Goiter Fear
I have always had a horror of goiters and been troubled by bad dreams of getting one. I have nothing against the goitered, so if you happen to have one and are reading this, I don’t mean to be insulting; I’m sorry for your troubles and that, I just have an unholy fear of them, and this is why:
One day, when I was a little girl, I was at the chemist with my granny. It was still an old-fashioned chemist-shop at that time. It had huge apothecary jars, a great big wooden counter, hundreds of tiny wooden drawers with labels on the front, and a reassuring mixture of menthol eucalyptus and Germolene in the air.
I was pretty darn wee – maybe five or six – and holding out to put a penny in the life-like collie-dog and lamb charity collection… collection-what? Collection-statue, I guess you’d call it – you put the pennies through holes in their painted resin heads. Then I spied the lollipops on the counter, all sticking out of their red-domed container like a beautiful sugary hedgehog.
I was busy coveting one of these kinder-to-the-teeth lollipops when my granny concluded her business at the counter, said goodbye to Ishbel Froghan and turned to go. I looked at the lollipops a fraction longer and then, turning to catch up with her, bumped right into the stomach of a purple old man. Not even purplish. Purple. With a pitted, veiny drinker’s nose and manky teeth. And right there on his neck was a huge and shiny goiter. I froze in utter terror. I had never seen anything like it, even in a book. What horrible, terrible thing did this man have on his neck? And his nose! He must be very wicked indeed.
Then I ran to my granny’s skirt and hid my face. I was all of a sudden ashamed of myself because I knew I must have hurt the old man’s feelings, but it was the most vivid moment of raw, bulbous terror I’d ever had in my short life.
My granny flapped me out of the shop and, as it was obvious I’d taken a real fright about something, she took me to The Coffee Pot for an ice-cream soda. I told her what had been the matter and she laughed and said “Och but that’s just a goiter. It’s not serious at all.”
She tried to reassure me that Mr M., the owner of the goiter, was a very nice wee man who’d lost his wife (where?); that it was not anything very terrible at all; and that it wasn’t a separate, living monster cleaving to the man’s throat. But I wasn’t listening because I’d heard, for the first time, the name of the swelling. Goiter. The ugliness of the word made me shudder. Goiter-goiter. Goiter!
The only other really affecting fear of physical malformation I ever had – aside from the usual idle fears we all have late at night: I hope I don’t go bald, or, Flaming Nora! What in all hell has happened to Sam on Eastenders’ nose?? (a collapsed septum brought on by too much cocaine sniffage) – was when, a few years later, I saw the matriarch on Emmerdale Farm with a broken arm. She was shouting at her son and the sight of the elderly in a rage is always shocking to me unless it’s Ian Paisley. Her arm was in a sling and looked like a wing and for a long time afterwards I had bad dreams of an abominable aproned chimera – part-old woman, part-Chicken Little – running around a kitchen with large-print blue floral wall-paper, screaming raggedly like a banshee, and bleeding crimson all over its crooked yellow wing.
Since then I’ve broken 5 bones of my own and liked the cachet that came with having a plaster-cast at school. I got over having these bad dreams, but the goiterphobia never went entirely away. (Richard E. Grant didn’t help my fear one bit and, while I admire and possibly fancy him, I have always held that against him, just a whisper.)
But why am I telling you any of this? Because this morning I woke up with a sore neck on one side! Holy Mother Of Christ With A Cough!! At once, all my fears of purple neck-swellings came flooding back. I ran to the mirror and quizzed the Problem Husband about possible swelling, however infintessimal it might be, because that’s how goiters start, I was sure. He examined my neck, all solicitation and soothing words, because we have been through this before and we both know I am a horrible hypochondriac. Not a doctor-going hypochondriac, mind you. I was brought up far too don’t burden the NHS unless something’s actually rotting off of you, for that. My hypochondria usually just has me hugging my knees and rocking with a film of sweat over my fear-blanched forehead, while a cup of tea goes cold beside me.
