For the past week, I’ve been experiencing a mild sore throat. It’s not severe enough to disrupt my sleep, but there’s a slight discomfort, particularly when I drink my first glass of water in the morning. While I haven’t felt the urge to rush to a doctor or urgent care clinic, I’ve spent plenty of time contemplating whether this could be due to allergies, stress, postnasal drip, or even the onset of throat cancer.
Logically, I know it’s far more likely to be one of the benign issues, yet the latter possibility lingers in my thoughts, much like the anxiety I feel when trying to differentiate between simple gas pains and a heart attack, or between a pulled muscle and a blood clot. This tendency to overanalyze is what I refer to as being a cyberchondriac.
“Cyberchondria,” according to Microsoft Research, refers to the irrational escalation of health concerns based on one’s online searches and information. Essentially, I find myself believing I have some rare disease after Googling a relatively common symptom. The vaguer the symptom, the longer the list of potential life-threatening conditions that I feel compelled to explore. I can’t count the number of times I’ve stumbled into forums discussing leprosy.
This peculiar inclination seems to run in my family. As a child, I often watched my mother leaf through an old medical encyclopedia ominously titled Diseases of Women, trying to diagnose her latest health scare. “Have you ever heard of idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura?” she would casually ask, flipping through the yellowed pages as she sat cross-legged on the floor. “Because I think I might have it.”
Whether or not I worried that her self-diagnosis might be passed down to me is a blur—I mean, who knows, I could also have amnesia or even early-onset Alzheimer’s, which are always in the realm of possibility. Growing up just before the advent of the Internet meant I didn’t have the luxury of instant access to a wealth of information about rare diseases. Instead, I relied on comparing my symptoms with those of family and friends.
“My arm hurts. Remember, Aunt Betty had arm pain right before her stroke.”
“Yes, but she was 89 and had been bedridden for years, while you’re just 15 and gearing up for a roller-skating outing.”
“Still…”
My obsessive research methods have evolved alongside the explosion of health information available online. I have developed a near-intimate relationship with WebMD, which recently informed me that I could label myself with “somatic symptom disorder,” indicating a condition focused on bodily symptoms. With every new symptom, a plethora of potential diseases awaits my examination.
Take, for example, a simple headache. WebMD cites over 65 possible conditions associated with a “sudden onset dull headache.” Sure, a tension headache is the most likely culprit, but how can I disregard the possibility of a migraine, meningitis, or even Cryptococcus, a fungus found in bird droppings? After all, I do live near birds.
I often wonder why I can’t simply apply common sense to my self-diagnoses (like realizing my toe hurts because I stubbed it, not due to some obscure nerve disorder) and instead insist on exploring the most severe possibilities. Perhaps it’s a need to confront the worst-case scenarios so that reality feels less daunting. Maybe I dislike making assumptions because you can never be too sure. Or maybe I just believe I’m too unique for a mere common cold.
You might think I spend countless hours at emergency rooms, chatting with nurses and doctors over coffee breaks. In reality, my obsessive behavior usually keeps me at home. By the time I finish exploring every potential ailment and navigating through a labyrinth of online articles, my symptoms have generally subsided, leaving me to sheepishly conclude it was probably just allergies—like my husband frequently suggests with an annoyingly smug smile.
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In summary, my journey through cyberchondria highlights the humorous yet troubling tendency to overanalyze health symptoms. While it’s easy to get lost in the depths of online research, it’s essential to balance our concerns with logic and common sense.