Think of all the valuable time we’d save our doctors if there were a copy of The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs (Knock Knock) in every home. Instead of the usual vague complaints (“Not been feeling quite myself . . .”; a furrowed brow, the voice trailing off into ellipses), patients could go to their physicians with a neat list of direct questions in hand. Is my flatulence due to gastroparesis (no known cure; feeding tube necessary in extreme cases) or irritable bowel syndrome? My runny nose: Hodgkin’s disease? Or relapsing polychondritis? Neatly organized by body region and further subdivided by symptom, with a rich selection of quotes, vocabulary builders and helpful factoids in the margins of every page (did you know that flying on an airplane with an ear infection can result in imploded eardrums?), this handy guide is perfectly designed to enable even the healthiest readers to quickly and efficiently discover their own—hitherto undetected, yet inevitably fatal—diseases.
