As a young-ish adult, I take many things for granted: my ample head of hair, my ability to troubleshoot computer problems without calling a 1-800 number, and Sam Waterston returning for yet another season on Law & Order. One day, my hair will be gone, computers will be incomprehensible quantum machines, and Sam Waterston will be playing a 110-year-old district attorney on Law & Order. The one thing I shouldn't be taking for granted any more is my health, and this was never made clearer to me than a year ago, when I began treatment for a chronic pain problem.
Before last year, I hadn't seen a real doctor in about eight years. Once, in college, I went to the campus health center to get some prescriptions for a nasty case of the flu. The medical professional who treated me was the sweetest lady ever; she explained everything she did before she did it, smiled brightly the whole time, and gave me a printout from a web site that listed all the things I should be doing to feel better. "You're the nicest doctor I've ever had," I told her as I was leaving. "That's because I'm not a doctor," she said. "I'm a nurse-practitioner."
I had to go home and Google that one.
How seriously should you take your doctor's advice versus the advice you find on a web site? When my condition developed last year, the first thing I did was to do some research online. After several hours of reading and cross-referencing various web sites, I concluded that I had a pinched nerve. This shallow self-diagnosis informed all my interactions with actual doctors later. I told my general practitioner that I thought I had a pinched nerve. He referred me to a neurologist who then sent me to get a battery of tests over several months. The neurologist concluded that I did indeed have a pinched nerve, and the solution would be to undergo physical therapy for three months.
But a funny thing happened when I went for my first therapy session. My physical therapist, who asked me a few simple questions and made me do some stretches, determined within minutes that I didn't have a pinched nerve after all -- I had, in fact, a condition called bursitis. I'd heard of bursitis before, in professional sports injury reports in the news, but it had never occurred to me that I might have it. But the more research I did, the more I think my physical therapist is right.
Sometimes doctors are right, and sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes, the Internet can help, and sometimes, it can't. I wish I knew the lesson here, but I don't. For every doctor who thinks it's a bad idea for a patient to use the Internet as medical resource, there's another who disagrees.
Point: When the Patient is a Googler [Time Magazine]
Counterpoint: Is There a Doctor in the Mouse? [Salon]
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3 comments:
great to see you blogging again. inspires me to start updating mine!
i can relate to what you're writing about. i still really appreciate doctors, but it is sometimes good to get several opinions.
Maybe Scott Haig's article is more a rail against a certain personality type, the person who would (in the absence of Google) be poring over medical texts and looking for ways to one-up their doctor anyway.
When my sister was small, she suffered a series of seizures, ultimately diagnosed as rolandic epilepsy. The first episode shook my parents to the core, and in the early days when they were still in the dark, they were able to glean from the web useful information that helped them cope and ask the right questions. There must be a million stories like this...on the balance of things, knowledge has got to be better than ignorance.
On the lighter side, have you seen Nanni Moretti's movie "Caro Diario"? The third part is a funny bit about how doctors don't listen.
Michelle, I agree that Scott Haig's frustrations weren't the result of a Googling patient per se, but one who was simply "suspicious and distrustful". If that's truly the case, the Time article's title is misleading.
Chris, I really appreciate doctors as well, and honestly, I trust most doctors more than my own ability to parse the overwhelming (and sometimes contradictory) information on the Web.
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