Ahh, Dr. Google, the one doc who still makes house-class, no symptom too insignificant to warrant careful consideration. One click, and all your symptoms are run through a myriad of databases capable of telling you virtually anything and everything that might be going wrong. But should you Google those symptoms?
I injured my hip in aquatic physical therapy over 2 months ago, and it hasn't healed. X-Rays haven't revealed any dislocation or fracture, and my doctor recently suggested a remote possibility of avascular necrosis of the hip. He explained that, basically, it means that your bone is damaged and isn't getting enough blood, so it stops building up. I left that office that day with a choice to make: do I go to the net and look it up? There are pros and cons to using the great resource that is the hospital of the World Wide Web; here are a few that I've thought about.
Pro's and Con's of Dr. Google
Pro: Knowledge can help you achieve a better differential diagnosis. A differential diagnosis is the list of all possible diagnoses that might be causing the symptoms you're experiencing within a reasonable doubt. If you go online and look up a diagnosis that's been suggested and it sounds totally off-base, you can help your doctor eliminate it from your differential diagnosis. If Dr. Google leads to a disease that fits your symptoms well, you could talk to your doctor about that disease. Bottom line, sometimes a little extra knowledge is helpful in communication with your doctor.
Con: Knowledge can freak you out. There are a ton of horror stories online about missed diagnoses, treatments that backfired, horrible prognoses from illnesses, and general medical malady, and they can drag you down. I'm not one of those people who emphasizes the role of mindfulness and chronic illness, but I believe that a negative, terrified attitude can only make a poor health situation even worse, and it's hard to filter out all the negative information online. A good case in point are drug side-effects: many effects happen to only a handful of people on the medication, but reading them may scare you away from trying it. An adage to remember is: what has been seen cannot be unseen.
Pro: Internet research can help you feel proactive. When you're ill, the world starts circling around you in ways that are completely out of your control. Symptoms go un-managed, and it can take months to get in to see a doctor to figure out the problem. Turning to the internet gives you something to do in the meantime, and sometimes advice on new home-remedies to try (or those to stay away from.) It's proven that a feeling of control helps people cope better with challenging situations, and using the internet helps you feel more in control.
Con: Not everything you read is true. Does that really need to be said? But when you're hurting, it's easy to latch on to the hope of some miracle diet or new restorative snake-oil, and it's easy to get exploited. Some people share information that is blatantly false, knowingly or not. And moreover, not everything you read on the internet is true for you. Just because something on the internet has convincing results doesn't mean it will work for your specific situation. Just because a diagnosis sounds convincing doesn't mean it's what you have. A hefty dose of skepticism is always necessary.
Pro: The devil you know is better than the devil you don't. For me, after years of undiagnosed chronic illness, this is always what keeps me looking, motivated, curious. It's more comforting for me to do a lot of research and be able to prepare myself for a number of different things going wrong than to know something isn't right with my body but choose to ignore it. This is a personal choice. For me, the agony of not knowing outweighs the agony of preparing for the worst.
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