Most things about the Internet are great for the mind if not necessarily for the soul. Vast amounts of knowledge right at your fingertips. Even the worst speller can turn out decent writing with the aid of online dictionaries, spellcheckers, and various other tools. There are news, conversations, debates, and dozens of ways to participate in the world around us. This massive globe of ours feels just a wee bit more personal when the Internet is there to bring people from the far ends of the planet closer to one another.
However, there is one area in which bringing knowledge to the masses may not be such a great thing: the world of medicine.
One of my biggest fears in life is getting ill in a terminal way. I frequently find myself concerned about changes in my body, because, let’s face it, the human body does change a lot over time. As much as we like to think of ourselves as unique and beautiful butterflies, some of those changes we undergo are not all that exquisite.
The problem is, that while medical science can explain many weird things, it’s still a bit of a crapshoot. This is infinitely more the case when medical information is brought to the users in the form of online medical databases, such as WebMD.com. These services allow you to click your way through questions and reach a handful of possible suggestions for a self-diagnosis. This can presumably be helpful.
For me, it sure isn’t.
I deliberately try to avoid such websites due to my tendency to allow myself to be lead by the hand to a diagnosis that not only does not bode well for me, but is also unlikely to be accurate. Worst yet, once I am losing sleep over the possibility of a headache being linked to a stroke, cancer, liver disease, kidney failure, or Tsetse fly bite, and I drag myself to see a physician, if the doctor tells me it’s not terminal and probably just stress, I find it difficult to believe him. Why? Because the Internet told me it could be something else.
When these self-diagnosis sites first came about, they were mostly about clicking on a symptom and getting advice on how to treat it. Basic stuff. It’s when they started providing ways to diagnose yourself without x-rays, MRIs, blood samples, and stuff like that, that it became a whole new ballgame.
At least for us hypochondriacs.
Mika Salakka is a Finn living in the United States. He is a nursing assistant, a creative writer, a devoted husband, and an observer of the human condition. His interests range from music and literature to psychology, sociology, medicine, technology, and spirituality.
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I know exactly what you mean. I had to make myself stop visiting websites like WebMD. I was constantly letting my fears run away with the “worst-case scenario.”