Does your googling/worrying create obbsessions??

[Fj2014]

A few weeks back I was convinced I had bowel cancer and got terrible stomach pains, then ovarian and was bloated and had pelvic pains, now I'm scared I have a tumour on my hip and it's killing me!!
Is this normal??
Does the worry cause the pain or the pain cause the worry?

Any answers would be much appreciated!!

[venusbluejeans]

It is normal for someone with Health anxiety, yes

[Whitetrash]

Yes, I'm terrible for consulting Dr Google

[GingerFish]

Yip Google makes me ten times worse. Even if I just google something simple like a sore throat, it always tells you have throat cancer.

Right now I have a niggily feeling that I have lymphoma thanks to google after a lymph node that came up at the start of the year with an ear infection didn't go all the way back down. It got smaller and has remained the same size and I have no other symptoms but thanks to constant googling, I can't get my mind off lymphoma.

[Fj2014]

Yip Google makes me ten times worse. Even if I just google something simple like a sore throat, it always tells you have throat cancer.

Right now I have a niggily feeling that I have lymphoma thanks to google after a lymph node that came up at the start of the year with an ear infection didn't go all the way back down. It got smaller and has remained the same size and I have no other symptoms but thanks to constant googling, I can't get my mind off lymphoma.

Ahh I have a lymphoma worry too - I found a gland under my arm three weeks ago which is still there and high WBC so I'm getting more bloods and a scan but I'm so freaked out cause now I've found two more swollen nodes under that arm - argh!!

I'm worried they are swollen from poking allll day yesterday though so I've tried to ban myself until I see my doc in three weeks from touching!!

This is hard!!!

[Fishmanpa]

I don't know if it creates obsessions but it's obvious from the posts here it does. It's the arch enemy that poses as a friend and is the nemesis of the anxiety sufferer as I've plainly seen on the boards.

From a point of view of an non HA sufferer, it sure can spoil your outlook when it comes to illness. When I was in the diagnostic process for cancer, I was sure I had lymphoma. I knew something was wrong and that's what Dr. Google said. It sucked but lymphoma was one of the easier cancers to treat. Then I get the diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma, head and neck, stage IV. I was actually somewhat relieved it wasn't lymphoma until I looked up SCC! Holy )!@*&#!! All cancers are bad but SCC Stage IV doesn't paint a pretty picture at all. The stats were depressing! I was really shook up by the prognosis. I heard all the usual, "everyone is different" etc but stats don't lie do they? Why would all those stats and info I read on Google be there if they weren't factual?

I'm here and a testimony that they do lie! If I were a stat, I wouldn't be here. Even with my heart condition, I shouldn't be here so what does that say about Dr. Google eh?

Look at the boards. People are given a clean bill of health by several medical professionals, tests and scans and still they Google obsessively and believe that over all else. It's very sad really.

I believe one of the best things you can do for yourself is stay the heck away from Dr. Google! I happen to love Google. I can look up a question or a recipe and have it instantly. But concerning medical information? Pfttt... too much BS IMO.

So yes, it does and can cause obsessions and without a doubt cause undue stress and anxiety to those that consult the good Dr. G.

Positive thoughts

[Serenity1990]

Honestly I don't think google is the problem. I self-diagnosed stuff off google all the time before all this started, but without the catastrophisation. By which I mean I'd google something, it'd suggest cancer, MS or whatever else and I'd just think "well all of those things happen to other people", skip to the bottom of the page and decide I had a benign fungal infection, or whatever. And I was invariably right.

The trouble arrives when the "those things don't happen to me" mechanism fails for whatever reason. Because that's what keeps people sane.

But in the defence of google a lot of my recovery has come from there. Not only has it given me this place, but using it to learn properly about the condition(s) I've been convinced of has taught me that comparing your symptoms to a list on webMD (or whatever) is pointless: we have a finite number of bodily symptoms and an infinite number of potential conditions. It's the way those symptoms present - the pattern - that makes the difference, as well as the clinical signs. You and I aren't trained to interpret such things but doctors are.