The neck, then. It’s all tender, like my glands are fighting off some invidious agent of disease or other, and my throat was sore on one side too, at first. The sore throat went away but the neck has grown more tender as the day’s gone on. I’ve Googled the buggery out of goiters and, while intellectually I’m laughingly confident I amn’t getting one – wrist-flickingly disdainful, even, of my pathetic and irrational hypochondria – my heart is telling me to sprinkle iodised salt over everything I eat.
I’m going with the heart. Don’t hate me. I’m just a weak-minded fool of a housewife and for my pitiful bugaboos I surely deserve goiters heaped upon me. My soul is a wretched, cowering thing and wholly deserving of all your hottest scorn. But try to forget all that, won’t you? I’m not a bad person. I always put silver coins in the heads of charity collie-dogs, yes, and in the lambs too, and I have done much in the way of voluntary work with baby birds and AIDS victims. Amn’t I deserving of some small charitable regard?
What phobias do other people have? ‘Fess up! Nothing is too ridiculous a thing to be scared of here at Problemchildbride. Except a fear of caterpillars in jack-boots. We all fear them, obviously – like, duh. I only want the unobvious fears.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:54 am
A fear of failing and of letting others doon, and my willy dropping off.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:26 am
A fear of depths. I will climb any ladder, no matter how high, as long as it’s not in a hole.
June 15th, 2007 at 8:12 am
skin cancer,
I had skin cancer for three weeks recently and no one would believe me, they all said it looked like a healing burn, I was convinced there was a wee mole under there going hideously wrong.
Then, last week having almost made an appointment to see my doctor, it fell off. Yes my skin cancer fell off and how my husband laughed.
Now the skin on two of my fingers has gone a little wierd.. I’m keeping quiet, I’m warching them though… closely.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Don’t worry about goiters, dear. A good sized one allows you to wear more than one hat.
As for me, I have a recurring dream, once every few months of being in my house as a tornado bears down on me — one of those monster F5’s — and I cannot make myself run to the basement. Rather I stand and stare at it as it gets closer until . . .
I wake up in a cold sweat.
Cheers.
June 15th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
I have a terrible fear of attractive women, so i try to avoid talking to them because i get all hot and embarrassed. The more attractive they are, the worse the problem. Sometimes the words don’t come out properly at all, and then they usually turn to whoever is standing near me and say how nice it is that people like me are allowed out every now and again.
June 15th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
Goiters – don’t worry, maybe you’ll wake up some morning with a big purple bowling ball attached to your neck.
For me, not much strange. I have visions of dying but not really dead, waking up in a coffin buried underground. Visions of Kill Bill 2, and me not knowing how to use my fingers.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:48 pm
I have a fear of a tsunami – I dont know where this came from but if I’m near the ocean I MUST regularly scan the horizon so that I might save myself. Oh, and others around me.
I can’t bear insects. I just can’t.
June 15th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I have a morbid fear of getting caught.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
sharks
yep, ever since jaws…i only shower and i never go in the ocean..just sit on the beach…some nights i even check under my bed…
June 15th, 2007 at 11:29 pm
Answering phones…just because. Also cabbage, if that can be a phobia. And phones.
June 16th, 2007 at 8:48 am
Rats. I have recurring nightmares about the little fuckers. I don’t care for them at all.
I am conquering my fears one by one as I know that there is nothing to fear but fear itself. One of these days I am going to march into Petco and demand to hold a rat. Hopefully that will put an end to the night terrors.
June 16th, 2007 at 11:52 am
ladies of a certain age can be quite frightening, but heights and public nakedness are what keep me awake at night…
June 16th, 2007 at 1:49 pm
I also have an irrational fear of rats. I think it’s because I saw that film “Willard” when I was 5 or 6 and so it stuck.
Physically, my biggest fear right now is old age. The withering and wrinkling scares the shit out of me.
June 16th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Goiters are caused by deficiency of iodine in the diet. Consequently: the best way to deal with a goiter is to take foods, which contain natural iodine. They are water nut (singhara), lotus reed, stem to the lotus, tuber of the plant cuperus tuberosus and pineapple.
