One day, I felt an ache in the groin. It started mildly but gradually became incapacitating.

I saw a series of urologists, none of whom could find anything wrong with me. Several of them prescribed medications; one of these, Urised, has the spectacular side effect of turning your urine blue. I do not mean cerulean blue, like the sky on a balmy summer day. Bic pen blue. Once, as I was standing at one of those trough urinals in a bathroom at a football stadium, I became aware that the man next to me was staring down at me, slack jawed. An opportunity like this occurs but once in life. I zipped up, pulled a cigarette lighter out of my pocket, and spoke into it in a robotic voice: "Gardak reporting. Earth colonization plans complete. initiating return to mother ship."

Urised didn't relieve my problem. Nothing did. My doctor eventually asked me if I was having stress at work or in my home life.

I said no, not really. And he just stared at me. A thunderclap of silence. And finally I said, "Well, except my girlfriend wants to get married and have a baby and I think the company I work for might be about to go bankrupt, plus I have no talent, no integrity, and no future."

And the doctor gave me his diagnosis: "You are a young man. Enjoy your life."

And the pain went away.

The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. by Gene Weingarten