To wish Dr Google could be struck off

Your spot on Bewitched but I do look for my DH hahahaha.

When I was diagnosed after an episode of TGA the doctor told me to Google it to find out more. Good advice to put my mind at rest, but beware of American websites which can come up with some wacky ideas. NHS and UK research websites were the best.

Use recommended NHS sites, or sites such as Cancer Research UK. Nobody makes you click on multiple sites and just like retail sites, some are absolute rubbish.

The internet is here to stay. If you are the sort of person who goes up to random people in the street to ask for advice then you get what you are given. The same applies to internet sites.

Google just makes information readily available. The problem is that many people are not at all selective in finding reliable sources and dismissing unsuitable ones, that's all.

Anyone can post anything on the internet and people will believe it.

Before the internet there were home medical books. with names like the Fireside Doctor . These were just as frightening as Dr Google - and then there were all the people with trivial problems, and not so trivial problems, who didn't consult anything and were always convinced they had cancer so wouldn't see the doctor

My FiL hid symptoms from his GP for several years because he was convinced he had cancer. When he finally came clean and was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, he nearly held a party he was so glad he did not have cancer!

I love Dr Google but you have to be ready to take some of the stuff you find out with a good pinch of salt. I recently saw a gynae specialist and asked if I could just have a hysterectomy because Dr Google suggested that it was simply a case of cutting a little hole, poking around with a glorified crochet hook and hoiking it out. End of gynae problems. I was laughing as I said it. His reply was that he wished more people would be like me and not take Google seriously. It caused him a lot of problems because people believed that they knew what he should do and often told him in no uncertain terms then got upset when he failed to comply. After all an untrained internet search must be more accurate than years of training and decades of experience

I did not peruse google when I was diagnosed with cancer but I had a friend who would read anything and everything and then tell me.
She did not have the medical knowledge to sift the wheat from the chaff, thankfully I do.

I used to be a victim of Dr Google and before that the medical Encyclopaedia. Now I followed some good advice I was given on here, only Google the NHS site!

When I got my diagnosis the first site I went on told me that by the time I was reading that it was out of date!
I now do not google but use a couple of Facebook groups where people are going through the same as me and can give instant advice, especially in a practical way.

We have always been fascinated by our own bodies/health. As MOnica says there were books....
I used the Dictionary of Symptoms, by Joan Gomez until it was in pieces.

I google, with some discretion, and it has served me well. Our family is prone to have weird things which no-one has heard of except Dr G.
Try osteochondroma, branchial cyst
or hyperparathyroidism

A nurse friend told me years ago ‘only look up NHS sites as they are more measured’. I try to stick to that advice but occasionally I don’t. Then I worry. And recheck. Until I feel reassured a bit. Then I think ‘but what if’ and Google again. Until I feel reassured a bit. Rinse & repeat.