DR. DOOM
That’s you diagnosing yourself on Google.
What is it with hospitals and clinics that they don’t share the test results with you? You have just had an MRI or ECG and the assistant or nurse has your result in their hands but won’t tell you because it has to be given to the doctor first. Really. Here your BP is spiking with the suspense of it all, the whole staff knows how good or bad the outcome is except you.
Predictably, the doctor has gone for lunch and he won’t be back till 4 pm so you do what all mature and sensible adults do. You go berserk on Google typing in your symptoms. By 2.30 pm, you are pretty much sure that you have spondylosis, colitis, and a possible ulcer. The more you read the longer the list of what ails you.
Twenty minutes later, you add migraine, infection in the sinus cavities, and rheumatism to the list. It is also on the cards that you have a frozen shoulder and your neck might need surgery. As the clock strikes 3.30 you are abs certain you have kidney issues, liver issues, and angina pectoris.
The thing with Google medicine is you cannot get enough of it. For sheer masochism, it is hard to beat. The more you read, the more miserable you are and the more miserable you are the more you read. Oh, vertigo is a given and you have a sneaky feeling that you have neuropathy and plantar fasciitis with an outside chance of being afflicted with gout and tendinitis.
At last, it is 4 pm but no sign of the doctor. He is stuck in traffic. So you begin to climb walls in frustration. The nurse holding your file and future in her hands has walked past you seven times without giving you even an itty-bitty clue. Even the ward boy knows your fate and you think, maybe, if I bribe him, he can peek and tell me.
Just then doctor arrives with that impassive poker face and by now you are a blabbering, gibbering idiot, who is convinced he has diabetes, sepsis, and cervical tensions in the C3. C4, and C5 vertebrae.
Your name is called and you totter in your abs certain that it is curtains and have you noticed the doctors never look up, they are reading your file, making those hmmmm type sounds, turning the pages while you are thinking why don’t I just kill myself and then he looks up and says, nothing wrong, all good, just lose a little weight. And the nurse grins.
