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Personality Traits?
Nov. 15th, 2005 12:52 pmI've recently noticed how differently everyone in my little group of friends/family reacts to injury or illness.
When my mother gets sick, she wanders around the house talking about where the insurance policies are and how much I'll get when she's dead, and to whom to sell the antiques. She will eventually drive to her doctor's office and sit in the waiting room until her doctor can fit her in, and then will come home convinced her doctor knows nothing (because she's told my mother that nothing is wrong with her).
One of my friends calls me each time she injures herself -- usually before she even bandages herself up! She tells me a funny story about how she did it, and then I encourage her to stop bleeding on the floor and call a paramedic or something. She's pretty accident-prone so I get a lot of calls.
Another friend of mine is very stoic when he gets ill. He will get sicker and sicker and sicker, and only when he is actually vomiting green bile will he go to the doctor -- although by then he's already pretty much diagnosed himself. He's got a remarkably complicated series of illnesses behind him, of the type that doctors will say "this doesn't generally happen to adults" or "I've never seen this in anyone under 95 before," so that's pretty impressive.
And me? When I get sick my first instinct is to get online and check out WebMD. Sometimes I type my symptoms into Google. This week I had (I think) tendonitis, so I typed my guess into WebMD, found out that it would be pointless to see a doctor (which is generally the advice I'm looking for), and followed WebMD's remedies. The next day I was better.
I am SUCH a librarian.
When my mother gets sick, she wanders around the house talking about where the insurance policies are and how much I'll get when she's dead, and to whom to sell the antiques. She will eventually drive to her doctor's office and sit in the waiting room until her doctor can fit her in, and then will come home convinced her doctor knows nothing (because she's told my mother that nothing is wrong with her).
One of my friends calls me each time she injures herself -- usually before she even bandages herself up! She tells me a funny story about how she did it, and then I encourage her to stop bleeding on the floor and call a paramedic or something. She's pretty accident-prone so I get a lot of calls.
Another friend of mine is very stoic when he gets ill. He will get sicker and sicker and sicker, and only when he is actually vomiting green bile will he go to the doctor -- although by then he's already pretty much diagnosed himself. He's got a remarkably complicated series of illnesses behind him, of the type that doctors will say "this doesn't generally happen to adults" or "I've never seen this in anyone under 95 before," so that's pretty impressive.
And me? When I get sick my first instinct is to get online and check out WebMD. Sometimes I type my symptoms into Google. This week I had (I think) tendonitis, so I typed my guess into WebMD, found out that it would be pointless to see a doctor (which is generally the advice I'm looking for), and followed WebMD's remedies. The next day I was better.
I am SUCH a librarian.
