Not feeling well? Have a strange symptom or two? Too busy to go to a real doctor? Well, don’t worry, friend, because the Internet can make you feel all better! Right before it makes you feel like tearfully giving away your cats and writing out your last will and testament. Just follow this easy How-To and you’ll be back on your feet and/or curled into a ball of depression in no time!
STEP ONE: FIND A MEDICAL WEBSITE
The Internet is full of websites that offer helpful medical advice. The best ones are affiliated with actual hospitals and have names like “MayoClinic.org.” The worst ones are affiliated with Eastern European Viagra pushers and have names like “Get-A-Stiffy.net.” Choose wisely or you may suddenly find yourself exchanging heated emails with a Slovakian businessman named Juraj who will feed your family to feral pigs if you don’t pay him $50 in shipping costs. And honestly, the last thing you need in your condition is another headache.
STEP TWO: ENTER YOUR SYMPTOMS
Once on the website, type your main symptom into the Search box. Be as specific as possible. Past experience has shown that entering things like “wrinkly knees” “boogie fever” or “really feel like hitting a blonde cheerleader with a beer bottle” can yield somewhat unsatisfactory results. Also, be sure to use proper terms for your body parts. Only real doctors with offices and parking garages know how to find your “swollen Chumbawumbas” and “inflamed Devil Danglers.” That’s why they get a $10 co-pay.
STEP THREE: LEARN THAT YOU’RE DYING
Based on your symptoms, the medical website will generate relevant information that tells you you’ll soon be dead. For example, when I recently entered the search terms “mosquito bite,” I discovered that I have Dengue Fever and/or Malaria and just three weeks to live. Surprise! Then, when I changed it to “ant bite,” I learned that I’m also suffering from Sepsis and a severe case of Dementia. Wow! The website had lots of other facts about my condition, but at that point I was crying too hard to read the screen, so I typed in “temporary blindness” and found out that I’m also dying from a massive eyeball tumor. Thanks, Internet!
STEP FOUR: BURN YOUR BRIDGES
Once you know that you have only a few days left to live, it’s important to tie up loose ends and leave this world with a bang. So call your mother-in-law and finally tell her that she has the looks and personality of a young Ike Turner. Make sure your neighbor knows that her husband is sleeping with the stoned pool boy. Sign up for Netflix. And if you’ve always dreamed of hot-wiring a Porsche 911 and crashing it into suburban BestBuy, well, now’s your chance, sicko! Do not go gentle into that good night!
STEP FIVE: MAKE AMENDS
Unfortunately, there are a few downsides to diagnosing yourself on the Internet. Downsides like the 100% chance that you’ll be absolutely wrong. Downsides like not actually dying of Dengue Fever and/or Malaria and/or a massive eye tumor. Which, of course, would have been really nice to know before I dressed like a pirate hooker and laced the PTA’s coffee with LSD last week. Really, really nice to know. Sooo nice to know. Therefore, I would now like to apologize to the ladies, their custodial staff, the local fire department and the Central Texas K-9 Unit and inform them that they can all stop being so upset. My bug bite should completely heal in time for me to join the court-mandated chain gang.
STEP 6: RECUPERATE
Any medical professional will tell you that using the Internet to find out you’re dying, then not dying, then possibly going to jail for poisoning the PTA can be very stressful. That’s why it’s important to get rest, drink a lot of fluids and not go to work or clean the house for at least two weeks after your self-diagnosis. Massive quantities of self-pity is also advised. Should symptoms persist, be sure to see a doctor.
Just not the jackass one who lives in your laptop.
Between websites with medical advice and all the shows on TLC and Discovery, there are many and varied ways to completely freak yourself out. I’m glad you came out on the other side. And didn’t die from malaria.
Been googling, have we?
You’d think after the 4th time in the pokey for poisoning my neighbor’s annoying dog, ramming my car through the local councilman’s office, and showing up to my mommy and me group with a fifth of Jack and telling them where they can all stick it, I’d learn that Web MD is probably not correct in their diagnosis of my symptoms as Sleeping Sickness.
I went to WebMD last week and entered my symptoms. They were headache and smashing headache. The internets told me I was dying. And then it told me I had a headache.
Never again internets. Never again.
Is there room for me on your pity pot (where it never ever rains) for me? The internet just told me that medication I’m taking to ensure good bone growth has actually given me a brain tumor.
Giggling so HARD in the dark quiet here.
It’s 11:30 and everyone is sleeping BUT oh sweet lord how I love this:
“So call your mother-in-law and finally tell her that she has the looks and personality of a young Ike Turner.”
