Malade Non-Imaginaire
My eyebrows are falling out. Don’t worry, it’s not COVID. I’m not on chemo. There is a tiny lump on my face. It looks like a pimple. It could pass for a pimple. I know it’s not a pimple because it has been there for a year now. If I die in this pandemic, I’m going to be eyebrow-less, pimple-faced. I miss the old me, the one that was eyebrow-full, pimple-less. But in this life, you can’t have it all.
As this pandemic stretches on, in house arrest, I am noticing a lot of things. Like how I’m out of breath after cleaning the washrooms. I know that I have to clean it but it’s really not that dirty. There are time that I’m awake at 4 am. It’s not like I need to milk the cows or anything. Like how I have more long white hair now than I did at the start of this pandemic. The salons are closed, so that’s not really my fault. Like how I have not had a blood test in more than one year. I don’t want to. I can’t bear to hear what the doc will say.
In the United States alone, there are 30 million people living with a rare or undiagnosed illness. They have more of a reason for not wanting to go to the hospital: 1) They cannot even get a hold of their doctor. Virtual consultations just don’t cut it. 2) If they need to be confined in the hospital, visitors are not allowed. All the more they are cut off from the world. 3) Fear of getting COVID-19 in the hospital (obviously). 4) Being stressed out over the medical appointments to the point of triggering flare-ups or escape from remission. 5) Missing out on physio, occupational and speech therapy sessions
(https://www.nature.com/articles/s41436-020-01069-7)
From a chronic disease perspective, one study looked at the baseline numbers for new diagnoses of 6 major cancers: breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, gastric cancer and esophageal cancer. Then they compared it to the numbers tallied up during the COVID-19 pandemic. For all 6 cancers combined, there was a drop of 46.4%. In theory, half of us could be walking the streets during this pandemic totally oblivious to the fact that we already have cancer.
(https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2768946)
These missed diagnoses are not a problem restricted to the old. In fact, a recent report revealed that from 2009-2018, there was a rise in severe disease among the young, ages 15 to 24. During this same period, the incidence of combined chronic disease and mental illness increased by 11%. What is this number going to look like when we emerge out of this pandemic?
There are some interesting tools at our disposal and you do not need to be a health care professional / researcher in order to access this information, nor do you need a password:
Chronic Disease Dashboard – BC Centre for Disease Control:
http://www.bccdc.ca/health-professionals/data-reports/chronic-disease-dashboard
Toronto Health Status – Population Health Status Indicator (PHSI) Dashboard:
http://www.ontariohealthprofiles.ca/torontohealthstatus/2_AdultChronicDisease.php
Both dashboards teeter around the year 2017 for data availability, but this gives us a fair idea of where we are at now. Worthy of note is the BC dashboard for chronic diseases. Topping the list are Mood and Anxiety Disorders. In the second place, Hypertension. If in 2017-2018, Mood and Anxiety Disorders were at a rate of 20 per 1,000 people, just how exacerbated is this number going to be in the year 2021 – when we all emerge from Lockdown?
We’re all at home and we’re noticing things. A mole that is getting bigger. Eyesight that is getting blurrier. Gums that are eroding. In the 17th century, the playwright Molière made a joke out of hypochondriacs in “Le Malade Imaginaire”. Was it really all just in his head? But then again, he wrote this during a plague.