As a preventative measure to you ever getting one, I want you to bake a lotus reed pie and stop all your worrying. All right, love?
June 16th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
They are water nut (singhara), lotus reed, stem to the lotus, tuber of the plant cuperus tuberosus and pineapple.
I’d rather have a goiter.
June 17th, 2007 at 4:45 am
Smithwick’s fucking terrifies me.Can’t be having that at all.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:18 am
Knuds, “and my willy dropping off.” Is it narcoleptic?
Sneezy. I once read of someone who said that they weren’t afraid of heights at all – only grounds – the ground being what does the actual damage. It made me giggle but a fear of depths is no joke. It must make watching Oprah very difficult – she’s so deep, and all.
Honey. YES! I know what you mean exactly. I was never a hypochondriac before I had my children but for the past five years or so I’ve spent countless foolish hours wondering which of the great panoply of the cancers is going to get me – first. I’m Woody Allen in a pinny, these days. I hope it’s just a phase.
Rand, does the tornado say anything? Now that would be truly scary. Especially if it said “Randall, you’re not in Missouri anymore.” The Wicked Witch of the West in that film haunted my curtains for years after I’d seen that film.
Asym, attractive women are just unattractive ones with prettier faces. If you ever have to address an attractive female crowd and are feeling a little nervy about it, just imagine them naked. Oh. Ah. There are ways in which that could backfire though. Women are people too though!! Honest. Just people. The way to a woman’s heart is often through her funny bone. Tell her a joke. A good one!
JoeinVegas, in Scotland not knowing how to use your fingers is a condition that usually sets in at about 11pm on a Friday night and doesn’t leave until about 11 on a Sunday morning. That coffin one’s deadly scary – no pun intended.
Jali, tsunamis are truly scary at the same time as tuna sarnies are delicious. What’s that all about? Silly old world. I’m allright with most insects except for Dick Cheney.
Bock, I can see how that might be an asset in the robbery line of work. And you could also steal hope from the eyes of children – that’d help some – in fact, I wonder if you can get that on prescription?
Savannah, I was the opposite for a while – I was scared of the shower after Psycho which I saw at way too young an age. I only had baths for the longest time. Sharks are splendid thing to be scared of – the truly wise are because they want to friggin’ eat us Noo-noo. Noo-noo. Noo-noo-noo-noo-noonoonoo – Aaaaaaaargh!
fmc – I feel similarly about phones although it’s more of a loathing than a fear. I’m shooting in the dark here and guessing the colour lilac has a good deal to do with your fear. For me too, only my lilac is kind of a nutty fruitcake brown sometimes with a layer of sickly sweet marzipan, sometimes a layer of hard, brittle icing. Often brandied – sometimes flambeed. I love cabbage!!
Got to go – kiddy calling – back in a mo’.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:48 am
Eddie you could lead up to the full rat with a starter mouse and then maybe a gerbil. Is it the tails? Or is it their vicious little eyes? Have you seen that Flushed Away animated movie with your kids yet? It really opened my eyes I can tell you – now I’m learning to trust rats and let them into my heart – which I will promptly disinfect afterwards – Pine Sol won’t damage the heart, will it?
Manuel, whose public nakedness? I fear naked Henry Kissingers riding a cock horse to Bambury cross with rings on his finger and smells on his toes.
Medbh – I think everyone on the planet has seen Willard but me. I saw Stuart Little. Bah! The word withering scares the wits out of me. Nothing good ever comes of withering – although some might argue that sun-dried tomatoes are the exception. Not me, though.
Emma, lotus reed pie, you say? Well I’ve got some Lou Reed CDs in the cupboard but I’m not sure whether he’d need puff or shortcrust pastry. I think he’d curdle the pineapple juice too.
