I’m drawn to this topic after spending the past hour on Google and webMD trying to determine what life-threatening sickness. Don’t lie; we’re all guilty of this. Falling into the trap of self-diagnosis. Yes, with the advent of the Internet, we were provided with a terrific resource to find out just about anything you want with the click of a mouse. And for some that becomes a day glued to your screen looking at videos about rock climbing and for others, fascinated by the endless supply of sloth photos. Regardless of your interests, there’s something out there for you. And while this is often a very helpful resource, it can also prove very detrimental to your sanity.
I can attest to the evils of Google searches, particularly WebMD, for fueling my hypochondria. On any given day, I could come up with a myriad of diseases or health problems that I am afflicted with. Some of them seemingly mundane and others seriously life threatening. The underlying fact is I am convinced that I must have all of them, or at LEAST one of them. I could spend days talking about all the things that I could potentially be suffering from, within the past week. But that would take too much time and more importantly, I don’t have any legitimate reason to think that I actually have one or any of them. Merely the “feeling” that something is slightly off with my body. So I must be sick with something. So there I go, opening up two tabs, WebMD and Google. You’ll notice that I directly go to WebMD, like it’s some true authority on my apparent ailment and using Google search as a second opinion.
So here I am typing my “symptoms” into the symptom checker and as I see the list I start thinking REALLY hard if I could have any of them and eventually I’m poking myself so I click the“tenderness” option (or any other comparable scenarios where I’m actually deliberately inflicting the pain to create another symptom.) Then I start Googling my symptoms and searching all the diseases that WebMD has produced related to my apparent symptoms. Pretty soon I’ve spent, or shall I say wasted, hours of my day thinking my normal healthy life, as I knew it is over. Then the anxiety kicks in and here I am just thinking. Which I think is one of the most dangerous things someone can do ever. I mean yes, people come up with great thoughts in those moments of solitude. But your own mind can also be the most dangerous place you can imagine.
So back to why I decided on this topic for this week, today I see this rash on my face and have procured a list of 20 potential diseases it could potentially be. In a mere ten minutes. I mean, I guess you should give me some credit for the sheer swiftness with which I’ve determined how sick I must be? But hey, guess what? The reality is, my real problem today is likely just hives or acne, if there is in fact anything actually wrong with me. And guess what? What is one of the causes of both hives and acne? Stress. Crazy right? Maaaaayybbeee the stress from my hypochondria has caused this affliction of hives/acne. But wait, I need to stop there, before I diagnose myself with acne and then start to come up with my other“symptoms”. Next thing you know, I’ll have jumped to determining that I have Chron’s disease or Ulcerative Colitis because I took Accutane. And of course that has to be why my acne is back and I *now* also have pain in my stomach. And well of course I’d be the rare case with the side effect, because my mom hated that I took the medicine. Should have listened to mom I guess?
But honestly, I think what all of us hypochondriacs are really stricken with is the terrible malady of stress and worry. And well it’s self-inflicted. We get all worried about simple things and then start to think that our body feels weird, and so there MUST be something wrong with us. That itch could NOT be normal! Or maybe it is. Because maybe it’s just the fact that it is starting to get cold and your skin is dry. Try some lotion and maybe an oatmeal bath before you decide you have chicken pox. Even though you’ve already had it and vividly remember running around your living room when you were 7, naked and covered from head to toe in little red bumps. And even if you don’t actually remember it, there is photographic evidence.
The thing really is that this hypochondria stems from our other worries in life. So I am living in Beijing now. Originally doing the thing that 90% of the expats do, teaching English. Well after a year of that glamorous life, I wanted a change of pace, but I also wanted to stay in China. So as luck may have it I randomly was told about a job and started a week later. Incredibly quick turnover for a decent paying, good, “real person”job. So I was happy, enjoying my life, excited to stay in Beijing for even a little bit longer since I wasn’t quite ready to close this Asian adventure chapter in my life. But with this great luck and excitement, there was this sense of apprehension, lurking in the shadows. All of the sudden I was so nervous, I was worrying about the medical I would need to pass in order to get my visa. Even though in the grand scheme of things my lifestyle isn’t enough to cause me to fail a standard medical.
So here I was, nervously awaiting the results of my physical. And hey, maybe THAT is the reason I had the hives from earlier. You know that worry and subsequent stress? (Side note: I have this talent for jumping to conclusions, way too easily. One thing happens and all of the sudden I am planning my day fifty years down the road. Which does not help to alleviate stress. At all.) So, in this case, I left my physical exam and started planning where I would go, and who I would invite, for my going away dinner. I had already concluded this going away dinner was inevitable because I was obviously going to fail my medical exam. And did I have any valid reason to think I would actually fail this exam? No. But here I was, looking up the phone number for my favorite sushi place and trying to decide who I would want to be at this shin-dig. So there I am deciding if I should invite that friend of a friend, that I don’t know that well when I have absolutely no reason to realistically believe that I will fail. And if I did happen to fail, well the reality is that it would be a GOOD thing to know that I was sick. So that I could get healthy again.
And just as my hives are starting to itch and I’m packing my suitcases in my head, I get the envelope from the doctor. Open it, hands shaking, preparing what I’ll say when I read the unfavorable results. But guess what? NO ABNORMAL FINDINGS. Crazy right? No, not crazy, to normal people. But I’ve grown to expect the worst. It’s like “Hey, things are going TOO great. I’m enjoying my life TOO much. This can’t actually be the case. When is the other shoe going to drop?” This thought is a frequent visitor in my brain. And to a certain degree I think this is a thought that all of us hypochondriacs are afflicted with. We assume there has to be something wrong. But the truth of the matter is that is not the case. It is possible to just be having a good life. Instead of preparing for the seemingly impending doom, just sit back and enjoy it. And my only other recommendation for all you hypochondriacs out there is: DO NOT USE WEBMD. It is a vicious black hole for our sanity.
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