here's a phenomenon within Wikipedia where if you repeatedly click the first link of each article you land on, you will eventually land up on the page titled 'Philosophy'. A similar quirk occurs on many medical websites. If you keep following links, you will eventually land on a page titled 'You are about to die of a serious illness and/or obscure tropical disease (and/or cancer)'. En masse, we flock to the internet for medical guidance, often panicking and the absurd possibilities hypothetically presented to us. The problem is that while medical websites provide us with a wealth of often very accurate information, they have very little ability to tailor it to their reader. So, as soon as they mention, say, Guinea Worm Disease in relation to your symptoms, it's hard to dispel the thought that you're the one person in 1,000 people who has it. It's a bit like a terrible, anxiety-inducing version of the national lottery. The rise in cases of 'cyberchondria', where patients give themselves an exaggerated self-diagnosis using the internet and end up wasting GPs time as a result, is having a major impact on the NHS. Experts from King's and Imperial College London warned today that even if only 5pc of outpatient appointments were linked to health anxiety, that would cost the NHS in the region of £420million every year. Surely, it can't be that bad, I felt when I read the news this morning. Seeing myself as an eminently sensible person who also happens to be feeling a bit rough, I set myself the task of self-diagnosing my ailments on the internet to see where it might take me... #1: My poor toe I wouldn't have complained about it on an ordinary day. After all, if Piers Morgan can present Good Morning Britain with three broken ribs, I can sit at a desk with a throbbing toe. But it hurts. Oh how it hurts. So I turned to the internet. I google 'My toe hurts.' Within thirty three words I’m staring at the words “fungal infections” and feeling a deep sense of unease. I am then confronted by a list of foot conditions, from bunions to gout. I haven’t been dining out on banquets of turkey legs in the Henrician Tudor court lately so I keep scrolling. As I’m dealing with a swollen toe, the one that most fits my issue is ‘swollen feet’. Given I’m a man (and what a man – did you hear I came into work with a stubbed toe?) I feel confident in ruling out pregnancy complications, but the rest of the diagnoses for swollen feet seem perilously plausible. Option 7 is particularly grisly. The words "heart, liver or kidney disease" jump out at me as if written in neon. I learn that “Inadequate albumin production can lead to fluid leakage”. I don’t know what albumin production is but I do know that I emitted a fluid leakage upon reading the words “heart, liver or kidney disease” and am now overtly preoccupied by the words “heart failure”. Presumably the leakage is albumin, and I am about to suffer from heart failure. I’ll be grateful if I even make it to the GP’s office. Conclusion: I have heart failure. #2: A right headache I google ‘I have a headache’. There are few options to deal with, including the National Headache Foundation. I click on their website and see a chart of different types of headache. “Coffee-withdrawal symptoms” seems the most plausible, given that I’ve cut down to six a day, I’m only on my fourth and it’s already 10am. I read the words “Treat by terminating” and click away in fright. The fact the sentence finishes “caffeine consumption in extreme cases” does nothing to temper my fear that the National Headache Foundation wants me dead. I return to google and the second site I land on tells me there are 150 different types of headache before listing about six. I become convinced that the probability of my headache happening to fall into their list of 6 out of 150 is negligible, so I search elsewhere and find that that headaches can be a symptom of brain tumour. I'm still none the wiser about which of the 150 it is and decide I'm better off asking my GP. Conclusion: it's not a hangover, it's probably a brain tumour. Best to check. #3: I just can't stomach it All this internet searching has got me feeling queasy. I search "My belly hurts" and am confronted by a range of worrisome abdominal ailments. I cycle through them, recognising some of the symptoms but not others, and continue to leaf through more pages until I find one that feels right. One line in the summary of Appendicitis jumps out at me. “We can live without it, without apparent consequences.” I can really relate to this. I have been living without appendicitis without apparent consequences - as far as aware, all my life. Perhaps that means I have appendicitis. Conclusion: I have appendicitis. #4: A pain in the neck While searching around about how best to treat my headache I click on a link within the site and land on a page about whiplash and neck strain. “Initially, it’s possible you may have no obvious symptoms” it reads. This really concerns me. I am showing no obvious symptoms. By this point I am around 50pc certain I have whiplash though I can’t remember the incident that led to it, probably because it gave me a concussion. Conclusion: I have whiplash, and quite possibly concussion. I've drawn up such an impressive list of diagnoses, I'm struggling to remember them all (so I google amnesia immediately). Before logging off for the day, I decide to check out if all of my various diagnoses are linked. I type all of my combined symptoms into an online 'symptom checker' and am provided with an overall diagnosis of ten conditions, from the gastrointestinal to the rheumatic. I even have something called Whipworm; a worm lodged in my large intestine. The disclaimer above the results says "You may be alarmed by some of the suggested diagnoses" and it's safe to say that's something of an understatement. "Speak to your doctor before reaching any conclusions", it goes on to warn. Oh, I will. Source
