A Diagnostic.

Those who have known me for long know that I am susceptible to minor bouts of hypochondria, at least as much as the next guy. Over the years I've been heard to proclaim: "If I die from an aneurysm, I called it" as if the shots needed to be called, as in billiards.

It was Rilke who wrote: "one dies the death that belongs to the disease one has."

And in a story by Carson McCullers: "Some night you'll go to sleep with your big nose in a mug and drown... Prominent transient drowns in beer. That would be a cute death."

My newest concern: transcortical sensory aphasia. It is basically the inability to understand spoken or written language while retaining the ability to speak and write. Lately I've had a brain cloud that seems to have settled in, making it difficult to concentrate on any text, and when people speak I just stare at their mouths trying to make sense of it... I know what you're thinking: Is it transcortical sensory aphasia or is it just a case of "what the heck are you even talking about?!"

Perhaps it seems crude to speak of tsa in a seemingly trivial way, but joking aside, if this does turn out to be transcortical sensory aphasia, I called it.