onions and spicy food or drinkin’ booze just before bedtime

4

Why be original, when you can cite something as original as this?

The Spon Plague

5

I gave a name to a nasty disease I encountered when I went to Sacramento for training.

(I’m retired now, after twenty years with the State of Confusion, I mean, California.)

The hotel where I stayed had the typical “breakfast.” I set my coat, my notebooks, and a copy of the morning paper at a comfortable spot where I wanted to eat my Danish, drink my coffee, and scan the paper before I left to go to class.

After getting my “breakfast,” I returned to find all of my paraphernalia dumped elsewhere, where there was no place to even set my coffee cup.

I drove to class, and in Sacramento, there is NO street parking anywhere. I found out that all parking structures have exorbitant rates, and people who don’t pay monthly are banished to the very highest level of the structure.

I was driving carefully, looking to find a place that wasn’t marked “RESERVED” and I guess I was just too slow. The guy behind me PASSED ME in the parking structure.

Be careful in Sacramento, People! The entire city is infected with “I’m-so-important-and-you-are-not.”

Nasty, nasty disease!

~VOW

6

Tom thumb: a form of strain caused by trying to handle a large cat.

7

Sorry for this one, Dr. Paprika, not aimed at you.

False Hypochondria Diagnosis - a term for when a lazy doctor doesn’t want to put forth the effort to discover you actually have a heart murmur/allergy/chemical imbalance/other.

Thank heavens for my current doc. She rules.

'nother one

Terminal Volunteerism - when you volunteer for so many things you feel like to die from exhaustion. This is something I inherited from my mother, luckily we both learned to curb it before it was too late.

8

Well, you could move to Los Angeles. Problem solved! (Or so I here, no personal experience.)

9

Oh, LA has its own set of problems!

Mr VOW and I got our craw full of California, and retired to our place literally out in the middle of nowhere in AZ.

~VOW

10

Angina - when you are a guy and have to, uh, handle things by yourself. Operative word there is “handle”.

11

From a SF tale the title of which escapes me: Narapoia, the feeling that you might be following someone or that people are plotting to do you good.

12

Back in the day, when I was working in animal health, we actually did invent a disease.

Background: an annoying coworker was in the habit of starting conversations about projects he was not involved in, in a way that led a number of us to conclude that he was sneaking around and rifling through files on people’s desks. So, as a trap, we invented the Rufescent Rhinitis Project. The objective was to treat the condition in farmed Norwegian reindeer. We created some correspondence (paper - it was a long time ago) and baited the trap. They never bit.

Ahem. Rufescent rhinitis = Red Nose.

j

13

Hyperlexia: chronic excessive/obsessive reading.

14

Cones disease, always running into roadwork.

15

Wouldn’t that be spelled handgina?

16

Welter Gropius: the inclination to grasp at chaotic disorder

Johnny Quest: an all-consuming need for bathroom location-awareness in any public space

Vindalooneycated: mental affliction from consuming Indian cuisine at a specific phase of the moon, resulting in irrational smugness

Echolalolia: meaningless repetition of Lalo from Better Call Saul’s lines as a symptom of psychiatric disorder.

17

I’ve seen it spelled “thicken prox”.

18

I’ve had this! I suspect that all parents have had a case of this at some point.

19

Just wait until you turn 70.

20

Some disorder where a woman never menstruates in her entire life.

Some disorder where a person gets extreme sensitivity to pain, to the point where they have to be kept in a bubble-confined sort of room for life for their sanity’s sake because a stubbed toe hurts 100x worse than it would for a normal person.