Letter From America: Initial Diagnosis
It seems as if no week goes by without some new and interesting condition being described and immediately reduced to its initials, says Ronnie Bray in this deliciously funny column. So what is ODD, BRATS, CAB, CML. DNS? Don't overwork your brain trying to work it out. Just read Ronnie - and enjoy!
When Gay and I were missionaries in Tennessee, way back in ?01, I woke up one morning with my jaw frozen shut accompanied by excruciating pain when I tried to open it.
An emergency visit to a dentist provided an initial diagnosis of TMJD. He arranged for me to meet a TMJD surgeon an hour later and he confirmed the diagnosis, asked for $6,000, so we shook hands and said farewell forever!
TMJD, is tempero-mandibular joint disorder, a failure of the joint lining where the lower jaw hinges onto the skull, was new to me, and I told the dentist that it was an American invention that we did not have in Great Britain. He begged to differ, saying that it was first described in Britain.
During my working life in England, I had developed osteo-arthritis. That was the diagnosis and that what was I was treated for. When I moved to America, it was translated into OA, a near relation of RA, and, in course of time, my diagnosis was changed to PA.
Gay struggles with PN, ABM, and CIP, which is Chronic Intractable Poverty! I enjoy COPD, and SPS, know someone with MPD, have two friends with OCD, am on nodding terms with someone with MG, and suspect a neighbour of having SA.
Badly behaved children in the USA are diagnosed as victims of ADD, ADHD, and a new one out this week, ODD, which is Oppositional Defiance Disorder, which sounds very much like BRATS and the signs and symptoms are identical. American BRATS are on expensive medication regimes, can be made to wear spectacles with coloured but non-corrective lenses, whereas their British counterparts are diagnosed by grandparents and treated for their condition with (CAB) Cuffs and Blows, which goes a long way to explain the peculiar shape of my head and ears.
It seems as if no week goes by without some new and interesting condition being described and immediately being reduced to its initials, and I am not sure that I will be able to keep up due to CML (Continuing Memory Loss), DNS (Disappearing Noun Syndrome), and WHDICIC (Which Way Did I Come In Complex).
The sudden influx of initialised diagnoses has put my head in a SPIN (Selection Processes In Neutral), brought my MIND (Multiple Intelligence Network Defunct) to a standstill, and initiated the premature onset of WWIU (Which Way Is Up?), any of which could be fatal. Thank goodness I am over my CI, have no signs of CA, and the FBI is not after me, although the INS, now changed to DOHS, does take an uncommon interest in me!
Initial diagnoses are a clever way of saying something essential in so economical a way that no one except doctors know that the ?H?* is going on. It is all too much for me, because I was born in a simpler time when things had proper names. Initial diagnoses provide too little information to fire up my faltering imagination, and leaves too much out for me to grasp the intention, so, in reprisal, I will exercise my own initial diagnosis and say, as the man from ITMA was wont to say, TTFN!
* = Heck. (What did you think I meant?)
Copyright ? Ronnie Bray 2004
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
