My father, who gave me his name, among many other blessings, directs his profound medical knowledge toward the GOP nominee’s health in today’s pop-up reincarnation of beloved Spy magazine, brought to you on Esquire’s website:
It’s sweet how concerned Donald Trump and his army of amateur medical investigators have been about Hillary Clinton’s health during this election season, sifting the Internet for clues to find a proper diagnosis for what ails her so she can get help. So it is unfair that nobody is giving Trump’s health the same detailed attention—not even his personal physician. Thankfully, one vigilant doctor has been keeping a close clinical eye on the self-identified superhuman Republican candidate and made a startling discovery: the likely cause of his short, short, short fingers.
When Dr. Robert Neer, a retired endocrinologist at Mass General Hospital and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, looked at the measurements obtained by The Hollywood Reporter last August, he saw something that only a physician with 49 years of experience would notice: the tell-tale clues of a genetic abnormality that would explain the Republican nominee’s sub-normal, 15-25th-percentile finger length. SPY contacted Dr. Neer for a full medical explanation.
What makes his fingers so emasculatingly underendowed?
One of the conditions that has long been associated with shortened metacarpal bones—those are the bones in your hands that are between your wrist and your fingers—is a disease called Albright’s hereditary osteodystrophy, which was accompanied by abnormal blood levels of calcium and phosphorous. Everybody who is an endocrinologist knows about it. That’s why I was completely taken by the hands when I saw them, because that’s the kind of thing that I look at all the time in patients that have problems with calcium, which is what my special interest was.
Is there a longer name for it that might make Trump feel more special? It might help him to know that something about him is longer.
The condition that was described back in the 1930s is called pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism. The weirdness of the name means that many doctors who might otherwise not be expected to know anything about it have at least heard about it.
Blame the GNAS gene, after all.
Let’s hope the candidate, armed with this possible diagnosis, can finally get the medical help he needs.
Bob, I was sure that this was a joke that was flying over my head. I spent minutes trying to find the joke in the word pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism, and then finally googled it. Yes Martha, it’s a thing. Yes, it effects the kidneys. Yes, about 10% of those presenting with pseudopseudohypoparathyroidism also have learning disabilities. No, it doesn’t explain the orange face and white eyes, at least not WebMDs version.
That would mean false-false so in other words, real, wouldn’t it?
I’m not a doctor ( but there’s nothing preventing me from playing one on the internet) but the plain (sic) meaning of the word doesn’t exactly translate in the way you are saying. False something and then false( false something) = something is what you’re saying, but that’s not what’s going on…
There is hypoparathyroidism.
Then there is pseudo-hypoparathyroidism, which (i’m guessing) is a condition that mimics the symptoms of hypoparathyroidism, but which has definitively been determined not to be hypoparathyroidism.
Then there is pseudo-pseudo-hypothyroidism, which is a condition that (again, guessing) mimics the symptoms of pseudo-hypoparathyroidism but which is definitively neither pseudo-hypoparathyroidism nor hypoparathyroidism. so, we can see where your progression of false(false hypoparathyroidism) = hypoparathyroidism falls down.
I think, in the light of this conversation, Bob_Neer pere is onto something. We might be looking at pseudo-pseudo-hypo-para-conservatism where there is a weak echo (pseudo-) of a weak effort (pseudo-) of a weakly held (hypo) sorta philosophy (para-conservatism): the symptoms are Shakespearean in scope; “sound and fury, signifying nothing”… that is to say, strenuous intellectual effort in service to a bombastic and pugnacious rhetoric of spite and bile with neither something concrete to show for efforts nor damage to credibility for wreaking havoc… and with tiny hands.