Enter your symptoms and figure out what you are for sure dying of.
March 2, 2017 9:01 PM   Subscribe

Hypochondriapp: enter your symptoms. Get the worst disease possible.

by Emily Xie
[via the one and only darth]
posted by Uncle (46 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
Sooo...this is different from WebMD how, exactly?
posted by sexyrobot at 9:03 PM on March 2, 2017 [16 favorites]


I hate to break it to youse guys, but we are all dying here. We are a little early to cyborg out, or drive harvesters with slices of our brains, rebuilt from frozen, donated, DNA. Life is the disease of diseases. Demise is the thing we all race ahead of, except for the bungee jumpers and the like.
posted by Oyéah at 9:07 PM on March 2, 2017 [4 favorites]


I gave four standard symptoms of Parkinson's and they could not connect the dots. Let me try another disease.
posted by Oyéah at 9:09 PM on March 2, 2017


Hey my name is Parkinson.
posted by parki at 9:15 PM on March 2, 2017 [5 favorites]


It might be a tumor.
posted by Greg_Ace at 9:18 PM on March 2, 2017


It's not a tumor.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 9:20 PM on March 2, 2017 [8 favorites]


Definitely not lupus.
posted by not_the_water at 9:22 PM on March 2, 2017 [7 favorites]


Dry mouth? MÖBIUS SYNDROME
posted by infinitewindow at 9:22 PM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


But I've already had congestive heart failure and a mild stroke and after inputting my symptoms from both, got nothing even semi-closely related. I'll leave it to my cardiologist, neurologist and internist to fight it out among themselves... and they ARE fighting. Sigh.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:24 PM on March 2, 2017 [3 favorites]


I did get a kick out of providing a very random list of symptoms: loss of coordination, vaginal discharge, paranoia, puncture wound, and belching. Just seeing them together delighted me. The result was uninteresting, but my sense of the absurd was nicely cultivated.
posted by bloggerwench at 9:26 PM on March 2, 2017 [7 favorites]


I couldn't even figure out how to tell it I am drowsy and my shoulder hurts. Neither of those were available options.
posted by jacquilynne at 9:27 PM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


Priapism? Ouch.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:27 PM on March 2, 2017


From Three Men in a Boat:

It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine
advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am
suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most
virulent form. The diagnosis seems in every case to correspond exactly
with all the sensations that I have ever felt.

I remember going to the British Museum one
day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a
touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I
came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the
leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget
which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating
scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of
“premonitory symptoms,” it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of
despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the
symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months
without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus’s
Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested
in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started
alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and
that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright’s
disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so
far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with
severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I
plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only
malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of
slight. Why hadn’t I got housemaid’s knee? Why this invidious
reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed.
I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and
I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid’s knee.
Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without
my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with
from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded
there was nothing else the matter with me.
posted by fallingbadgers at 9:44 PM on March 2, 2017 [23 favorites]


I feel so much better now.
posted by Belle O'Cosity at 9:54 PM on March 2, 2017


i don't need this, google already told me i have cancer because my sports bra was making my boob itchy
posted by poffin boffin at 10:02 PM on March 2, 2017 [12 favorites]


Hmmm. Torso failure. That doesn't sound good.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:06 PM on March 2, 2017 [14 favorites]


I tried to put in what I was recently in the hospital for and nothing showed up. I'm disappointed in the lack of Fournier's.

Do not google that. Please. You will regret doing so if you do.
posted by mephron at 10:09 PM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


I did get a kick out of providing a very random list of symptoms: loss of coordination, vaginal discharge, paranoia, puncture wound, and belching. Just seeing them together delighted me. The result was uninteresting, but my sense of the absurd was nicely cultivated.

I'm going to diagnose 'sat on a knife while attending Oktoberfest that you're sure wasn't there when you started sitting'
posted by Merus at 10:17 PM on March 2, 2017 [7 favorites]




At least y'all don't have boneitis.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 10:53 PM on March 2, 2017 [2 favorites]


Sigh. I gave it the symptoms for bacterial meningitis and it game me Adenosine monophosphate deaminase deficiency type 1, which isn't particularly rare, fatal, or contagious. I feel cheated.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 11:01 PM on March 2, 2017


Edgy, ants in my pants, discombobulation: Initial symptom skin failure, leading to final-stage Bonus Eruptus.
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:43 PM on March 2, 2017 [1 favorite]


I gave four standard symptoms of Parkinson's and they could not connect the dots.

