Alice Wha' ??!!

I will attempt something new in my posts. I will from time to time post about what I feel are rare but interesting diseases, and will try to present it as layman-friendly(I don't get the term though, it's redundant coz unless it is rape, you need to be friendly to lay a man anyway..hmm..) as possible. I mean, if everyone comprehends the medical jargon, why bother reading my post then right? Might as well log on to the medical website without having to put up with my rubbish right?

To begin this quest for knowledge, I shall start with a disease called "Alice In Wonderland syndrome".

If anyone could recall the classic story book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" or better known as "Alice in Wonderland" (which I doubt anyone could, since most of us have long past our puberty and "Alice in Wonderland" could well mean a title of a movie that has got nothing to do with Alice the bored innocent girl who somehow fell into this rabbit hole and got herself lost in Wonderland; albeit there are many holes involved yet none of them have anything to do with that made by the rabbits, and adventurous in a different land that made you wonder, "is this the right video we got for the kids?" , looked at the title again and noticed that it was actually "Alice in Wonderbra".....if you catch my drift) you will notice how Alice encountered many odd looking creatures in odd looking forms, huge and small , in which people of the olden days may find it intriguing, but relive the adventures and narrate them to today's society, Alice may end up having to give her urine sample tested for stuff the rock stars pump into their systems. It's that hallucination like symptoms that gave the name of the rare syndrome, the Alice In Wonderland.

If you still can't imagine it,then why not fake a migraine and ask your family doctor to prescribe you DF118, a potent and almost obsolete painkiller. Then tell your doctor, that you can't sleep because of the headache and ask him for Xanax, and anti-depressant/something that can make you go to slumber. Combine both DF118 and Xanax, walla!! you will be with Alice in Wonderland and will be able to visualize how AIW syndrome feels like. . Oh, and that DF118 and Xanax combo...don't try it at home if you don't know the right formula, which incidentally, I am not going to tell you. And everyone thought only the celebrety chefs come up with all the great recipes eh?

Anyway, what is Alice In Wonderland syndrome? Often associated with migraine like symptoms (which is by the way, is a headache that can make you swear you had grown another heart that throbs continuously in your brain and when upon reaching a climax of intense, makes you want to throw out your last meal. So remember, if you have migraine, do not eat expensive meal as all will come out the same way it came in), a person suffering from AIW syndrome has problems perceiving what they visualize. They see things around them in smaller forms. It's not funny when you think you've suddenly turned into a giant, really.

Let me explain to you in a simple manner. Notice how sometimes when we hear people like, I dunno, that Nazri perhaps, talks, (although AIW syndrome does not have any symptoms of spinal level speech, you know, a speech that bypasses the brain), the perception you get is that the statement came from a walnut sized brain; looks like an actual brain but tremendously smaller in size? Now, if you visualize it to be small (never mind if it really is small), this perceiving the image that translates to a small size, termed micropsia, is what a person with AIW experiences. Or perhaps when you see a leader of a country who is more afraid of B1N1 instead of H1N1 (got this from a circulating sms by the way), you visualize that it is his balls that are the size of peanuts. AIW sufferers can also experience the opposite, called macropsia. I think this is more severe, since it is no fun going around feeling like a midget, especially when you have had no time to build up a big ego to make up for the shorter size...err...I meant smaller size.

I don't know about you, I'm more comfortable with the micropsia visual of nuts though. If you look at most of the govern-MENTAL department, you will not need to suffer from AIW syndrome in order to perceive that they have hard earned big and sluggish buttocks. Some even may have an attitude that you may perceive that person's asshole in a macropsia manner...the asshole so big that it became the person as a hole... I mean, whole....until finally, an asshole is what you see before you.
"The most prominent and often most disturbing symptom is that of altered body image: the sufferer will find that they are confused as to the size and shape of parts of (or all of) their body.". Well, if you see yourself in the mirror, and see a distorted figure, first, do not panic. Check if the mirror is of good quality, not something you find in the Petrosains exhibition hall. Do not mistaken this symptom with that suffered by most women, who keep complaining about how distorted their bodies are, and some may even travel back and forth to the plastic surgeons' operating theatre to come out looking like the plastic surgeon had just grafted her buttocks skin onto her face using botox injections. ( A bad botox job would look like the surgeon totally transplanted the whole buttocks onto the face. Hmm...who does this face remind me of huh? Some character who spent RM1.7 million just to study the Disney characters. You can read HERE to see how hypnotizing Mickey really is, or is it Malaysia's first woman PM? Wait...running by proxy does not earn anyone any title, sorry.) No, ladies and gentlemen, this symptom are not of AIW syndrome, instead basically, it is what the laymen call "insecurity". Men too are not spared from this "insecurity" problems, albeit the onset may be much later in life, majority approaching the age of 40 years, when they start seeing vital parts as in need of altering, hence explaining the surge in the sales of "enhancement cream" or Viagra in this age group. Unlike AIW sufferers, people suffering from insecuritities are unable to be treated with mere popping in the pills, rather, they need to go see a shrink..."Insecurity" therefore, did not gain a proper diagnosis it clearly earns, even though they are more rampant than the rare AIW syndrome. Ah well, the poor shrinks need to make money too..

Treatment of AIW syndrome is that for other migraine prophylaxis: anticonvulsants, antidepressants to name a few, along with strict adherence to the migraine diet. See, here we have a rare disease, we go all around to come up with a diagnosis that is hardly heard of, and yet the treatment is the same as that of the treatment of migraine. And yet people say it is tough job, being a doctor. Becoming a doctor is tough, being a doctor is a piece of cake really.

Actually the trick lies in the diagnosis. Once you get the diagnosis right, you simply whack the fler with the same medications, it's a no brain-er task. That is why anyone can get away with imposing as a doctor simply by dispensing Panadol...after all, it works for fever,and to some extent, headaches and backaches which covers half of problems encountered by the GPs. especially on Monday mornings - where backaches comes from excessive sexual activities and the headaches are from the lack of it. (The other half can be miraculously cured by MC...oh that and antibiotics....I've had idiots coming to me demanding antibiotics to cure her allergy rash). Yuup...general practitioners have the easy peasy job and if they do not indulge in mind intriguing endeavours such as blogging and FaceBooking, they most likely will end up bored. If you've heard of doctors making the headlines, like their brains get blown to pieces because some junkie was not delivered their much needed junk, or if the doctors themselves blew others' brains off, it is because they are simply bored. It is detrimental not to upset a bored doctor...really...you don't know what can go on in their minds sometimes...Read it HERE to find out and also in What Irritates Doctors.. , if you're interested to know what goes on in our twisted minds sometimes. Why do you think "House MD" was invented?

A word of caution. Do not mistaken myopic vision as a symptom of AIW syndrome, although myopia sounds close to micropsia and macropsia. Myopia is the inability to visualize far ahead, something you encounter from time to time suffered by our politicians, latest being the English and Mathematics that was reverted back to Bahasa Malaysia simply because they forgot to teach the teachers English first, before asking these teachers to teach the students in English. That is a classic myopic vision indeed, so unfortunate that it is unlike the Alice In Wonderland Syndrome - rare.