5 Tips For Guiding Your Doctor Through Google’s Analysis Of Your Symptoms

Photo by Victoria Heath on Unsplash

You wake up in the middle of the night with an intense itch between your toes, and going back to sleep is completely out of the question.

Lights on, magnifying glass out — this is NOT a drill.

Like most Americans, you are dealing with a medical affliction. And as a smart consumer of the medical-industrial complex, you seek to be informed and ready to take action on this affront to your personal health.

This, my afflicted friend, is where Google becomes your health care partner.

Who else is there for you at 3:00 AM? With the entire world and its collective knowledge at your fingertips 24/7, seeking information on your every ache and pain is a smart thing to do.

After a few or 17 hours of consulting with Google, you’ll likely find that making an appointment with your doctor is the next step on your road to recovery.

Some doctors recognize the value of varied opinions, while others scoff at the potential benefits of “arm-chair experts”. If your doctor falls into the latter category, you’ll want to use these techniques to prepare for your upcoming appointment to get them on board with learning from Dr. Google!

1. A picture is worth a thousand words. Before you show your doctor your toes, review at least forty similar rash images curated from Google Images. This can only help your doctor in prognosis, and shows how invested you are in your health. See next tip for organizing!
2. Pinterest is your friend! Let Pinterest help you organize images for eczema, athlete’s foot, psoriasis, and scabies with Boards, which act as folders. You can even create Board sections (like sub-folders) so “athlete’s foot”, for example, can go under your “Reasons to skip the gym” Board.
3. Theory before science. Your doctor may brush you off with a prescription for hydrocortisone for the itch, but don’t be intimidated by your doctor’s years of undergrad, medical school, residency training and years in practice. Ignore the current “science is real” trend — it makes a nifty bumper sticker, but this is your health we are talking about! This is the time to really stretch Google’s capabilities and find all possible reasons for your woes. A quick search on “itch on toes” yields about 3,850,000 results. Clearly, this is the time to talk theories with your doctor, and avoid that expensive prescription co-pay!
4. It’s all in the details. Don’t hesitate to use this precious time with your primary care provider to scroll through @melissa69’s comments about her sister-in-law who also had that rash and most likely died from it, or @grannyoftwelve’s suggestion that old shoelaces, blended with almond milk, had impressive results in reducing itch. Leverage the collective experience of the internet!
5. A dose of humility helps. While your doctor may have impressed his future in-laws with his framed Harvard diploma and years of gravitas reflected on his face from late nights cramming for Anatomy, one just can’t argue with Google’s search index which contains hundreds of billions of webpages and is well over 100,000,000 gigabytes in size. A gentle reminder to your doctor (at both the start and the end of your in-office visit) of Google’s superior sourcing will go a long way to getting your doctor on board as a partner in your treatment.

Armed with these tips, go confidently into your next appointment with a fully-charged phone, iPad or other smart device, secure in the knowledge that Google always has your back (and toes).