My Affair With Dr. Google

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I admit that I have a bad habit of typing my symptoms into Google and trying to diagnose myself. It's not about wanting to discover more things wrong with me. I just want to understand some of the more annoying symptoms that pop up from time to time without having to send an e-mail to my doctor.

What's my hesitation in contacting my doctor?

It's probably because in the last e-mail I sent I told her about my urine and feces turning deep reddish purple after I ate beets. The Internet told me that it might be a sign of iron deficiency, so I wrote and asked her about it. When my doctor wrote back and told me to enjoy eating the rest of the beets I had in my frig, I felt like I asked a stupid question and wasted her time.

So here I am over the past few weeks consulting Dr. Google instead, which has its own unique set of problems:

Misdiagnosis: Crohn's disease

So over the weekend, when I had GI tract pain and a canker sore, I put those symptoms into the search engine and came up with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis. Of course, going back to the eMedicineHealth website today to write this post, I see I missed the part where it said that recurrent canker sores are a sign of these two diseases. After those search results, I decided I needed to focus on some self care and leave the Internet alone. Needless to say, the GI tract pain cleared up after a day of the BRAT (broth, rice, applesauce and tea) diet and the canker sore, which was very small to begin with, cleared up in about 48 hours.

Unnecessary Worrying: Loss of Smell

I tweeted with an acquaintance of mine last night on Twitter who happened to mention that for the last two years she's experienced a loss of her sense of smell. Wanting to help her, I Googled loss of smell, which took me to a nice link over at MayoClinic.com. The smart people there posted a disclaimer with their information:

Causes shown here are commonly associated with this symptom. Work with your doctor or other health care professional for an accurate diagnosis.

Reading the information there, I learned that loss of smell is sometimes related to aging. Then I clicked in the Expert Advice link and learned that the beta blocker I take can be associated with loss of smell (and taste) as well. While these are both interesting factoids, my overactive imagination probably didn't need to know these things. The information was good for someone who actually has loss of smell and just TMI (too much information) for someone who doesn't.


Self Diagnosis: Eustation Tube Dysfunction

Over the past week or so, I have been waking up with a stuffed up left ear. It seems like just when my ear clears up, it's time for sleep again. I tried a bunch of self care things like a heating pad, cotton in my ear and inhaling steam as well as over the counter medications like Sudafed, Mucinex, ibuprofen and loratadine (generic Claritin.) Since the problem kept coming back, I finally decided to Google it.

I looked to see if a stuffed up ear was a symptom of thoracic outlet syndrome (only one hit) or a complication of using my CPAP machine (lots of hits.) I came across the term eustation tube dysfunction and many, many forum posts from people who say they suffer from it but get no relief from their doctors. Which got me thinking that if this continues, I am going to have to go see my doctor.

It just so happens that my CPAP supplier called me yesterday asking if I wanted a refill on my supplies, so I asked the staff person helping me if using a CPAP machine can cause ear problems. She asked around to the professionals in her office, including a doctor, and the verdict of her straw poll was no. She referred me back to my sleep doctor--smart girl that she is!

The only useful thing I found in all my searching is that if the ear stuffiness is cause by the CPAP, putting in earplugs while you use the CPAP machine can help to equalize the pressure in your ears. So I stuffed a cotton ball in my ear last night and found that it seemed to help a little bit.

The bottom line: I spent a lot of time searching, not really finding an answer, when I probably should have just picked up the phone and made a doctor's appointment.

My Verdict

The Internet is great for finding more information on conditions that you have been diagnosed with, but is a poor substitute for the advice of a doctor when you have new symptoms you are trying to figure out on your own. So I think it is time to end my affair with Dr. Google and go back to asking questions from my real doctors. I need to get over my embarrassment about asking stupid questions and trust that my doctor will let me know if I am asking too many questions and wasting her time. Although I suspect that if I am sending too many emails, she'll invite me to come in to see her before my next scheduled appointment to get checked out by Urgent Care.

So are you having an affair with Dr. Google too? Fill me in on all the juicy details in a comment...

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Cooler Weather Brings Memories of School Days

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It's been crisp and cool these past few nights on our walks with the dogs. The weather got me reminiscing about my school days and a poem about Fall I memorized in grade school. Through the miracle of Google and the Internet, all I had to do was type in a few of the words I remembered, "...Asters, deep purple, A grasshopper's call..." and I found my grade school poem:

September

A road like brown ribbon,
A sky that is blue,
A forest of green
With that sky peeping through.

Asters, deep purple,
A grasshopper’s call,
Today it is summer,
Tomorrow is fall.

~by Edwina Fallis

I Googled again and learned about the author of this poem, who I did not learn about in school:

Edwina Hume Fallis

1876-1957

Edwina Fallis was born in Denver, Colorado and served as president of the Denver School Board. Fallis demonstrated her passion for education through her storytelling with the use of toys and props for her kindergarten students. She taught in the Denver schools for over 40 years. She also wrote textbooks and the best-selling book "The Child and Things." Once she retired, she devoted her time to writing and published over 100 poems and the children's book "When Denver and I Were Young." Denver honored her after her death by naming the Edwina Hume Fallis Elementary School after her; she was the first teacher to receive this honor.

In my mind, an aster looks like an artichoke when it has gone to flower. So I decided to Google "aster" to see what they really look like:

Image by anslatadams via Flickr

It appears that even though my school days are behind me, my love for learning lives on. Only now I have the power of the Internet to help me learn even more.

How Do You Say Goodbye to an Internet Friend?

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I recently found out that a friend on Facebook suddenly died five days ago. I didn't know her well at all; I befriended her to increase my number of neighbors in Farm Town, an online game I play on Facebook. We occasionally "spoke" when she came to my virtual farm as part of the game, to complete a task for coins or water my flowers. Our conversations began when she typed: "Hi, how are you?" or "Your farm is very pretty." or "Where have you been? I haven't seen you online for a while." She seemed like a genuinely nice person.

How did I find out she died? I saw a post in my Facebook news feed yesterday that obviously was not written by her, giving details about her funeral service. I immediately went to her profile and read a series of posts from a niece, a nephew, a daughter-in-law and friends. I don't know how she died, but it was clear from the posts that she was in a coma and everyone was pulling for her to come out of it. I want to know the details, but no one has posted that information on her wall.

It is sad, but because of her death I now know more about her. She lived in South Africa; she was divorced; she was a mother, grandmother, aunt and friend to many. She worked in a real estate office. She was only 49 years old. I searched for an online obituary and was unable to find one.

She obviously touched my life, but now I am alone with my grief. Unlike my in-person life where I share my family and friends with many other people, this was an exclusive one-on-one friendship that I shared with no one else. So now I am left, by myself, to make sense of her early and untimely death, with more questions than answers swirling in my brain. I can't jump on a plane to South Africa to attend the funeral. I feel awkward about emailing her family and asking for more specifics. The best I can do is take the final gifts she sent me in Farm Town and create a little space on my farm to memorialize her.

I am left wondering what is the best way to say goodbye to an Internet friend. And it's got me thinking about what plans I should make now to ensure I can say goodbye to the friends that are part of my online life after I log off for the last time.

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