“But hypochondria is a plotless story, a deviation from the regular progression of an illness from stage to stage. Without a firm diagnosis for my unreliable symptoms, I am stuck in the first scene of the drama, endlessly looping around the first few lines of dialogue. The compulsion to narrativize this experience is always there, but always thwarted. The comfortable point at which to tell the story never arrives, because everything is always in present tense. No narrative structure can help those who never get to turn the page on the opening line.” MetaphorIllnessTraumaNarrativeHealth AnxietyIllness As Metaphor Author:Caroline Crampton
“I wonder if the hypochondriac him or herself is a metaphor, a condensed node of ideas about illness crushed together into one individual. I am pressed between these layers of meaning like a flower preserved between the pages of a book, trapped in narratives about my sickness that have already been written.” MetaphorIllnessNarrativeMeaningHealth AnxietyIllness As Metaphor Book:A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria – A Revelatory Medical Memoir and Biography of Health Anxiety Source: A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria – A Revelatory Medical Memoir and Biography of Health Anxiety