Twenty, bold words but what will you do when the goitership lands in Dublin? They come from a planet far far away, you know. That old iodine canard is just a duck – a French duck, and look at the French. Enjoy your neck now while you can – take it to the swing-park and spend time with it: that little neck of yours’ll grow up all too quickly and purpley and you’ll wish you had those precious innocent days back. Goiters hate us for our freedoms, see – they’re part of the Necksis of Evil.
Hangar Queen, I’ve never had a Smithwicks before but I can’t wait to be terrified right off my arse on them when I get me to Oireland in the autumn. You’ll have to learn me the other local brews. An apt pupil am I, studious and very keen to learn.
June 17th, 2007 at 10:18 am
1) Insects, arachnids, anything with more than 4 legs. I used to be fond of munching on lobster and crab, but they’re starting to look a bit creepy to me too, lately. It’s a serious phobia, the kind they write about in books, the kind where I can’t touch a picture of a bug, even. My dad and uncles used to flick bugs at me when I was a kid, to watch me flinch and scream, and then I’d get spanked if I made a fuss, so I’m sure it’s all tied in there somewhere.
2) Robots. From the age of about 9 onwards, I was terrified of robots. I used to have nightmares about them all the time, and I didn’t even like robot-type toys. Then, when I was about 28, I saw “The Black Hole” on TV. It all came rushing back to me — my parents took me and my little brother to the cinema to see it when it first came out, and I was about 9. I remember being at the movies, being absolutely terrified of the evil robot in the movie, and crying and begging my parents to leave, but they wouldn’t take me out because my little brother wasn’t scared, and he wanted to stay and watch it. So between the ages of 9 and 28 I had this irrational fear, and didn’t know why, until I saw the movie again. I had blocked it all out. I’m still not fond of robots, mind you.
3) Swimming pool drains, or opening my eyes up underwater in a pool. Even a picture of such a thing can induce a panic attack in me. My parents had me over at a friend’s pool when I was 6 months old, and I remember sitting on my dad’s lap, and reaching for a ball in the water, and then plop! In I went. I was only in for less than a minute, but I remember the helplessness and the terror, and seeing the drain, and being afraid that I’d get sucked in, as it was a very large drain, compared to me. And yes, babies can remember that far back, especially when there’s massive trauma and such involved. By the time I was 18 months old, I could read out of a newspaper. I shit you not.
June 17th, 2007 at 11:47 am
Heeheehee!
It’s funny, I was always scared of goiters as a child, but had never seen one. I don’t know how I heard of them or thought they’d be scary, but they were. I was also scared of blowing my nose, because OBVIOUSLY my brain would come out with the snots. And I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between brains and snots, because they look the same. Or so I thought/think.
My fiance is scared of moths, and it’s hilarious.
June 17th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
goiters, schmoiders!
Cancer, Ha! Anyone can quit smoking but it takes a man to face cancer!
I think my greatest fear is getting stuck in a dentists waiting room with a bunch of mullet wearing, uneducated, Budweiser swilling, cousin marrying, teeth missing rednecks, for eternity.
June 17th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Dia duith, A Sam,
A little news.
An bhuil is aguth air an fear mor as an Loedhas, Duncan Macloud. Bhi se air an BBC leis an David Dimbleby. Ta se ag obair ar on loom agus ta se 92.
Is Mise, le mas
vince
June 18th, 2007 at 7:26 am
Little things don’t scare me, even scorpions can be squashed. It’s the crocodiles you have to watch. I hope your neck gets better dear. Do you have any good ointments for it?
June 18th, 2007 at 7:41 am
But have you done a SINGLE thing for baby birds with AIDS?
June 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Sam, it’s amazing that you have this phobia because I have a secret morbid fear of gaiters. Can we swap?
The only good thing to be said for gaiters is that they fail the basic medical diagnostic test – Rubor, calor, tumor (redness, heat, swelling) – and therefore do not arouse feelings of hypochondriacal anxiety.
