Everyone knows you shouldn't diagnose yourself on the internet. But everyone does it anyway. Well, not everyone, but a lot of women I know have done it, and I am a chronic self-diagnoser. My husband, and a few other husbands I've come across, don't understand why a woman would needlessly freak herself out by googling her symptoms.
Well, I thought I might shed some light on the subject for those who don't get it.
Here's a typical scenario:
1. Woman develops a symptom, usually something a little out of the ordinary. Like, say, an odd twitch or pain in her arm. She doesn't remember hurting or over-working her arm at any time. So this mysterious symptom is unexplainawayable. She tries to ignore it for a bit, but if it gets worse, the need to know just what it might be grows stronger until it's almost overwhelming.
2. Woman goes through what she has heard or experienced to explain it away. She resists checking Google because she knows Google will tell her that she's going to die a painful death. So, she racks her brain for other sources of info. Family, friends, that Oprah episode last week. Does cancer start this way? A motor neuron disease? The problem is she only comes up with more questions, not answers.
3. Woman starts to get panicky, but since she has gone down this road before, she doesn't want to annoy her doctor or her significant other for something that's probably nothing. Unless it isn't. Her mind goes back to that Oprah episode where Dr. Oz emphasized the need for self-advocacy and quick action when something is wrong. Is this one of those times? Or is she being an idiot? Where will she find peace of mind? Where can she find information? She needs something anonymous, something that won't mock her. She needs the internet.
4. Finally, after a sleepless night, trying to forget about it, she decides she has to know the worst. She sneaks out of bed, goes downstairs, and flips open her laptop. She types in a variety of search words and clicks on the scariest results first. To rule them out of course.
5. After about 45 seconds she's convinced she has necrotic facitis and she's going to die in 48 hours or less. She spends about 5 minutes planning her funeral and imagining her last moments, and then attempts to calm down.
6. It takes a while, but eventually reason returns and often she won't even need to discuss it with anyone else. She reads the scary information again, this time more carefully, and realises she only has 1 of about 10 symptoms for the scary disease. And that one isn't even quite right. Then she remembers she was carrying her daughter around a lot more than usual yesterday and that's probably what it was. She sneaks upstairs and goes to bed, her husband and her doctor none the wiser, and goes to sleep. The end.
Now what's wrong with that? I--I mean
she--didn't bother anyone. Solved my own--I mean
her own problem. Is self-diagonosing really so bad? Should a woman have to do it in secret? Just sayin' is all.
On a completely different note, my artfire item of the day comes from http://YarnChick.artfire.com and isn't it adorable? I can't decide if I want it for Clara or myself:
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