I'm starting to think this might not be a reliable diagnostic tool.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 12:05 AM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]


I told it I was tired and apparently I have Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria

I am very satisfied with my answer. No idea what it is but it makes being tired sound much more interesting than the reality.
posted by kitten magic at 12:35 AM on March 3, 2017


No results found for "I'm really tired"

Whew!
posted by aubilenon at 12:37 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I've been to the doctor, honestly, about 20 times in the past year and a half. I keep feeling like I must look like the biggest hypochondriac, but I keep getting symptoms that don't go away and they keep saying "yeah, you should come back in." I was feeling extra shitty tonight (like, seriously, what is going on with me?), but I've actually finally reached the point where I'm like "I don't care what symptoms I'm getting, I'm not going back unless I can no longer move."

And then I opened MetaFilter saw this post.

But the upside of having been so many times is that I've had like a million tests and I can be like "psh, no, my red blood cell count is fine." So you can't touch me, Hypochondriapp! Because the one scary diagnosis it doesn't have is "hmm, all your tests look fine, I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on this and have you come back if it doesn't get any better in a few weeks."
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:50 AM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


Hmm. Dropsy, vapors and the heartbreak of psoriasis. [Clickety] Ah well, it's been a good run.
posted by Hardcore Poser at 1:06 AM on March 3, 2017


Hardcore Poser (I'm sorry, there's no way to address you without feeling like a jerk), your comment made me want to make an app that gives you the old-timey diagnoses for things. Like the 1890s version of this. It's interesting to see how medical knowledge has changed since the Victorian period. Most diagnoses were pretty specific, but may not necessarily have been the right thing (if, for example, someone had a disease that wasn't known at the time, they may have been diagnosed with something similar), and sometimes the diagnosis could be really vague, like "softening of the brain." Sometimes they were also subtle racist or classist dogwhistles (as with one African American man who was said in other sources to have died of fright, whose cause of death was listed as some sort of cerebral issue -- because it was all in his head, you see).

So yeah, you put in a bunch of symptoms, and your diagnosis is "congenital weakness." We could even monetize it with ads for Liebig's Meat Extract and Johnson's Tar Syrup.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 2:26 AM on March 3, 2017 [10 favorites]


It is a most extraordinary thing, but I never read a patent medicine advertisement without being impelled to the conclusion that I am suffering from the particular disease therein dealt with in its most virulent form.

Well, I can never see one of those drug ads with the (US mandated) list of horrifying possible side effects without thinking that I would definitely suffer those effects if I took that drug. It's probably a good thing, because otherwise I might take their advice and bother my doctor about their overpriced poison.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:54 AM on March 3, 2017


It did not recognize "general malaise."
posted by kuanes at 4:29 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


I have a friend who is a severe hypochondriac, and we joke about it all the time. (We both have anxiety. We try to keep each other sane.) I am sort of tempted to send this to her, because it's funny, but I'm not going to, because she would totally believe it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 5:49 AM on March 3, 2017


Mine's just a flesh wound.
posted by chavenet at 6:09 AM on March 3, 2017


No way am I going anywhere near this app. No freaking way.

This reminds me of Wayne Biddle's A Field Guide To Germs, which is perfect reading for those mornings when you've come down with an unexplained cough.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 6:12 AM on March 3, 2017


Complete spontaneous implosion? Is that still a thing?
posted by blue_beetle at 6:15 AM on March 3, 2017


When I was a child, my parents felt that my intellect was worth cultivating, so they got me a set of Childcraft Annuals. These were, of course, miniature child-focused encyclopedias based on assorted topic sets such as How Things Work, Stories and Fables, About Animals, World and Space. Cool stuff for a knowledge-hungry boy, and one of them (the Mathemagic annual) helped spark a lifelong interest as well as being my first exposure to The Phantom Tollbooth.