Teeheehee, Thank you, Wendi Aarons.
How do you know what my mother-in-law looks like? It’s like you’re psychic.
WebMD diagnosed rabies…seems a logical conclusion. Thank you Wendi, most excellent post.
In Africa we have sangomas (witch doctors). They can cure anything from HIV/AIDS to broken relationships.
Want that old flame back, even though it’s been 30 years? Dr [insert name here] uses mirror under water to find him and make him come back to you, leaving behind his loving wife and children!
Dr [insert name here] will also lengthen & strengthen your male parts and make your female parts tight like it was never pricked!
Best of all is there’s one on every street corner!
(And they all seem to use the same guy to print their pamphlets, so no matter what the good doctor’s name, the colours, typography, typeset and list of miracles will always be the same, although pictures may vary )
*shudder*
Hmmm….feeding my family to feral pigs. Can I pick which family members?
I made the mistake of doing the same when I was not feeling so well a while back. According to what I found I should be dead and/or blind now. I just checked my pulse and everything seems to be fine so far.
According to WebMD my husband is pregnant
I am so relieved to finally understand what that co-pay is for! This completely alleviates any resentment I feel about forking it over. As always Wendi, your insight is life changing.
Could I get Juraj’s contact info?
You missed a step: Ask Twitter. Twitter knows best. Because of Twitter I once thought I had a thyroid problem and ask my doctor to test me because I really had a thyroid problem.
I didn’t.
oh boy! this is stellar advice. And if you ARE diagnosed with something scary by a real doctor, don’t google treatments for it!! You’ll likely find the best treatment is leaching…or suicide.
Love it. Web MD is the best! Pregnancy, too bad he’s a male…coronary artery disease, yep, just the flu… shortness of breath caused by heart attack, nope just coming up 150 yards the back side of the mountain and your lungs on fire because you don’t excercize that excessively like you should….like I said, Web MC is the best!
Was there a live feed from last week’s PTA meeting? I’d like to see the replay.
My ex (still friends) called me over the weekend to google some antibiotics he’d been given. I said, you should know you probably have an STD. This for for treating syphilis, chlamydia, and a range of other STDs. Is there something you wanted to tell me?” (As I googled STD symptoms and incubation times)
He said, “Oh no, they just brought me a box full of bottles of it for my men.”
Web MD is always good for a laugh and I recommend it for friends. My sore throat was most definitely the Black Plague as you’ve seen in all of the papers, right? And that non-itchy rash that my son has must be toxic shock syndrom because of his excessive use of tampons. I don’t know how many times it has alerted me to call an ambulance because, in reality, I had pulled a muscle or something. And my doctor enjoyed it when I told her that I had saved her the diagnostic process, that I had Black Plague, and simply needed to be treated. Apparently, for those of you wondering, since it was a bacterial sort of plague, 10 days of augmentin took care of it. Who knew?!
Totally forwarding this to my friend who always checks her symptoms on the Internet. And who is a PSYCHOTIC animal 99% of the time. Hmmmm, connection?
Oh my gawd, I’m dying.
Who needs health insurance when one has the internet AND Wendi!!
I’ve been worried about my swollen Chumbawumbas for a long time. This post has NOT helped.
Thanks, Wendi.
Sage advice as always.
a few weeks ago I googled my shakiness, nausea, headaches and found out, SURPRISE. PREGNANT.
i was convinced. my fiance was not. i begged him to go to the dollar store (only business in town) to buy a pregnancy test because WHAT WOULD THE TOWN THINK OF ME IF I BOUGHT ONE and told him I HAD GOOGLED IT.
turns out it was just a strong cup of coffee.
I told my EX mother-in-law that she resembled a young Ike Turner WWAAAYYYYY before the internet told me I was dying.
Now that I know I’ll be ok, I can skip step 5 and don’t have to make ammends with her. WOO HOO!
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Cannot. Stop. Laughing. Or crying, now that I’ve looked up “sensitive chichen itzas.” I’m a goner.
According to WebMD I’ve been dead for 2 weeks.
I have nothing to respond with that could match the hilarity of this one. I am so pissed I’m late to the party with this. I’m going to tweet it anyway.
Honestly, if we get right down to it, it’s the Devil Danglers who should get the blame. A few hundred years ago, it was all CONQUERING and DISEASE SPREADING and HEY-HO, INDIGENOUS PEOPLES! I mean, I’m not _positive_ I can blame men for mosquito bites, but I’m willing to go out on a limb and try.
(There. I just gave WebMD its next home-page slideshow topic. Really, I should not be giving this stuff up for free.)