How To Get Ebola Online.

Put a glove on that router!

I don’t like going to the doctor.

For a while, every time I would go, I would get some sort of low-grade bad news.

Not, “Your test results indicate that you have an aggressive form of cancer.”

More, “It turns out you’re menopausal in your 30s, which means you’ll be hooked up with roller coaster-style emotions, various aches and pains, wild hormonal rushes, hot flashes, and night sweats about 25 years before your friends get them.”

Not, “You have a tragic infection in a particularly crucial organ.”

More, “I think you’re developing more allergies by the year.”

Nothing truly awful, right? Just a steady stream of lame that was neither fatal, nor curable. Kind of like re-runs of Frasier.

So now, rather than head over to the clinic to find out if there’s a medical reason why my arms seem shorter than everyone else’s, or why my nose sounds like a klezmer jam session, I prefer to self-diagnose with the enthusiastic help of the internet.

Before you scoff, I need you to understand that there’s an art to self-diagnosing. It’s like a classic decision tree: you have to consider various options and outcomes, and move through all the data available to you in a linear fashion.

Though there is one caveat: if you’re not good at self-diagnosing, you will always have cancer.

Did you know that nearly every symptom you can come up with is tied to some form of cancer? Google does. And it’s smirking at you.

You don’t actually have cancer, though. You have a headache. Which you know… because that third result makes you go to the ER in a panic.

When you realize it’s not a tumor—through your veil of panicky tears—you experience deep gratitude for your unfettered access to healthcare. Nonetheless, you will still fail to contact your MD the next time you get sick… at which point Google will tell you that you have rickets.

GET THE LIME!

These days, the top amateur health researchers are shunning cancer (and rickets!) in favor of Ebola.

This is due, in part, to the fact that many Ebola symptoms can be tied to nine zillion other ailments: fever, muscle aches, vomiting, etc. You could have sunstroke, or you could have Ebola. You could have food poisoning, or you could have Ebola. You could have the flu, or you could have Ebola. You could be pregnant, or you could have Ebola.

The hemorraghing thing is bit of a wrinkle, but it’s pretty easy to find some sort of bruise on your body to achieve Symptom Bingo. Granted, it’s been on your shin for two weeks and the coffee table is to blame, but… Ebola.

It also doesn’t help that every news channel is telling you that the Outbreak Monkey is alive and well and taking public transit with open sores. If you search #Ebola on Twitter, you’ll find a veritable storehouse of misinformation and panic. Heck, you’ll even find a brain lecturing an R&B star about accountability in the medical community:

(Cry me a river?)

The world can be a scary place. And not just for people who used to look like this:

(Seriously. I don’t get how you go from that ^ to this…

… but God Bless America.)

So if there’s something wrong with you, and you’re headed to WebMD, allow me to offer you some tips for getting to the bottom of what’s wrong with you:

1. Get really, really specific. Searching on “cough” won’t do it. Does the cough sound like you have a piece of cracker stuck in your throat, or like your lungs are full of Jell-O? Do you sound like an animal? A common one or an extinct one?

Do you… produce anything?

Tell Google. It just wants to help.

2. Avoid backwards induction. Don’t start with the worst case scenario and attempt to prove it… because frankly, you will always prove it.

3. Fatigue is the most dangerous symptom of all. Don’t search on “tired”. All sick people get tired, no matter what they have, but Google is going to suggest a couple of doozies.

(Or, you know, lady problems.)

4. Don’t ask social media. Twitter is the new Google when it comes to getting horrible suggestions for fairly benign symptoms. Is this really the protocol?

***

Here’s the big picture: however you happen to be feeling, and whatever you’re plugging into Google, it’s rarely as bad as you think it’s going to be.

… unless, of course, it is.