The Internet is good for a lot of things. There's one thing, however, that the Internet is terrible at. Which is taking the place of your family doctor.
Let me explain. Gone are the halcyon days when you could show up at your family physician's office for everything. He would be the same doctor you'd gone to as a child, and you'd kept on going there because when your body is surprising you with new and horrible conditions, the giant green stethoscope hanging from the doctor's ceiling and the SpongeBob cartoons handpainted on the walls seemed charmingly familiar, rather than like elements from some recurring nightmare in which you tried to outrun a phantom menace while wearing concrete boots.
He'd have a cheery, if confused smile, and a wall covered with medical degrees and his children's sketches. Or maybe they were his sketches - if so, no wonder he'd become a doctor.
"Doc," you'd tell him one day, "I think I might have a stomach problem." And he'd blink, smile, and say,
"Well aren't we precocious," and hand you a lollipop and tell you it was nothing serious. And you'd leave, charmed and reassured, until the pain eventually became unbearable and the doctors at your college told you in alarming tones that you were definitely pregnant at which point you became more alarmed and really started to have nightmares in which phantom menaces would have been a welcome relief up until the moment when you went to the emergency room. At which point, a male orderly so handsome that you'd suspect he was in fact an actor playing a doctor and not a doctor at all - and whom you'd immediately envision yourself marrying, blame the painkillers - would tell you in jovial tones that you had tiny little cysts growing on your ovaries. Or Yellow Fever, which in rare cases can be sexually transmitted - although the handsome doctor would be quick to say that "that's obviously not your situation" with a discomfiting grimace that forever killed any fantasies you may have had about the two of you.
But the number of medical students opting for family practice is dwindling, leading to a shortage of bespectacled family docs, and that means that increasing numbers of people are turning to the Internet to solve the mysteries of their innards.
Like me. Today, for no good reason, my right arm began to tingle. A few minutes later it went numb. It stayed numb for an hour. Alarmed, I typed "why are my hands going numb?" into Google.
One website, which is run by a person who is probably not a medical professional, told me that the most common causes of this rare condition are spinal cord injury, Lyme Disease, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, Cervical Spondylosis and Syphilis. After a brief flash of alarm, during which I felt the ground rise up to swallow me and simultaneously regretted every outdoor adventure I'd ever gone on in childhood, I realized that this website was probably a joke. Cervical Spondylosis sounds like something you'd mistakenly order while on holiday in Italy, expecting it to be delicious, only to discover that it is in fact made of snails and covered in a cheese so rancid that it makes high school gym socks seem like attar of roses. Syphilis is similar, except you'd get it in France.
I quickly closed that browser window and arrowed on over to another. This one seemed more my style. The author advised forgetting about the problem, although "your hands will be fine, but if you need 'em, just wave them a few times and take a few deep breaths."
This seemed like eminently sensible advice, especially compared to the last blog, which all but suggested I dig my own grave. I shook my hands, took a few deep breaths, even did a few jazz squares since it seemed like it couldn't hurt. None of this was even remotely helpful. My emotional terror alert ratcheted back up to burnt sienna, I was now convinced that my problem was a very serious case.
Yet another blogger wanted to share her experience with tingly hands. She turned out to have "pernicious anemia," she explained, which meant that the rest of us probably did too. It turns out that there is a "pernicious anemia" - so-called, I imagine, because the medical establishment doesn't want you to confuse it with its milder cousin, "lovable anemia" - a slow-developing disease that culminates with neurological problems, which is around the time that most doctors diagnose it. It sounded scary, which is why I decided I didn't have it. I browsed some more, but the blogs mainly fell into two camps. The first camp told me that whatever I had, it was probably fatal, and instead of seeking treatment it would probably be best to write out a note to my relatives to prepare them for the inevitable. The other camp was convinced that the problem was about as serious as a hissy fit, and solvable with yogic meditation and jazz hands.
Which is when I realized why it's a bad idea to replace your doctor with the Internet. In the old days of the family doctor, you only had one befuddled person offering opinions as to what ailed you. Sure, he was often wrong, but at least he was just one man. In the case of the Internet, there are millions of people who are convinced they know what is wrong with you because it happened to them, or someone they know, or someone they don't know but read about once in the news. What these people lack in medical training they make up for in good intentions. Unfortunately, medical training takes seven years whereas good intentions take about seven seconds, so the balance remains largely negative.
Which is when I also decided that I probably wasn't about to die, and if I was, I didn't want to be found collapsed in front of a computer screen.
Just kidding! Of course I didn't shut the window. I did jazz hands until the feeling in my fingers miraculously returned. That stuff works! You should probably do a few rounds of jazz hands right now, just in case. Not that it matters, because by the time you read this you'll have died of Ebola. It happened to someone I read about once in the news. Or maybe that was a novel. Anyway, it was definitely Ebola.
