The whole family was in Destin, FL last week for Spring Break, and about midway through the week I got a crushing headache. Not your run of the mill tension headache, but a pretty localized splitter that literally shut me down in a dark room for the whole night. It subsided a bit by the next day, but two days later it was still there.
Being the inner nerd that I am, the first thing I did was fire up my laptop and consult Google. Not to go into too much detail, but I could easily describe where the pain was, and Google returned a TON of information from various health and medical sites. To summarize what I was led to believe by Dr. Google, my diagnosis was one of the following:
1. A benign (yet severe) tension headache brought on by an increase in blood pressure or stress or sinus condition...blah, blah, blah. Take some Ibuprofen and ride it out.
or
2. A life-threatening condition that requires immediate emergency attention, otherwise your head will explode with a 100% chance of death.
Needless to say, I went with diagnosis #1 and I'm still alive and kicking. Turns out it was a nasty sinus infection, according to my family doctor.
It made me wonder though - how many people today consult Google instead of a doctor when they have a problem, and then show up at their doctor or E.R. convinced that they have some malady based on a self-diagnosis via the Internet.
God, I would hate being a doctor in the information age.
