Friday, November 20, 2009

What Idiot?

"Unexplained weight gain"

I laugh every time I think of those words on a doctor's letter nearly three years ago. It's funny because my weight gain at that time wasn't all that mysterious: I was eating too much and moving too little.

I think we humans are always in search of an explanation. If we can't find one, we make one up.

And when there is no explanation, as in the case of my whacky eosinophils? Doctors explain it away with one simple word: idiopathic. It means "of unknown cause," or, in med-speak, "Hell if I know."

Keep this word in mind the next time someone asks a difficult-to-answer question. "How did this house get so messy?" "Why are our sales down for November?" "How did you get so brilliant?"

Simply shrug your shoulders, put on that enigmatic smile and say, "It's idiopathic." You might just get away with it.

3 comments:

Trish said...

idioTpathic is what I call it when the doc has the gall to try to give me that word.

A friend used to call it "damnfino" as in, damn if I know what the hell that is.

but I think I'll use it the next time any doc asks me about weight (nevermind those pesky steroids I've been on).

Good luck with your EOS...down ROS, down EOS, DOWN!

no kidding, WV: idiopastc

Petrea Burchard said...

Idiopathic. Damnfino. I'll keep them both.

Ronni Gordon said...

It's similar to when you present them with some symptom and they say they don't know what it means and "We'll just watch it." I'd rather they did know, but I'm always so terrified of bad news that I'm happy to settle for "We'll just watch it."

Good luck with your EOS!