I bet many have had this kind of thing happen when reading up on the net ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/technology/internet/25symptoms.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/25/technology/internet/25symptoms.html
Extract from Three Men In a Boat which was written 1889."I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch—hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into—some fearful, devastating scourge, I know—and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever—read the symptoms—discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it—wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance—found, as I expected, that I had that too,—began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically—read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight... I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid’s knee.”
When I was about 14, I read about an article about Stephen Hawking and his ALS which described the early symptoms as facial tics and pins and needles in your fingertips. So, of course, the next day I started to experience them, convinced that I'd be wheelchair bound by the time I took my A-levels. I also thought I had CJD because I forgot my homework now and again.
schizophrenia and diabetes were my cyberchrondriac indulgences at one point
I remember when my old doctor wanted me on Advair, and I googled it. I found all kinds of message boards that were basically support groups for people whose lives has been ruined by Advair. I always knew it was considered a steroid with a lot of bad side-effects, but chronic thrush? Ick.
Hah, why, were you spontaneously hallucinating and very, very thirsty?
I hope you let him know that he was rumbled."When I got there the doctor had a load of papers in front of him which he was leafing through which I immediately recognised as print outs of some of the websites I had already visited."