But then there was Book 15... which they left in with the others... the Guide for Parents.

This was a guide meant to explain children and their proper care TO parents, not the other way around. The majority of it was all about diseases and disorders, from the mundane to the ridiculously rare, and filled young delfin with a delightful sense of hypochondria from an early age.

Then, one day, I came down with a rash and a very sore throat. My parents were concerned, so to alleviate their fears I went to the handy Guide for Parents and declared "I have scarlet fever." Dad scoffed; no way! We went to my pediatrician, got swabbed, and sure enough, scarlet fever.

There were many lessons in this series of events. My parents learned that their child would read and understand just about anything he could get his hands on. And I learned the worst lesson a hypochondriac can learn; sometimes you are RIGHT.
posted by delfin at 6:57 AM on March 3, 2017 [14 favorites]


I had the Childcraft library too. The thing I remember most about the Guide for Parents is the picture of the kid in a croup tent.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:21 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


Also, I apparently have progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy. I'd never heard of it before today, but it sounds bad.
posted by SisterHavana at 8:25 AM on March 3, 2017


I'm seeing a rheumatologist Monday, also after "seeing the doctor at least 20 times" in the last year with every marker and scan (except the visual iritis checks) coming back normal, except for one mostly-meaningless thing coming back elevated once.

And I just a story where someone semi-incidental to the story happened to die from a "rare skin disease", which just happened to be a disease on my doctors' "root cause shortlist" (1/3 patients die of it within the first decade after diagnosis, after which, counterintuitively, the prognosis tends to improve)...

So I tried this, thinking it would make me feel better. It gave me a disease with a better prognosis than the aforementioned "rare skin disease" (benign tumour), BUT made me feel ridiculous for worrying about things that might not come to pass.

So... mixed results.
posted by flibbertigibbet at 8:42 AM on March 3, 2017


an app that gives you the old-timey diagnoses for things

marthambles!
posted by poffin boffin at 9:04 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


When I used to read the Merck Manual (Home edition) a lot, I discovered that one of their gnarliest diseases, Wegener's granulomatosis, begins with ... sinusitis.

I realized the Merck doesn't publish the statistical frequency of diseases and conditions, which doctors keep secret so they can laugh at you.
posted by bad grammar at 9:11 AM on March 3, 2017


This is kind of awesome but it feels redundant after having my brother go to med school. After the first year where he thought he was dying of all kinds of crazy things, he shifted focus to diagnosing me with crazy stuff.

Some of it has been accurate.
posted by bile and syntax at 10:56 AM on March 3, 2017 [1 favorite]


At least I don't have lurgi.
posted by It's Never Lurgi at 12:52 PM on March 3, 2017 [5 favorites]


Putting in "overweight" got me "Slipped capital femoral epiphysis", the acronym for which is pronounced "skiffy." It's hard to get worried about a disease that sounds like a pet nickname.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:11 PM on March 3, 2017 [2 favorites]


shit you have skiffy? I highly recommend you get your affairs in order, stat.
posted by bologna on wry at 4:20 PM on March 3, 2017


Big time saver. Would use again.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:54 PM on March 3, 2017


So you can't touch me, Hypochondriapp! Because the one scary diagnosis it doesn't have is "hmm, all your tests look fine, I guess we'll just have to keep an eye on this and have you come back if it doesn't get any better in a few weeks."

This! This is the winner.

The scariest thing is being sick and not knowing why. I put in a symptom (nausea) and it hilariously actually popped up with the actual illness I have (autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease). Which is funny -- how did it know? But had me wondering why it made this list. While it's something people consider to be among the scariest (it's not painful, just distressingly inconvenient at its later stages, although sometimes one of the inconveniences is dying), it's something that's easily and instantly confirmed with a blood test and then you have the benefit of certainty and can get on with it in whatever way you can.

I have a friend who's incredibly healthy but dealing with a Sudden and Mysterious Brain Swelling Issue of Indeterminate Origin and his entire life's on hold until they can figure out why and then what to do. That seems so much scarier to me.
posted by mochapickle at 12:45 PM on March 4, 2017


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