I Have My Dad's Looks, Humor, and Hypochondriasis

I've been told all my life just how like my Father I am.
I have his sense of humor for certain.  I look just like him (the whole, "If you put a wig on him it would look just like me" comparison happened when he had less facial hair).

Being Daddy's Little Girl, I'm always eagerly looking for new ways to compare my father and myself.  However lately, I'm starting to compare us in ways that I'm more anxious about than anything else.  My dad, you see, is likely a hypochondriac: someone who constantly convinces himself he has a terminal illness or serious disease.  Something that my sister (a nurse practitioner) and I absolutely love to kid him about, and joke about to each other.  Being a nurse practitioner, and married to a doctor, my sister receives numerous calls and queries to consult against from my father.  In past years, my reaction to my sister's stories about this have been carefree giggles and shaking my head with a wide grin, taking the news in no other way but lightly.  The last 3 months have changed all that...

You see, I am likely a hypochondriac.
Something that I am not surprised about, knowing that I am more like my father than anyone else in this world. 

How do I know I'm a hypochondriac?
Well, I've already convinced myself for one.

The real evidence came from my list of medical touch points in the last 3 months, all of which turned out to be nothing or could have been fixed with a simple over-the-counter medication:

• Emergency Dermatologist appointment in June:  I thought a mole I had my entire life was skin cancer.
• CVS Minute Clinic in July
• Urgicare Visit in July
• Emergency Dentist appointment in August
• At least 2 calls to my physician's office
• Countless calls to my sister, the nurse practitioner, trying to slyly bake in medical questions to our standard sisterly conversations
• 20+ visits to WebMD

I have more medicine in my medicine cabinet than the door hinge can handle, and it will be depleted by the end of the winter.  My vitamin count is increasing on a monthly basis.

In case you need more convincing, here is the last conversation I had with a doctor (my dentist) just yesterday:

Dentist: "What seems to be the problem?"
Me: "Well let me give you the back story so you don't think I'm crazy..."
Dentist: "Okay..."
Me: "At lunch the other day my toungue brushed over this bony protrusion I never noticed before.  The gum seemed a bit sensitive around it, and it's definitely not on the other side."
Dentist: "Okay..."
Me: "Well I had my husband take a bunch of photos of it, and then I noticed along with that bony lump, another soft sack next to what looks to be an absessed tooth - my last molar."
Dentist: "Okay..."
Me: "I think it might be Tori or an absess leaking out to under my gum line... well I want to fix anything before it gets really serious so I'm here."
Dentist: "Okay... well let's start here: Does anything hurt?"
Me: "No."
Dentist: "Alright. Let me poke around."  [Dentist pokes around for a while, speaking in complex dentist-y lingo]
Dentist: Repeats everything to me in complex dentist-y language.
Me: "So what does that mean?"
Dentist:  "The pony protrusion on your gum line - that's just your jaw.  You've had that part of your jaw your entire life. You just noticed it now.  And the soft sack on your gum line, well I couldn't find it, so there's not one.  Lastly your 'abscess' tooth, is actually quite healthy - see here on the xray how strong your enamel is?"
Me: "Oh..."
Me: "So you're saying I am crazy?"

So anyways, I still love being Daddy's Little Girl.  And believe it or not, I still am eagerly looking for ways to compare us.  Though now the comparison study has the additional intention of preparing myself for my future.