Mitch is a hard stick is all I can say for sure. (I know that sounds like a character description but it’s a medical one) https://twitter.com/riotwomennn/status/1319029347336978434

Probably on anticoagulants too. Sometimes old fragile papery skin does that when the veins are elusive. But the lip argues anticoagulants.

Also clinically possible that he touched the cursed horcrux as others are suggesting on this thread. Just spitballing here so may as well keep the differential broad.

It would be unusual for horcrux contact to demonstrate non-contiguous involvement, but the literature is not broad enough to exclude it.

Ok, an anonymous commenter suggested the possibility that McConnell IS a horcrux himself. There’s only one other case report in the literature of this and it was a vastly different presentation so this possibility is kind of blowing my mind.

It’s very humbling to be a full professor and have a lay person suggest a plausible diagnosis that didn’t occur to you.

For McConnell to be damaged by a horcrux suggests he was attempting to destroy said horcrux, and that premise does not hold up. Diagnoses generally have narrative consistency.

So in the event this is a horcrux related disease and yet not incurred in the act of destroying the horcrux, two possibilities remain.

1. As mentioned, McConnell is the reservoir for a piece of the soul of another. We might expect that to have near zero physical manifestations

HOWEVER, this expectation is based on one case in a much younger person. McConnell may have relinquished his spiritual real estate decades ago, and / or the effects in his much older substrate are more visibly toxic. Or the occupying soul is more manifestly evil than Voldemort.

2. McConnell himself was *in the process* of creating a horcrux or horcruxes, ie, he himself is the soul-splitter, which as we have seen (again, N=1 so cautious generalization) is physically corrosive.

There may be divided opinions on this, but I favor the latter, after application of non-validated clinical decision tools.

First, can we reasonably rule out the possibility that he IS a horcrux?

- generally inanimate objects
- of high symbolic meaning
- when animate, a pet or
- an accidental horcrux of one’s mortal enemy

Horcruxes themselves do not have evil intent; the evil is from the cursed soul imparted to them. So overall, this seems not a good fit. I feel the impulse to jump onto “snake” as a match but here we should exercise some restraint, I think, as the operative word is “pet.”

Ok, can we rule IN the possibility that he was *creating* horcruxes? Let’s take a look at the criteria for a horcrux generator:

- thirst for power
- willingness to exercise unfathomable cruelty in pursuit of that power
- seeming interminable tenure in power

- zero empathy for children
- zero empathy for small animals
- zero empathy in general
- rule breaker of the highest order

Most clinical rules don’t even require one to meet all criteria but McConnell really wants to fill out that AUC.

So I guess the bottom line, as my pals @RyanMarino and @_HarryPaul_ might say, is who the f*ck cares about his health profile and I apologize for pointlessly propagating that original photo.

Final diagnosis: His actions have rendered him utterly soulless.