Web surfing to a healthier body

I was out sick a couple of days last week — my annual February bout of something unpleasant — and that led, as it always does, to getting sucked down the rabbit hole of the Internet.

Fortunately, I was able to get back into the real world just before my brain exploded.

The Internet is, of course, a marvelous thing in many respects. I can be typing merrily along on my computer when a cloud of doubt crosses my mind: “Did that really happen that year?” or “How do you spell ‘metamorphosis?’” A quick trip to Googleland, and I’ve got the answer without breaking stride. Very cool.

The problem is, information runs amok. Say what you want about newspapers, but we have always tried to accomplish one thing — herding fact and opinion into separate corrals. The lines blur sometimes, but it’s usually pretty clear when something is an editorial (as with one of these columns) or a news story (supposedly factual).

True, you can get into wonderful existential arguments about such things. How do I know there is really an Egypt, for instance, since I’ve never actually been there? How do I know the pyramids aren’t trick photography?

I don’t, but some things you have to take on faith. On the Internet, everybody seems to know what they’re talking about, and they’ve all got a source list as long as your screen. Never mind that some of them are crazy.

Anyway, I was bored, so I started looking up the symptoms I had online and found myself not on medical sites, but medical chat rooms. I recommend these highly if you ever want to scare yourself half to death.

Based on what I read, I could have had the flu, or bronchitis. I could also have had lung cancer, asthma, yellow fever or (I’m not making this up) bubonic plague. Maybe I should have gone for the latter as a sure-fire way to get a quick appointment with my family doctor or physician’s treatment center: “Hi. I’m afraid I may have a little touch of bubonic plague — you know, the Black Death? Any chance I could get in to see somebody?”

Or maybe not such a good idea, come to think of it. I’ll bet the parking lot would be empty when I got there, though.

I know that it bugs some doctors that we patients do a lot of outside research these days. It’s a turf thing with them. Nevertheless, in some cases, I believe it actually helps by answering some basic questions that the patients would otherwise be asking them, cutting into the 4.5 minutes they’ve been allotted for each visitation. The rub, once again, is information gone wild.

Someone posted a set of symptoms similar to mine on one chat line, and the responses ranged from “Get to the emergency room immediately!” to “Don’t worry, it’s probably just stress related,” to “I’ll pray for you.”

There are, of course, actual medically approved Internet sites, but they tend to be way too much work if you happen to be sick. On one, WebMD, you click on the part of your body that seems to be misbehaving, then conjure up a list of what seem to be several hundred symptoms.

My favorite WebMD symptom is “Loss of height.” I realize that people tend to shrink as they get older, but this makes it sound like something sudden (“Doc, I was 6-2 when I went to bed and 5-9 when I woke up!”)

I finally did get to my doctor and told him some of what I had learned on the Internet, and he just looked at me as if I had suddenly broken out into a rap song.

“We’ll need to run some tests,” he said.

Which reminded me of the one good thing about Internet medicine — no bill.