To Google or not to Google

How do you know when an ordinary-looking blister on your shin is actually the exit hole of a massive Guinea Worm, ready to burst free after festering for six months? Answer: when you Google the terms "skin" and "blister" and "lower limb" and arrive at a JPEG of a Ghanian villager, twisting a Guinea Worm out of his leg and around a sardine hook. A simple Boolean search can turn something as routine as a blister into a pus-filled horror. The query "blister" begets "Cocksackie virus" begets "shingles," until narrowing your search parameters leaves you stricken with either a burrowing worm or an embedded botfly egg.

To empower yourself with Internet knowledge is to face a modern version of Hamlet's dilemma: to Google or not to Google. (It's a quandary Shakespeare might have entertained had he written "Hamlet" on an iMac with a DSL connection.) Stumbling bare-assed into an exam room with no clue about your prospects seems silly when the information is there for the typing. Yet, the human brain - a susceptible sponge - can turn a cluster headache into a full-blown terminal disease, from just a few graphic write-ups.

I ought know better. I'm an exceptional Googler and if there is a grotesque disease to match my symptoms, I will find it. Reassurance is not generally the outcome of a vast Internet query. Still, facing the prospect of an MRI recently, I couldn't resist the temptation to click on that blasted "search" button. It took just seconds to roll out a list of MRI risks and dangers: "possible movement of aneurysm clips or embedded metal objects," "accidental impaling by unsecured oxygen tanks or projectiles," "shoes with metal shanks may fly off your feet and knock you unconscious." I asked the technician about the Impaling Tank Theory. The tech, to my chagrin, did not challenge, refute or minimize the claims. Yes, it was true, she said, that if someone were to walk by the exam room carrying an oxygen tank, her bet was that it would be sucked into the MRI machine and would promptly kill me. "That reminds me," she added. "I'd better close the door." I took that for MRI-tech humor and double-knotted the laces on my shoes.

Pre-worldwide-web, a routine tetanus booster would hardly prompt the execution of a living will. But recently, an acquaintance of mine forked over twenty bucks to Legacy Writer upon learning that his upcoming vaccine, in rare cases, with causality unproven, might result in "permanent brain damage" and "coma." And that doesn't even speak to the recent controversy surrounding the thimerosal in vaccines which may have links to "autism," "autoimmune disorders," "spastic movements," and "incontinence."

In some ways, Internet medical searches are like a hyper-vigilant mama, warning you of every obscure and unlikely outcome, most of which will never transpire, but nonetheless imbue your experience with a host of "what ifs." That doesn't discount the legitimate and sometimes serious situations that drive any of us to log on at 2:00am and see what comes up in a cursory scan of WebMD. Some famous hypochondriacs would have been thrilled with this access -- those who were later found to suffer from disorders, which were, at the time, unknown or disbelieved. Charles Darwin, for instance, probably did have a parasite that led him to panic over his health. A quick entry of "sleep + sickness + fever" would have turned up for Charles, a few helpful GIFs of tsetse flies which in turn could have jogged some pertinent memories of the Galapagos.

But is it possible to sift through the scores of freaky surgical accidents and rare cases of Coumarin-induced gangrene and not lose your lunch or sanity?

I thought the best strategy would be to eliminate the most alarming search results by prolific use of the Boolean term "NOT." Coming up with the "NOT" terms is kind of like being told not to think of an elephant . . . an impossible directive. But try anyway.

The query could go something like "dizziness + headache + rash NOT Ebola NOT Creutzfeldt-Jakob" - which still renders "stroke," "naphthalene poisoning," "vertigo" and "acute prostatitis." Eliminate the new discoveries by use of "NOT" (NOT vertigo, NOT stroke) and you find yourself with "scleroderma" "septra overdose" and "carbon dioxide poisoning." Add "NOT scleroderma, septra and CO2" and you still have "Rett Syndrome" or "shellfish poisoning." Take out the shellfish, cut the Rett and you're on track for "barotrauma" and "impatopium bromide reaction."

If you reduce your query by every bacterial and virulent factor, you'll find your headache is the result of an addiction to Buspar, too much aspartame in your diet soda, or a side-effect of the hormone treatment you're taking for the gender change. Get rid of those variables and you're left, basically, with the fact that you've been poisoned and you're going to die.

Since almost any medical query taken to its extreme will likely result in your confirmed death, the up side is that you're now free to ponder your existence as an ephemeral being and run naked and transcendent with timber wolves. Just don't Google "mange." It could put a damper on the experience.