Why You Shouldn't Self-Diagnose On The Internet

When faced with a possible ailment, do you ever scour the internet for a diagnosis before referring to your doctor? And by that point, your symptoms have snowballed into a full blown self-diagnosis of cancer that not even your doctor can treat? If so, you might be a cyberchondriac...

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[fae]

I always google my symptoms and end up crying on the toilet

[mayankparmar]

Many times I searched my symptoms and it's always ends up with cancer LoL

[ArielBojorquez]

“Left arm starts tingling “
Me: Mom, it’s happening start the car.

[randysmith]

I don’t even have to google my symptoms to have panic attacks about my health

[michaelmxmo]

example a: its 2am and i am convinced i have a brain tumor 

[laurend.]

Ok, this is so serious. I've been googling stuff about this tiny bump on my eye all day and I ended up going from pink eye to corneal ulcers. I actually began to CRY. I began thinking so much about all the things that could be wrong with me that I started thinking I didn't want to leave the house. THE WORLD IS A GIANT BALL OF THINGS THAT WILL KILL YOU.

[lunagaulem]

I remember that one time I had a cold and every time I blew my nose, some blood would come out. I googled it and google diagnose me with nose cancer. Out of paranoia, I went to the doctor the next day and they ended up saying that I was fine and my nose was just dry from the humid environment. Lesson learned ._.

[wilhufftarkin]

My doctor always say that it's stupid to worry about one particular disease because there are so many diseases that when you get one that could actually kill you, it could be a completely different disease you didn't even know about. That doesn't sound reassuring at first but that kinda makes sense and actually helped me. Why worrying if you can't control it anyway. Imagine you're 90 and realize you didn't enjoy your life because you constantly worried about something that didn't exist.

[JayCo-]

Three years ago I made the terrible mistake of googling my symptoms and convinced myself that I had terminal cancer. I spent the next few days trying to find information that would tell me that I'm wrong, but nope... all the additional (mis)information did was make my anxiety MUCH worse. Finally I went to a doctor, who told me that I was fine, but I was certain that he was wrong. Only when my symptoms disappeared did I accept that my self-diagnosis was wrong. I never worried about symptoms of anything really until I had children and concluded that they and my wife would suffer without their father and husband. I feel for anyone who's gone through this, because the anxiety that people like us get, is debilitating.

[AImighty]

I can 100% back this video up. Googling my symptoms literally supercharged my anxiety and made it worse. I can’t tell you how many times googling my symptoms made me rush to urgent care or ER, only to be told time after time that I’m okay.

[kinggrizzly]

Me: has slight cough

Google: symptoms may include instant death

[wingsofpages]

I am in Depression now cause of online searching my symptoms

[jodileah]

i had this little lump in the side of my nostril and i googled it and it told me i had cancer and i cried for days and the next day it went lmao.

[papatoast]

I stopped my self diagnosing process when I diagnosed myself with bipolar disorder, ADHD, OCD, schizophrenia, nystagmus, hyper sexuality and I started thinking that I had cancer and then I came across this video

[openminded]

Nursing students are guilty of doing this to themselves when going through textbooks, I'm sure med students are the same.

Don't self diagnose!

A line from years back: 'Hairdressers go to other hairdressers to get their hair cut.'

That way they get another point of view from a professional.

[SophiesThoughts]

I actually had a serious panic attack a few months back about sudden marks on my chest. When i googled it, it was immediately just results like

YOU COULD HAVE BREAST CANCER.

Obviously that made me really anxious. Turns out i just have a little bit of harmless sun damage. Son of a bitch.

[Einar]

I googled my symptoms on English a few weeks ago, and the two options i got was that i either have HIV or cancer.. When i googled them on Norwegian, where we don't have many private clinics, and no big company really profits off my illness, the result was that i could be almost completely certain it was nothing and that the symptoms would disappear in a few days.. which they did..

[oneezmoneysniper]

Me: Clumsiness
Doc: lack of sleep
Google: *ALS*

[MsMarmima]

I did this just now. I think I might be having a heart attack or severe food poisoning. I'm scared to go to sleep! But I also know that this is a thing, so I'm hoping watching videos like this will calm me down enough to stop freaking out. I definitely don't tolerate uncertainty well :/

[noticks]

Me: Hot feet and hands
Google: Cancer.