June 18th, 2007 at 11:35 am
This made me think of How to Get Ahead in Adverstising…
I’m terrified of going gray. I know it’s going to happen, but it scares the piss out of me.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I keep dreaming that I’m in the car, reversing, and I put my foot on the brake but it doesn’t stop and keeps going backwards, generally smashing into someone else’s car or a wall or sometimes even a person. It’s not a recurring dream cos it’s always a little different, but the theme is the same. Have no idea why because it’s never actually happened to me…
June 18th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I don’t like my food touching on a plate either. Sweet fucking Chulthua , I am hungover like a goat today.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:40 am
You have not got a goitre! Trust me! Incidentally did he have pop eyes? The two often go together. I was very frightened as a very young child when Daddy and I were walking along a road and we came across a man lying in the road having a fit. Daddy tried to shield me from seeing too much but it was too late. Ironically when I was about eight my friend Jean developed epilepsy and I got used to looking after her and making sure she didn’t damage herself when she had one so that fear went.
Did you have to have had more fractures than me (Three). I’m frightened of losing my mind, my marbles and what dignity I have left.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:39 pm
spiders. all of them. when I see a spider I can crawl up the wall. and I am scared to step on one.
and being locked – no matter in or outside the flat.
and that a car may hurt my dogs. and that HE may get sick.
I am never scared of anything that may happen to me, I only hope it happens fast.
June 19th, 2007 at 8:07 pm
Fear of children’s sweets…. liquoricey, colourdy, chewy, mastiscation noise making children’s sweets… I can’t be in a room with them.. A room where people are eating them, a worse horror…They make me recoil, feel sick and want to cry.
Mentioning it to people (only in emergencies) tends to lead to a barrage of names of penny sweets that people get very excited about…which has the same effect on me as above.
Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory fills me with a sense of forboding like you wouldn’t believe.
And I have a six year old… my life is a minefield
June 20th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Have you ever seen the film “How to get a head in advertising” with Richard E. Grant? You’d love it
I was afraid of vomit when I was a kid. Even hearing the word spoken would have me on the verge of tears. Having discovered alcohol since then, I’ve become acclimatised so it’s no longer an issue.
Clowns scare the bejeezus out of me these days.
(Brian sent me – but I’ve been lurking around here before!)
June 20th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
Probably my biggest terror of the moment is never getting my front crowns sorted out – spending the next 30 years on an NHS dental waiting list while my face and lips sag without the support of my teeth.
June 20th, 2007 at 6:36 pm
Brianf sent me here, and wow – what an interesting site you have. I am still laughing! By the way, goiters don’t tend to hurt, so I think you likely are coming down with something (just not something that will end up hanging off your neck).
So glad I got to pay you a visit!
June 20th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Forgive me for laughing out loud while you detail our worst fears…but you’re funny. Besides, there is nothing unfunny about any essay with the word goiter in it.
(And I too still see Richard Grant with two heads. That image is disturbingly embedded in my brain.)
June 20th, 2007 at 11:27 pm
Buttons
The clothing type that is, not ones on machines. If a woman ever wants to end a relationship with me all she has to do is start wearing things with buttons. Of course she’d have to actually start that relationship before she could think about ending it.
I don’t even want to talk about them any more.
June 21st, 2007 at 6:15 am
Lovely commenters, I do loves you so! But I am bleary-eyed and tired after being out late last night, and at the windy beach today. I will reply to yeez all first thing in the morning, though.
Cheeroo.
June 21st, 2007 at 7:28 am
Fat Sparrow, your dad and uncles were the lets-talk-about-our-feelings types, weren’t they? I can tell.
Carolyn, that is a worry! There must be a way to tell if you’ve just sneezed out brain or snot though: try cooking them each up with fava beans and a nice chianti and whichever tastes the best will be yer brains.
Brianf, yikes-a-mercy! There is a tiny glint of Olivier’s Nazi dentist in Marathon Man in every dentist’s eyes. Fear of the dentist must surely be the yardstick against which all other fears are measured.
Vince, I think I know him. For real! I’ll check it out in the morning and see if I’m right.
