COVID 19 AND THE HYPOCHONDRIAC…NOT A GOOD MIX

Larry Restler was feeling sick, but he always felt under the weather. Since he was born Larry thought there was something wrong with him. His parents had taken him to their family doctor more times than they could count and he never found anything.

As Larry got older his parents suggested that maybe his maladies weren’t physical and they got him an appointment with Dr. Rebecca Goshen a Psychiatrist.

Every week Larry would go to visit Dr. Goshen and share his aches and pains and his fears of getting fatally sick. Every week Dr. Goshen would remind him of the tests Dr. Gazelle had sent him for and the results, which always came back nice and clean.

Rebecca would give Larry exercises to control his fears, but they never seemed to really work. She was hesitant to give anti-anxiety drugs because of the addictive nature of the prescription. Instead, she met weekly and had some deep, philosophical discussions.

As Larry aged, Dr. Goshen continued to meet with him. He went to University but didn’t want to live on campus, so he went to a school that was only an eight-minute walk from his house. He didn’t drive because of the number of car accidents that happened every year. He didn’t want to be a victim of a reckless driver.

After University, Larry took a job with an Accounting firm. He liked what he did, he only dealt with paperwork and had little contact with people. He still questioned the quality of the air in his workplace and didn’t like the fact that his office didn’t have a window but he was surviving. He still checked his temperature twice a day. He still went for monthly tests, and he still visited with Dr. Rebecca Goshen.

Larry was working at his desk when Leon came in to talk to him. Leon was a partner at the firm ‘’Larry, good news, bad news. The good news is we think you do an excellent job. The bad news is there’s a virus out there called Corona and we are going to change our office structure.’’ Larry rarely corrected one of his superiors but he had to. ‘’I know all about it, I’ve been monitoring it. It’s actually called Covid-19 and it is in the Sars family. It comes from Wuhan, China. I believe it is highly contagious and possibly fatal. I was going to suggest everybody in the office wears a mask.’’