Left behind by Obamacare? Bob Mankoff speaks up for the ranks of poor, downtrodden hypochondriacs

"But if you cure my hypochondria
I won't have any hobbies."

by Ken

"I was at my doctor the other day for my annual physical exam," writes our pal New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff, in Hypochondria, My Faithful Muse, then quickly qualifies that "actually, for me, it’s more like a perennial."

As a lifelong hypochondriac, I see no reason to wait a whole year, or even a whole month, to find out if that fizzy feeling in my fingers, the occasional twitching in my right (or is it my left?) eye, or the inability to remember the last name of the comedy duo of Peter Cook and Dudley ___ are one of Death’s opening acts.

If Bob's lifelong hypochondria precedes his only-near-lifelong cartooning, it's nevertheless unsurprising that the preoccupation has fed the occupation, as we can see in this sampling of the sample of cartoons he offers with his post.

"You're sicker than I think."

Bob continues:

I take these exams pretty seriously; I even study for them. Because one of the things that I know I will be asked to do—I think it’s a test for incipient dementia—is to stand on one foot, close my eyes, and count backward from a hundred by sevens, I practice at home before going to the doctor. I’ve gotten really, really good at it. Incidentally, when my wife saw me doing this, she thought it was proof that I was demented.

During the most recent exam, I performed well on that part, proudly rattling off a hundred, ninety-three, eighty-six, seventy-nine, seventy-two, sixty-five, but then I suddenly shouted, “Moore! Dudley Moore!,” which caused some concern for my internist but a bit of relief for me.

"Well, Bob, it looks like a paper cut, but
just to be sure let's do lots of tests."

And Bob concludes:

I think that my obsessive concern about my health comes from my mother, Mollie. I was an only child, and there had been a number of miscarriages before I finally arrived. Doting is probably too mild a word to describe my mother’s attention to my existence, so long in doubt, and which she felt could be snatched away at any time. I’m told that when I was sleeping, she would put a mirror up to my mouth to see if it would fog over, showing that I was indeed breathing and alive. I still do that myself, every once in a while, just to make sure.
Anyway, I think Mollie’s ministrations instilled in me a potential for hypochondria—a potential that has been fully realized and made its way into many of my cartoons.

"Well, Phil, aftter years of vague complaints and imaginary
ailments, we finally have something to work with."

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