Things to keep in mind when Googling

[wintergirl05]

i'm the google queen! haha, my boyfriend and family call me "miss google." i type in one symptom and tell the world i'm certain my death is near. it's awful! worst website to use when you have anxiety!

[rosiela]

This is great :) I have saved as a favourite to read over when I feel particularly anxious.

Thanks!

[anxietygirl06]

OP, thank you so much for this post!! I enjoyed it so much, i even read it to my fiancee'! He chuckled as well  I too have google'd one too many times, and here i am again just KNOWING something is wrong! i loved the part about your track record was 0 and x, because thats mine too! lol. anyhow, thanks again and im really happy there are others out there suffering with the same, and im not the only "different" one!

[FlowerorFoe]

Thank you so much for this post! When I found this and read it I could actually feel my blood pressure dropping! I am so thankful that I found this website. 

[GabbyMomof3]

Thank you for this great post. I'm one of those guilty ones who self diagnose via google and so far from my self prognosis, I don't have much time to live. I can't believe how unbelievable silly I've been basing a small symptom to something serious. I'm definitely laying off the self diagnosing. 

[AshleyNoelLaw]

I find this thread VERY helpful, My family is always jumping down my throat because I'm always goggling my symptoms which in turn leads to a trip to the emergency room or to the doctor.    I think they know me by name now at our local hospital ... I'm considering blocking the medical websites ! Considering lol

[albert916]

Good point on mean and mode/median.  I just realized that and I have stas background.

[adjbridges]

What an awesome post, As I sit here and smile at my last 2 years worth of self Diagnosis I have just realised that I got about hmmmmmmmm. o right out of hmmmmmm well lets say about 500

When I read this I read my life for the last period of 2 years and this is another inspirational post that is gonna help me move forward. You deserve more than a sticky and people like you who take time to post Honest, true, well thought out articles like this are what makes this world seem almost normal again...

Wow - Thanks again as this struck a real chord with me..

Wishing you all the best

[bobbiejo979]

nice post

[bob14323]

Thank you so much! Now, instead of googling, I go here, which helps me more than googling ever did.

[phsmom]

That stuff about "Writhing Bogey Disease" and its "symptom" of having blue eyes made me crack up! I am soooo guilty of Googling, and also trying to decipher "legitimate" medical websites.. I actually did have my husband block my access to them.. sort of makes me feel like the pre-teen whose parents block access to porn sites,  but I know I require it. Thanks again! Appreciate the reality check! 

[racin4r2]

I too am 100% guilty of googling. WebMD and Mayo Clinic, and heck even the CDC get frequented by me. The thing I hate is, while I'm googling, I'm telling myself, I'm only going to make it worse. But I still continue too. I have gotten a tad bit better at not doing it. But so help me, like you said about the news, I hear something, like there is an outbreak of Meningitis, Oh, I totally had it. I looked at symptoms and how to check for it, and as my mom says, I was borrowing trouble. For a whole week I swore I had it! Of course I didn't.  I mean the sites are good for some things, but usually if I go on there for something simple, I see something else, and go look at it, and the cycle starts over again. I will definitely remember this thread if I do, which I'm sure I will google something else at some point. Great thread. Glad to see more people out there have this problem too.

[cabeazer]

i have always feared certain health problems since childhood and got much worse when i had a bad experience giving birth to my twins ..later i calmed down quite a bit but last yr i had a bunch of built up stress and bam one night i woke up and felt stomach pain then all of a sudden out of no where i felt a cold hot sensation all over my body the strangest thing ever!.. then i stared googleing in a state of fear and ended up calling the ambulance 5 times in one week..i got so sick i was twitching and weak and started waking up in the middle of the night with this racing heart and cold hot feeling i googled every symptom i had and the results were awful deadly things for all of them ..well finally i ended up in the hospital with gastritis onset by stress lol i finally tol my self look  you have to stop worrying this is out of your hands i prayed constantly and i finally stopped having the severe sy,ptoms i still feel some anxiety but i can control it now and i no longer wake up with it  i am sure that googleing made my anxiety flare up even worse...do not google in fear worst thing you can possibly do WORST

[oldtimeocd]

so far with google i have cervical cancer,utirine cancer,ovarian cancer,oral cancer,melanomia,and bladder cancer. there is hardly any type symptom you type in that dont come up cancer. its crazy
my husband has forbade me to google thank God but i still sneak 

[MarkV]

I have struggled with Googling for years. It is difficult to avoid as some times it is almost natural how you "fall into it".

Steps -

• Step 1 - Reduce yourself to only look at "quality" sites like Mayo. Don't read message boards from other people as often these non-medically qualified individuals have poor information or inaccurate information/
• Step 2 - Ween yourself off Mayo slowly so that you don't go through reassurance withdrawal. Seriously. Do it.

[rhonab]

This post is awesome. Thanks so much!

[LVMomra]

What a fantastic post!!! Thanks

[perpetualhypochondriac]

Great post.

I usually don't google symptoms because I get too scared.  I never go for the obvious but find myself delving into the deep underbelly of illness.  It's just a bad thing.  The bad thing is, I work in a funeral home.  So I see the *rare* cases all the time.

[determined419]

This used to be me to a T! Especially when I first started taking anxiety meds. I'd google the side effects of said new meds, and find out that heart failure, loss of eyesight, growing 4 extra arms, and having testosterone turn to estrogen, all could  happen to me(minus the last 2 ) I'll still google the crap out of some things, but medical stuff if something I have learned I must stay away from as well!