Product Description

When every hiccup sounds like the call of doom, each stomach pang hints at incipient cancer, and a headache means it's time to firm up your last will and testament, The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. provides just the relief you need. Gene Weingarten has spent his whole life immersed in the eclectic details of bizarre symptoms, self-diagnosing every minor ache as a potentially deadly disease. Weingarten examines:

• The mind of a hypochondriac

• How your doctor can kill you

• Ulcers and other visceral fears

• The snaps, crackles, and pops of your body that spell disaster

• Things that can take an eye out

• Interpreting DocSpeak

Blending the neurotic anxieties of Woody Allen, the folksiness of Garrison Keillor, and the absurdist vision of Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten conjures up a hilarious prescription for the hypochondriac that lurks inside all of us.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #310651 in Books
• Published on: 2001-06-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Booklist
If even paranoids have real enemies, Washington Post "Sunday Style" editor Weingarten humorously demands respect for his own minor mental derangement. Before heading to Washington D. C., Weingarten ran the Miami Herald's Sunday magazine. Miami colleague Dave Barry's foreword reveals some stylistic similarities: like Barry, Weingarten takes an ordinary--or only slightly odd--situation and pushes it to its limit. There's a fair amount of true medical information scattered amid satire, sidebars, and tongue-in-cheek charts in chapters on hypochondria, the hypochondriac's relationship with physicians, and a range of behaviors, symptoms, and conditions (e.g., headaches, hiccups, heart disease, tumors, ulcers, obesity, smoking, alcoholism, pregnancy, excretion, and "things that can take out an eye"). Weingarten proudly claims a lifetime of hypochondria, a disease abruptly cured several years ago when he was diagnosed with hepatitis C: what doctors call "the next epidemic." So perhaps Weingarten is a posthypochondriac who recalls the pleasures of imaginary illnesses while coping with all-too-real health problems. Mary Carroll

Review
New York Daily News

Flat out the funniest book on hypochondria ever written.

Alexandra Jacobs

Entertainment Weekly

Weingarten half-merrily, half-anxiously dispenses with journalistic objectivity...and fleshes out concerns about his own mortality in detail that's not for the squeamish.

Allen B. Weisse, M.D.

Journal of the American Medical Association

If laughter is therapeutic, then this guide is sure to succeed, keeping all of us -- patients and physicians alike -- in stitches.

Jackie Jones Bleecker

The San Diego Union-Tribune

The definitive laugh-out-loud handbook....Hilarious. And Scary.

Review
Jackie Jones Bleecker The San Diego Union-Tribune The definitive laugh-out-loud handbook....Hilarious. And Scary.

Customer Reviews

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death.
One of the funniest books I've read, even for a bit of a hypochondriac like myself. FULL of the most fear-inducing information that one shouldn't take on board- like the chapter on ordinary body quirks that could meant the most catastrophic of illnesses. Particularly amusing (for me) was the chapter where the author interviews a Proctologist. Hilarious, with insane little footnotes, and illustrations. Be prepared for a rather sobering finale. Great book.

Truly a great read
Despite the macabre subject matter, this is a hilarious book. I laughed out loud many, many times. And while it may, indeed, feed a true hypochondriac's neurosis, it can also show just how obnoxiously far you can take it. I will admit that even I (not so much a hypochondriac) took a few of the `tests' presented in the book. I evidently have about a half-dozen serious medical conditions...

If you like Dave Barry, you'll like this book.

Great entertainment.
Warning... this is not for the paranoid, for those that read every bad bio-terrorisim book out there then wonder if they've contracted Ebola, or for those who call emergency when they've stubbed their toe thinking it's fleah eating cancer....
Great book full of witty looks at all the medical disasters that can kill ya...
It is well written, funny, well organised and lends itself to reading to friends and relatives who enjoy combining a lack of medical background with pure paranoia. Keep a copy around for flu season...