Nanas, I tried a salve of pottage, nettles and dolphin blowholes – it seemed to do the trick and nipped the goiter in the bud at the purely terrified fantasy stage. An old sea-dog’s trick I picked up in Mandalay.
Kara, I delivered hot millet to baby birds who were too ill to cook for themselves.
Conan, you’re quite right, of course. A rubber gaiter would be a wellie and they have to be green in colour if one has any sort of a clue about current wellie-fashions. The latest styles are trending swollen too, for added cushioning and support.
Sassy, you can manage grays though – look at Andie McDowell, she’s a hungred and three! I fear baldness. I never used to until my mother told me as a child that, when a child herself, she had been morbidly afraid of balding. I think she felt lighter as she told me and the burden of baldophobia passed down to me.
Caro, that’s just how my granny drove. Didn’t bother her a bit. It was really more of a problem for other road-users and pedestrians.
fmc – problem Child I is like that. One of the nurses in the neonatal ICU when the girls were born – who became a good friend – still used compartmentalised dishes at 29 whenever she could.
Pat, I worry about marble loss too but what bothers me is that I never knew how many I had to start with. How can I tell I’m losing them?
JenPen, I locked the girls and me out once, when they were two. I had to smash a window and crawl through to get back in. The Problem Husband was just delighted! I could tell by his wide eyes and gaping mouth.
Hi liz, welcome! Thanks for commenting. I feel compassion for your fear but cannot really fully understand it. At all! I LOVE children’s sweeties. Are you some kind of a wierdo, woman? I ask that in a non-judgmental way.
Gr8 K8, hello to you – thanks for stopping by and leaving a message – I loves it when people do. Vomit is one of these onomatopoeic words where if you didn’t know what it meant, you’d twig to it pretty quickly by how it sounds. A word that almost bests goiter for ickiness.
Kim, there’s always collagen – you could get a pirate trout pout.
Wordnerd, hiya. Welcome. With a name like wordnerd I am going to have to visit your site, that much is clear.
Mom101 – a man with a tiny we extra head who can still remain fanciable is a rare breed. Some men have just one big great one. Just messing wid ju, guys – I’m a guy-fan not a guy-foe.
Eolai – I’d have though zippers place men in more peril than buttons. I used to dream about the girls choking on mouthfuls of buttons and pennies when they were toddlers. We don’t even have that amount of buttons in our house – but in my dream our cup and their wee mouths did run horribly over with buttons…
June 21st, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Hi! I love your blog… read alot, have never commented, but as you can see I was compelled by the topic.. Nah, I’m more of a freak than a weirdo.
)
All my other fears are bog standard… bad things happening to people i love, the whole aging thing.. mice!… oh and I can’t look in the mirror when i get up to go to the loo in the middle of the night in case there’s a reflection of someone standing behind me…
See! mostly normal
June 22nd, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Liz, I like your other fears. They’re cool. But surely you’re overlooking the sweet delicious goodness of sweeties? What manner of madness haas brought you to this fear?
June 22nd, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Bertie Bassett and a jelly baby stole my lunch money when I was seven… …
Break a leg!
July 7th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
At my 40th birthday luncheon, my sister noticed my swollen glands. No wonder I’d been feeling so crappy. I went straight to the doctor that afternoon. After waiting in the sterile room for a long time, he came in, took one look, and pronounced “Goiter”. He then said he’d be back with the name of a surgeon and a prescription for an antibiotic. I waited and waited, imagining my birthday dinner with loved ones, and then I noticed all the lights under the door going out. I heard him say, “Who’s in 6? Goiter?” Someone came back and fetched me before they locked me in for the night. I was thinking at that moment how happy I was that nothing was wrong with my vagina.
The goiter was removed along with half of my thyroid. I was told by the surgeon that there is/was a spot on the other side of my thyroid that needed watching, and regular testing was intimated. I put that fear out of my mind – though it lurks and waits to be provoked – which it was by your post, which I thoroughly enjoyed despite the heebie jeebies, or maybe because of them.