Dolly Parton

Should Dolly Parton be honored or mortified to have a syndrome named after her?

I’m not typically one to stay up to date on the names of diseases, but I accidentally stumbled upon a country-music-themed disease that I reluctantly deemed worthy of sharing. Will your life change after reading this? Probably not. But will you have an incredibly niche fact that you could share if the opportunity ever presented itself? You bet (be careful deploying it though… you could come off as a weirdo).

There a number of notable diseases and syndromes that are named after the figures that first brought them to the attention of the medical world. Parkinson’s disease was named after James Parkinson, Alzheimer’s disease was named after Alois Alzheimer, and Lou Gehrig’s disease (another name for ALS) was coined that after the famous baseball player who suffered from it.

There’s no easy way to transition from that… other than to say that the background information presented now brings us to DPS, A.K.A. Dolly Parton Syndrome. If you were to have asked me what I thought Dolly Parton Syndrome was this morning, I’m guessing that I would have went with any variation of these answers below:

-Dolly Parton Syndrome must be the psychological issue that affects those who love the country music icon a little too much

-DPS is a side effect that can come from using too many hair products, especially blonde hair dye

-Dolly Parton Syndrome is the result of one too many breast augmentation surgeries

And it looks like I would have been somewhat close to answering correctly with that last guess. As I stated earlier, I was attempting to catch up on the latest news from everyone’s favorite country music legend, and I saw in the “Frequently Asked Questions” section on Google that someone has asked this:

“What is Dolly Parton Syndrome?”

First off, how many people were actually searching that? I’d love to know the number necessary for Google to put that up on the front page when you search Dolly Parton. Secondly, you can’t tell me that you wouldn’t also click on that question to see if the internet had provided an answer. That would be like walking out of a movie theatre with 15 minutes left to go in The Departed. At some point, you’ve got to see it through to the end.

And that I did.

The good news is that it doesn’t appear that Dolly Parton Syndrome affects humans. For all of those hypochondriacs out there, you can breathe a sigh of relief. The bad news? DPS mainly affects female cats, and the actual name for the health issue is Feline Mammary Hypertrophy. Come on… do I really have to explain it? Surely “Dolly Parton Syndrome” is all of the context clues necessary, right?

 

For those that have read this far and want to walk away as a DPS expert, the syndrome basically covers an issue where the mammary glands of cats swell up to such a large size that they drag on the floor. Despite the funny “slang term,” it’s a very serious issue with cats, and especially with young kittens. Though it seems like it can be avoided (or at the very least, the chance of DPS can be drastically reduced) if people get their cats spayed at a young age, so consider this a PSA.

In closing, if someone comes over to your house and says, “Wow, your pet cat looks a lot like Dolly Parton,” you should probably go ahead and call your veterinarian…