Let me explain. Gone are the halcyon days when you could show up at your family physician's office for everything. He would be the same doctor you'd gone to as a child, and you'd kept on going there because when your body is surprising you with new and horrible conditions, the giant green stethoscope hanging from the doctor's ceiling and the SpongeBob cartoons handpainted on the walls seemed charmingly familiar, rather than like elements from some recurring nightmare in which you tried to outrun a phantom menace while wearing concrete boots.
He'd have a cheery, if confused smile, and a wall covered with medical degrees and his children's sketches. Or maybe they were his sketches - if so, no wonder he'd become a doctor.
"Doc," you'd tell him one day, "I think I might have a stomach problem." And he'd blink, smile, and say,
"Well aren't we precocious," and hand you a lollipop and tell you it was nothing serious. And you'd leave, charmed and reassured, until the pain eventually became unbearable and the doctors at your college told you in alarming tones that you were definitely pregnant at which point you became more alarmed and really started to have nightmares in which phantom menaces would have been a welcome relief up until the moment when you went to the emergency room. At which point, a male orderly so handsome that you'd suspect he was in fact an actor playing a doctor and not a doctor at all - and whom you'd immediately envision yourself marrying, blame the painkillers - would tell you in jovial tones that you had tiny little cysts growing on your ovaries. Or Yellow Fever, which in rare cases can be sexually transmitted - although the handsome doctor would be quick to say that "that's obviously not your situation" with a discomfiting grimace that forever killed any fantasies you may have had about the two of you.
But the number of medical students opting for family practice is dwindling, leading to a shortage of bespectacled family docs, and that means that increasing numbers of people are turning to the Internet to solve the mysteries of their innards.
Like me. Today, for no good reason, my right arm began to tingle. A few minutes later it went numb. It stayed numb for an hour. Alarmed, I typed "why are my hands going numb?" into Google.
One website, which is run by a person who is probably not a medical professional, told me that the most common causes of this rare condition are spinal cord injury, Lyme Disease, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, Type 2 Diabetes, Cervical Spondylosis and Syphilis. After a brief flash of alarm, during which I felt the ground rise up to swallow me and simultaneously regretted every outdoor adventure I'd ever gone on in childhood, I realized that this website was probably a joke. Cervical Spondylosis sounds like something you'd mistakenly order while on holiday in Italy, expecting it to be delicious, only to discover that it is in fact made of snails and covered in a cheese so rancid that it makes high school gym socks seem like attar of roses. Syphilis is similar, except you'd get it in France.
I quickly closed that browser window and arrowed on over to another. This one seemed more my style. The author advised forgetting about the problem, although "your hands will be fine, but if you need 'em, just wave them a few times and take a few deep breaths."
This seemed like eminently sensible advice, especially compared to the last blog, which all but suggested I dig my own grave. I shook my hands, took a few deep breaths, even did a few jazz squares since it seemed like it couldn't hurt. None of this was even remotely helpful. My emotional terror alert ratcheted back up to burnt sienna, I was now convinced that my problem was a very serious case.
Yet another blogger wanted to share her experience with tingly hands. She turned out to have "pernicious anemia," she explained, which meant that the rest of us probably did too. It turns out that there is a "pernicious anemia" - so-called, I imagine, because the medical establishment doesn't want you to confuse it with its milder cousin, "lovable anemia" - a slow-developing disease that culminates with neurological problems, which is around the time that most doctors diagnose it. It sounded scary, which is why I decided I didn't have it. I browsed some more, but the blogs mainly fell into two camps. The first camp told me that whatever I had, it was probably fatal, and instead of seeking treatment it would probably be best to write out a note to my relatives to prepare them for the inevitable. The other camp was convinced that the problem was about as serious as a hissy fit, and solvable with yogic meditation and jazz hands.
Which is when I realized why it's a bad idea to replace your doctor with the Internet. In the old days of the family doctor, you only had one befuddled person offering opinions as to what ailed you. Sure, he was often wrong, but at least he was just one man. In the case of the Internet, there are millions of people who are convinced they know what is wrong with you because it happened to them, or someone they know, or someone they don't know but read about once in the news. What these people lack in medical training they make up for in good intentions. Unfortunately, medical training takes seven years whereas good intentions take about seven seconds, so the balance remains largely negative.
Which is when I also decided that I probably wasn't about to die, and if I was, I didn't want to be found collapsed in front of a computer screen.
Just kidding! Of course I didn't shut the window. I did jazz hands until the feeling in my fingers miraculously returned. That stuff works! You should probably do a few rounds of jazz hands right now, just in case. Not that it matters, because by the time you read this you'll have died of Ebola. It happened to someone I read about once in the news. Or maybe that was a novel. Anyway, it was definitely Ebola.
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