Possible Side Effects

I’m not exactly a hypochondriac, but I do have a history of blowing small medical “issues” out of proportion until the results are in. The small red freckle on the inside of my elbow I thought was melanoma. My self-diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome that turned out to be anemia. My “almost-pregnancy” when I was sixteen that turned out to be broken condom-plus-nerves-equals missed period.

Okay, maybe I have a touch of hypochondria. But I like to think of it as vigilance about my own health rather than an excessive preoccupation. I watch Mystery Diagnosis on Discovery Health not because I want to, but because one never knows when one will have strange symptoms that could result in serious illness or fatality, and one should be prepared. I spend an inordinate amount of time on WebMD not because I’m a classic neurotic, but because I believe that ignorance can be lethal. And I’ve occasionally read articles from The New England Journal of Medicine when they appear on my Google Reader feed because, well, you just never know.

Recently I brought a small mass I felt in my abdomen to my doctor’s attention. He said it was “probably nothing” (yeah, right), but sent me in for an ultrasound just to be “on the safe side” (also: yeah, right). In between the doctor’s appointment and the ultrasound, my mind jumped from fluid retention (one of my doctor’s suggested “diagnoses”) to fibroid tumors to ovarian cancer so fast it made my head spin. The rational part of my brain knows that my last gynecologist appointment was just two months ago, making fibroids or any other “female trouble” unlikely. But just for fun, I decided to do some internet research.

I Googled “abdomen” and “tumor”—too many hits, but something caught my attention. Headline: “Boy ‘pregnant’ with twin brother.” Doctors in Kazakhstan discovered that a seven-year-old boy’s abdominal cyst was actually the remains of his brother, a Siamese twin who had grown inside of him and died in the womb. Uh-oh. Twins run in my family, yet my mother never had twins (that we know about) and my sisters have all had their children one at a time. Then I Googled “absorbed twin” and found out just how common the phenomenon is.

Headline: “Doctors remove parasitic twin from newborn.” Headline: “Boy ‘gives birth’ to own twin.” These medical abnormalities, while often reported in lowbrow tabloids like Weekly World News (“Doctors remove tumor from child; tumor speaks fi rst words”), are also called “teratomas” and are basically tumors that include embryonic cells. Doctors often do not explain to patients following removal of such tumors that they may or may not include hair, skin, teeth, and even bone (hence the “absorbed twin” designation). They call them “dermoid cysts” or “teratomas” because it sounds a hell of a lot nicer than saying “your tumor had an eyeball.”

During the ultrasound, I studied the lab tech’s face intently to see if his expression revealed my fate—surely he would gasp in horror as he discovered a tumor the size of a grapefruit, but with a face and teeth and hair. My absorbed twin.

I imagine that, had my twin survived, he would look something like Brendan Fraser—big and toothy and slightly Canadian—and his name would be something like “Chaz.” He would have been fun when we were five, but I think by the time we hit our teen years, he would have become the bane of my existence. In high school, he’d be just the kind of twin to tell on me for the bottle of vodka under my bed, for the pack of Marlboros in my book bag, and the spare set of keys to my mom’s car that I stashed for those weekends when she was out of town. Jerk.

Chaz, being Chaz, wouldn’t have taken a year or two off between high school and college like I did. He would have graduated with honors, smiling with his big teeth as he accepted his diploma at graduation (I never bothered to go to my own…my diploma was mailed at a later date). He would have gone into neurology or some other medical field and spent a few years working for Doctors Without Borders before he married a woman who would be the daughter my mother always wished for. They would have four perfect toothy children that would be held up as examples for all of the other grandchildren in the family. His wife would bake often and mail care packages to all the family members filled with bread and cookies and lovely hand-written notes.

We would stop speaking to each other at family gatherings after he made a comment about me being “headed for spinsterhood” at one Thanksgiving dinner. Later, we would reconcile—twins, after all, can’t stay separated (or mad at each other) for very long. During my second divorce, he’d offer to pay for my attorney and let me stay in his second home in Connecticut while the dust settled on my doomed marriage.

I became so wrapped up in the vision of my non-existent twin, I was almost disappointed when my doctor called to tell me that my ultrasound was perfectly normal. No tumor, no teratoma, no absorbed twin. Poor Chaz never had a chance.

However, I know what he’d say in his brotherly way when he heard the news: “Quit with the Googling for medical advice, sister of mine. One doctor in the family is enough.”

Kelly Love Johnson is managing editor for skirt! and thinks that she has done enough health research to qualify for an honorary medical degree. E-mail her at kelly.love@skirt.com.

~Kelly Love Johnson