The Hypochondriac's Pocket Guide to Horrible Diseases You Probably Already Have by Dennis DiClaudio

Dennis DiClaudio is a humor and fiction writer, an improvisational comedian, and works in the editorial department at one of the world's largest medical and scientific publishing companies.

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Medical editor and improvisational humorist Dennis DiClaudio has written an amazing book. It is essentially a pocket guide to selected horrible, scary, and interesting diseases presented in a quirky, humorous way. These diseases are neatly organized by categories (autoimmune, fungal, genetic, etc.) and cover only the most unusual of dread diseases. Sure, the book covers some more commonly known diseases like leprosy, acromegaly, and furious rabies, but it really shines when discussing truly obscure maladies such as fatal familial insomnia, cyclic vomiting syndrome (which, while it may not kill you, will make you wish it had,) alien hand syndrome (which gets my vote for most unusual neurological condition of all time,) and amnesic shellfish poisoning, which will make you forget all about the prawns you just ate (as well as everything else, for that matter.) While all of these diseases are horrible in their own way, the one I find to be the most singularly scary is candiru infestation. This is the nastiest thing I have ever heard of: if you swim in the Amazon or Orinoco rivers a small, slender species of catfish called the candiru, but better known as the vampire fish, likes to swim up your urethra and lodge itself in your urinary tract. This hurts a lot. Do not try to pull it out because (surprise!) it has rearward pointing barbs that unfurl like an umbrella that will make it more firmly ensconced in its new home, where it spends its hours running sharp grating teeth all over your most sensitive parts to make a meal of your blood. (Some men have decided to have an otherwise unthinkable type of surgical amputation to make the pain stop.) As a side note, DiClaudio points out that there is legislation pending to outlaw importing candiru into the US, a measure that will, no doubt, get wide bipartisan support. Even the more conventional diseases like bubonic plague and encephalitis are examined in a new and eerily entertaining light. I noted with a bit of trepidation that encephalitis can be caused by many, many other diseases, which DiClaudio helpfully lists in part; these include, but are not limited to: chicken pox, monkey pox, camel pox, canary pox, mollusci pox, sheep pox, vole pox, Aleutian mink disease, Andean potato mottle virus, hemagglutinating virus of Japan, O'Nyong-Nyong, coital exanthema virus, Kyzylagach virus, yug bogdanovac virus, and mumps, just to name a few. Clearly you need to have an encephalitis contingency plan in place. This book is actually full of good information, though I advise true hypochondriacs not even be allowed in the same room as this book. These diseases are scary, sure, but through DiClaudio's masterful prose and dry sense of humor, medical education actually becomes enjoyable with this book. I highly recommend this to anyone with a good (if slightly warped) sense of humor, but the medically squeamish need not apply.