I’m gonna let you in on a little secret…

I suffer from Selective Squeamish Disorder, or SSD.  This “condition,” let’s call it that, has no telethon with dancing bears or  a single late night television commercials with that Harbinger of Sadness, Sara McLaughlin, to draw attention to our plight. Ours is a pain to be suffered alone with not so much as a GoFundMe account in support.

Now, I’m not an unusually squeamish guy after working in prisons for a number of  years, with all the stabbings, gunshot wounds, slashings and witnessing the popular inmate pastime of “What can I hide up my butt.” Suffice it to say, that my squeamish bar has been set to a notch a tad higher than John Q. Citizen. So, why is it that a simple television show triggers a grand mal SSD episode?

The symptoms of this vile condition present themselves differently, depending on the circumstances. Each attack triggered by House M.D. Remember that television show? A neurotic, drug addicted, shit of a doctor examines people with rare disorders and he sends his team of minions to discover and diagnose the malady. Simple enough, right? The thing that got me, every stinking time, was the funky inside the body images of some virus replicating, a foreign body festering, or some tropical blood infection tearing up the victim from the inside out. It was animation! But, it gave me the willies.

Courtesy of Jimmy Fallon Live

When they described the symptoms of a deadly virus, I felt the itch, the aching joints and especially when the inside the body view showed the lymph nodes exploding, I knew I had this disease. I had the ache, and these bastards had infected me. Never mind that I hadn’t traveled to the Southern Sudan. When House shoved a camera down some dying patient’s throat, my esophagus constricted.

On more than one occasion, Dr. House had me convinced that a copper intrauterine device caused an allergic reaction. I know, right? I’m not even plumbed for an I.U.D., but his power of evil suggestion made me go there, as opposed to thinking the lunchtime chicken burrito may have had something to do with the abdominal pain.

My SSD went into remission the day House M.D., was went off the air. No more thoughts of aneurism when it’s allergy season, no worries of catching the hantavirus from my cornflakes, no more questioning my parentage to discover rare genetic conditions, and headaches are not caused (very often) by brain worms. Then. It. Happened.

House M.D. is available on Netflix. All the horrors are streamable for a hypochondriac binge. Oh, I think my I.U.D. is throbbing.