Web MDon't

A couple of posts back, you'll see that I have some health issues that are culminating in surgery tomorrow morning. Looking forward to getting rid of the things that are causing me pain; not looking forward to the experience itself.

I'm not particularly scared about the procedure. Not my first rodeo. But foolishly I have been researching my condition on a couple of medical websites, and apparently I am facing certain infection, maiming, and probably death.

Don't get me wrong, I think these resources can be very helpful for looking up the spelling of a disease or the identity of a random pill. But in an attempt to cover all possible diagnoses and outcomes, these places are detrimental to hypochondriacs such as myself. It is perversely easy to turn a simple head cold into a brain tumor.

The best thing to do is to avoid perusing this information altogether, or at least talk with the doctor before jumping to conclusions. I imagine that doctors loathe these websites, since patients now have enough information to self-diagnose and then debate it with their physician. I bet they long for the days when the only widely-available healthcare information was what we learned from Johnny Gage and Dr. Brackett on "Emergency".

And while we're on the subject of televised health, how about those pharmaceutical commercials? Dry eyes? Restless legs? We've got a pill for that. Your job is to now go to your doctor and demand that they write you a prescription for it, whether you need it or not.

The very best part about these ads is the litany of potential side effects. I love how the voice-over runs through the gamut of disastrous consequences like an auctioneer. Concurrent with this list of maladies are scenes of happy, healthy people - it's a tad disconcerting to hear someone talking about paralysis while showing a clip of a grandma playing outside with the kids. And by the way, I think most men who have an erection for four hours or more would call the newspaper, not the doctor.

Ah, the information age. Ya gotta love it. That is, unless it gives you halitosis, kidney failure, blindness, eczema or hemorrhagic fever.