Don’t Google My Health
Remember how your parents used to say “don’t believe everything you hear?”. I doubt they told you as a kid not to believe everything you see with your own two eyes. Today we see false information all over the internet, or even true information but with false interpretation.
Einstein once said “The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know.” Yup! I could see that, rather quickly actually. The internet is a false pretence that gives us the illusion of thinking we know something at the click of a button. But we are not computers, interpreting the internet is a science in itself and you can’t believe everything you read or see with those own two eyes.
I always think back to a time when I had brought a stranger I met at a bar back to my apartment, and failed to have protected intercourse. I started thinking what if I had Gonorrhoea, or Syphilis, or Herpes? Well every body gets the herpes right? But what about the main one, the big boy, HIV! That was the lifelong, untreatable illness that would send me off a cliff!
I know this is pretty sensitive stuff, but I am telling you this because of how real it was.
Oh, did I mention I was in pharmacy school? I was learning about STDs and how to treat them, seeing pictures of what they caused, and understanding the importance of safe sex. Afterwards, I did the worst thing I could have possibly done, I learned! But not from class, no class was just the gateway drug that got me researching all over the internet! 1st symptom, fatigue (uhhhh yes but like who isn’t tired these days), 2nd symptom, lack of sleep (well yeah but I’m in grad school), 3rd symptom, pain in armpits (okay now I’m starting to get personally offended), 4th symptom, flu like symptoms within two to six weeks after exposure (Oh wait my throat does feel a little scratchy, and actually I feel all around achy too). Days went by where I felt like I couldn’t even look my own classmates in the face to have conversation because I was so caught up on the idea that I might have a severe, immune illness.
I kept reading on the internet about other signs and symptoms. One of them a rash, sure enough I formed one! right under my armpits on both sides. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at a girl or even have sexual thoughts for a whole 20 days. Thats like equivalent to a politician going 20 days without saying they’re a politician. I thought I was being cautious looking up all the symptoms to rule out my ignorance, when in truth, I let the internet get the best of me. I was in a depression.
I couldn’t bring myself to go get tested because I couldn’t bare the truth. What if I did have HIV or some severe illness? You wouldn’t believe it, we had volunteer patients from a clinic nearby come in and talk about HIV. It was perfect timing too, I sat there and heard one of them say “yeah i’m pretty pessimistic, there were some days where my CD4 + count was below 200 and I just looked up and said please take me, but I’m a Capricorn so ya know”, I thought to myself, wait I’m also a Capricorn (as if it was a predisposing factor). I had hit rock bottom, and was sitting there drowning for 3 months.
Eventually, I went and got tested. The practitioner working was a PA, she was angelic. She told me “listen to me, I worked at U Mass Med for 7 years and I had students coming to me with the same concerns all the time! Don’t believe everything you read on the internet, as a pharmacy student you should know that!”. Surely enough the labs came back negative (even months to years later), blessed to be anchored out of the dark waters and brought back to what I had taken for granted, my health.
The moral of the story is information can be dangerous at the source. Most people will believe anything they read on the internet, and medicine is not a topic that is to be interpreted by the general public, but rather by an expert. Your mind is so much more powerful then you know, and psychosomatic symptoms are extremely common among those who “think” they may have an illness. I think we see this a lot today. Forget about knowing more, rather its about knowing what is true!
Just remember, you can’t fear what you can trust. I trust my healthcare providers, but I don’t trust the internet! Do you?
