Reply
Fri 9 Feb, 2007 05:23 am
I used to do freelance editing and proofreading for a pharmaceutical company. I was frequently assigned to proofread package inserts--the small-type seemingly endless printed info about medications that is packaged with the meds.
As I read and got to the part about symptoms of the disease the med was designed to treat, I developed every symptom. Sometimes the symptoms would come and go as I moved from one to the next. Sometimes a symptom would linger. I started to think, "Gee, maybe I should take this stuff," until I got to the list of side effects. I experienced the side effects without taking the medication.
It got to be a joke at the company. "Should we assign Roberta more package inserts? What's she gonna come down with now?"
I also worked on other materials for a variety of products. The only ailment I never developed, no matter how much editing and proofreading I did on the subject, was erectile dysfunction. Even I have my limits. However, not developing symptoms of the physical condition did not stop me from experiencing the side effects. Hey, does that lemon look a bit blue?
Phoenix recently suggested that we know as much as we should about our health (http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=90464), and she's right. I have a condition, and I thought I should know more about it. I did some poking around online. Now I've got more symptoms than I had when I first started the search. For me, at least, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
What about you? Do you hear about something and feel it? Experience it? How does the power of suggestion affect you?
Lol!!!
When I worked in a hospital, it was well expected that, as people rotated through new specialties, they would develop symptoms according to the nature of the work the unit was dealing with.
Humans are made with so called "mirror neurones" that enhance our empathy for each other, by causing us to feel what others are feeling....the same areas of the brain light up in us when we feel another's emotional experience as as they do in the person experiencing the emotion. Well, they do if we have received enough empathy and attunement as little people.
Sounds as though your neurones are very bright mirrors indeed!
Didn't even know I had neurones, let along bright mirrory ones. Interesting, Deb. Thanks.
Re: The Power of Suggestion
Roberta wrote: ...As I read and got to the part about symptoms of the disease the med was designed to treat, I developed every symptom. Sometimes the symptoms would come and go as I moved from one to the next. Sometimes a symptom would linger. I started to think, "Gee, maybe I should take this stuff," until I got to the list of side effects. I experienced the side effects without taking the medication.
I know, I
know, Roberta ...
I suffer from a similar affliction.
I've found it's best not to read
too much about any prescribed medications on the internet. All those side effects! Suddenly I discover that I have the lot!
Naturally our dogs at some point have signs of every canine disease I study.
They're truly resilient little bastards.
Whenever I have to take any OTC meds, I read all the possible side effects, and develop them within 30 seconds of swallowing the pill.
If it's a perscribed medication, I get all the side effects a half hour BEFORE taking them, on the way home from the drug store.
Wally would say perscribed, but not you, Chai.
One of the side effects of my meds is shitty spelling.
Cocaine will do that to a person.
So there are others who are similarly afflicted.
Patiodog, Glad that your dogs have survived the worst.
msolga, Looks like you and I have to avoid knowledge.
Chai, Glad I never had to work on the med that causes shitty spelling. It would have defeated the whole purpose of proofreading, wouldn't it?
So it's only meds? What about unconsciously adopting someone else's speech patterns? Getting hungry (right after you've eaten) when you see someone eating? Feeling cold when you see something about the Arctic, or hot when you see something about the tropics?
If you're watching a movie and someone is drowning, can you breathe?
I admit to the speech patterns. And I did feel a bit chilled when I watched the penguin movie. I think my mirror neurones are in a constant state of overdrive.
I pick up accents even when I don't want to. I've lived lots of places and seem to have settled on a very standard non-accented American speech pattern. But I have to fight this Texan sound.
I was reading a book once in which there was torrential rain. I looked up from the book and had to go look outside as I was certain it must be pouring at my house too. (I guess I was hearing the rain in the book?)
I tend to hold my breath when someone is drowning on screen. Maybe I'm afraid that I'll drown too...
mac, Sounds like your mirror neurones are in high gear. Never read about rain and thought it was raining. Interesting.
Every time I so much as walk into a hospital, my knees turn to jelly. I just know there are people in pain there.
I've always said that you were perceptive, Eva.
No less perceptive than you, Gus!
I can see how that might have sounded simplistic, but it wasn't. Have you ever experienced physical symptoms from imagining others' pain?
C'mon, tell us a story.
I spent about a week thinking I had Lupus, back when I did those tests, as we always used ourselves as one of the several controls.
Well, yeh, that turned out to be due to something about ph, and yet more of a primer that one shouldn't take a 1+ seriously unless it was within a context of a person's tests. Yes, we shut down for those days until the test worked again.
Decades after that, I was checked for my eyes, and they ran a syphilis screening test that involved immunofluorescence as part of the routine and I showed up as 1+. Nice, they called me at work, when I was working out stuff for a 96 house project. Oh, hello? - even though I'd asked not to be called at work. I remember the nurse on the phone as being amazingly rude, telling me to contact the infectious disease clinic.
I was lucky, I knew who was the head of Infectious Disease, he was a friend of my long time boss, and per phone he told me what test to tell them to order, and yeh, I came up neg.
medicine seems a mess to me, though I'll acknowledge many gains.
This will affect some a2kers more than others, but, damn, I sooooo didn't want to hear I had syphilis, not least that I would have inform past partners.
Picture the phone call...
Eva, Do you mean that you experience pain because you know that people around are in pain. Or are you upset that the people around are in pain? Sorry if I'm being dense.
And I'm equally dense (but sympathetic) in my response to Osso. I understand (I think) how the power of suggestion affected you with the lupus. (Scary.) I'm less clear on how it affected you with the glaucoma/syphilis scare. Doesn't matter, really. I'm glad you didn't have to make those calls.
Eva, Do you mean that you experience pain because you know that people around are in pain. Or are you upset that the people around are in pain? Sorry if I'm being dense.
And I'm equally dense (but sympathetic) in my response to Osso. I understand (I think) how the power of suggestion affected you with the lupus. (Scary.) I'm less clear on how it affected you with the glaucoma/syphilis scare. Doesn't matter, really. I'm glad you didn't have to make those calls.
Roberta wrote:Eva, Do you mean that you experience pain because you know that people around are in pain...
Not pain exactly, but physical symptoms. Overall weakness, lightheadedness, disorientation...and every little ache of my own seems magnified.
Is it just me, or is this a common reaction?
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace