36 Times Patients Googled Their Symptoms Before Seeing A Doctor And Shared What Happened Next
My ex wife diagnosed herself (correctly) not off WebMD but at the local medical school library.
She was tired of scores of doctors doing nothing but prescribing yet another medicine to treat symptoms. She eventually began to wonder what the odds were that she’d have 10 different diseases with 20 different symptoms as opposed to having one disease that could account for all of them.
So she set out to find out if such a disease existed.
It did.
She then studied the clinical diagnostic criteria for that disease and began looking at her dozens upon dozens of test results and started putting two-and-two together.
She brought it up with our family practitioner who thought she just might be on to something. All of the specialists she saw thought she was an idiot, though.
“It’s a one in a million chance you have that!” they all said.
“But the odds of me having these ten separate diseases to account for all my symptoms are one in 25 million,” she’d point out. They still dismissed her as crazy.
She finally fought with the insurance company—with the family practitioner standing by her side the whole way—enough to get permission to visit probably the best specialist in the world for what she thought she had. He was in Seattle.
He confirmed she did. She had a relatively simple operation and was cured of all of those 20 symptoms overnight.
The whole experience of not being listened to by her doctors who were just interested only in prescribing medicine to treat symptoms instead of diagnosing root problems led her to go to medical school and become an endocrinologist.
Today she’s an endocrinologist at one of the best hospitals in the world, and a medical school professor.
RN, but my favorite was when a patients family member rudely insisted we give her mother who had a major stroke (resulting in nearly zero swallowing capability) as much water as she could drink because “I read a study online that said you can’t aspirate on water because your lungs just absorb it back into your bloodstream”. I looked her straight in the eyes and said “Ok, then explain drowning to me”.
I’m not a doctor, but I did take my very elderly Nana to the hospital after I showed up to her house and found her slurring her words and behaving very strange overall. Now, my Nana is a major hypochondriac and when she was admitted the first thing she told the doctor is that she believed she was experiencing the beginning signs of Parkinson’s.
It turned out that she had mixed up a bottle of non-alcoholic wine with a bottle of regular wine, had drank the entire bottle, and was completely hammered.
Not a doctor, but I had a coworker come into the office with this one. He was having nausea, fatigue, frequent urination and decided to WebMD it. We’re chatting in the office one day and he says something like “Yeah, I’ve been feeling bad lately, and it sounds like gestational diabetes but I can’t find any cases of men getting it.” I just slowly lowered my head into my hand and asked him “Do you even know what gestational means?” He did not.
I had a UTI, because I had the symptoms and Googled it. Day of doctor appointment, it was just a regular check up. But I asked for a UTI test since I explained how I was feeling.
Convo went like this:
“could it be possible to request a UTI testing? I’ve been feeling the symptoms of burning when I pee and some discomfort-“
“how do you feel now? Any pain?”
“well no not at the -“
“well if you did have a UTI the symptoms wouldn’t go away you are fine”
2 or so days later I get a full blown kidney infection from a, who would have guessed, a UTI. sent out a complaint. I always ask for a test if I am suspicious of anything and I have them document it if they say no from now on. That was a horrible experience.
Like a couple people have posted I’ve been on the opposite side of this, but i think it still fits. Back when i was a teenager i was a really big fan of Humon comics, and she posted a PSA about a condition she was recently diagnosed with called Polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS and listed the symptoms. Aside from the ones i couldn’t account for like fertility problems, i had nearly all of them, the biggest one being i hadn’t had my period in over a year. My parents took me to the doctor who immediately booked me for an ultrasound. Turns out i really did have it and my doctor commended me for coming to him about it.
I’m very thankful to Humon for posting that PSA, i never would have known otherwise that what i was experiencing wasn’t normal.
My sister is a paramedic. One day she and a team are sent to house. A man had called about a broken arm. I don’t know how he broke his arm the first time, but had read somewhere on the internet that if he just kept breaking his arm than the pain would go away. He had tried around three times by jumping up and smashing down his weight on his arm, and it shocked everyone that he proceeded after the first time. In the end the guy had to get four surgeries on his arm, but my sister isn’t sure if it wasn’t eventually amputated or not, since she was pretty sure by the look of it and the x-rays that it would have to be.
Followup on a recovering triple bypass patient. Was giving the general “You should try to eat more healthily, watch your weight, take moderate exercise, avoid smoking” sort of thing.
Resulted in a five minute harangue about “Nanny State Doctors telling us what to do and denying us simply pleasures. Healthy at any size, internet says so, just bad luck, stop interfering.”
I appreciate that there is a time and a place for (unsolicited) lifestyle advice relating to cardiac health, but an appointment with your physician to discuss your recovery from a coronary artery bypass **IS** that time and that place.
Some people are beyond help.
Doesn’t exactly fit the web and thing but…
A woman came to the ED complaining of chest pains. When the doctor asked if had tried to treat the symptoms she said she ate a bowl of oatmeal.
The doc was a bit confused and, figuring it doesn’t matter why she did that, he continued with the exam and eventually it was determined she wasn’t having any kind of cardiac event.
I had to explain to him later she ate oatmeal because she saw a commercial that said oatmeal can lower cholesterol. She thought she was having a heart attack so she reacted by having a bowl of oatmeal.
Like many others commenting on this post, I had the reverse happen. I was having debilitating stomach pain and vomiting about 4 years ago. I couldn’t keep anything down and I lost 20 pounds. A gastroenterologist told me I had acid reflux. My mom, however, went online and suspected I had Crohns Disease. A visit to a second gastroenterologist confirmed this, and I had to have about 8 inches of my small intestine taken out a month later.
I have a spin on this topic…
I had a searing pain through the left side of my chest. It was excruciating. It started as a dull pain but quickly felt like my chest was on fire. I thought I might be having a heart attack.
While lying in bed attempting to sleep and literally crying from pain, I googled my symptoms. My self diagnosis: shingles.
The next morning I went to the doctor and told him what I thought the problem was. To my surprise, he opened a web browser and went into EXACTLY the same site I’d looked at the night before. And sure enough: shingles.
Late to the party but may as well add this:
I was working with a physician and we went to see a patient who insisted that he had tiny fibers and worms/ bugs coming out from his skin. He had extensively googled his symptoms, self diagnosed with Morgellons disease, and had even gone as far as to join a support group. He was extremely articulate and intelligent, but when confronted with the fact that Morgellon’s disease is a delusional parasitosis, he acknowledged this but couldn’t grasp that a delusion would mean that he is perceiving something that is not actually there (delusion = fixed, false belief).
This will make my friend sound stupid, and she really isn’t. When she had her first baby and was in that woozy/sleepless/new mom phase, she took the baby for her checkup and completely misheard when the doctor told her the baby had eczema. She got home and started Googling what she thought he had said, and called me in a panic, saying, “The doctor said the baby has emphysema!”
Why, that infant never smoked a day in her life . . .
Nurse here. I have a lot of WebMD stories, but my favorite is the 57 year old woman who came in for routine visit and a request to try a new medication that she saw advertised on TV. Her visit was for a complaint of increasing urinary retention over the past three weeks. Most urinary retention in women is due to a mild bladder infection… very common in women that age. When we asked her about the medication she wanted to try, she said the TV ad said it was for urinary retention, so we listened. She took out a scrap of paper with the name of the medication scribbled on it: Flomax. Well. That’s not what’ll work for her and the doctor quickly said he could not prescribe it for her. She was a little offended at the refusal and asked why not. The doctor said, “Flomax is for benign prostatic hypertrophy and you don’t need it.” She demanded an explanation. The doctor bluntly explained, “This is treating an enlarged prostate. Women don’t have prostates.”.
Not a doctor, but throughout my childhood and teen years I had these weird episodes where I would suddenly have really bad Deja Vu and get very nauseous. For the next few hours afterward I would feel like I was in a fog and my memory would be bad. Eventually I googled my symptoms and learned they might be minor epileptic seizures.
I went to a doctor and he laughed it off and told me it was probably just having panic attacks related to the normal emotions of being a teenager. I was so sure he was wrong that I opted to go get an EEG – turns out I have a mild form of epilepsy and google was totally right.
For a stretch towards the end of high school and beginning of college I repeatedly had sinus infections. We’re talking one every 3 to 4 months for the span of about 2 years. The nurse I got initially told me not to believe everything I read on the internet and to stop googling my symptoms just for my doctor to come in about 2 minutes later and say “so you have another sinus infection?” knowing I was going to be right without her checking.
Not a doctor but worked at a hospital for a while. One of our doctors came back to the nurses station laughing because someone was fully convinced they were diabetic because they were “craving” water and webmd said that makes them diabetic. Turns out they are just human and require it to live..
Worst self diagnosis as a doctor. I was in a rough part of training, not sleeping, working 90+ hr weeks, and losing weight. I crawl into bed after 40 hrs awake at the hospital, too tired to eat. I notice my laptop on my lap is twitching. I realize I can feel my abdominal aorta pulsing. I freak out thinking I have an aneurysm (0 risk factors). Then realize I am hungry and tired and thinner than I have ever been.
Paramedic student here. Last week we had a call for an imminent delivery. Pt started having abdominal pain that would last a little bit and stop. And about 2-3 min later would start again. She googled her symptoms and everything she found was saying she was in labor. She called her husband and he told her to call 911. We walked in as the baby was crowning. She had no idea she was pregnant.
I had a patient come into the clinic who insisted she had radiculopathy because her feet were numb and painful, and she wanted a surgical evaluation. I asked her why she felt that way, the only thing she could say was she looked it up on the internet. She was very aggressive about it, saying she needed an MRI and she was mad that her PCP didn’t order one. I explained to her what diabetic neuropathy was, and she insisted it wasn’t that. I told her that the fact that she had diabetes, the stocking glove pattern, and the fact that at least two doctors at her PCP office said this was diabetic neuropathy meant she didn’t need further workup for back surgery. She threw a fit.
I recently dealt with a bilateral pulmonary embolism and went to the er with chest pain and shortness of breath.
At first, it wasn’t so bad and i really thought it was just indigestion because not 5 hours before it started, i was at a concert, drinking, and eating edibles and then eating tons of fried food at a diner.
The pain ultimately went on for 14 hours and was very specific, it got 10x worse if i tried to lay down, and was somewhat alleviated if i sat and leaned forward.
So after getting nowhere googling “chest pain” i finally googled that leaning forward bit , and “Pericarditis ” was the result.
So by the time i got to the er, instead of saying “hey doc, i asked Dr. Google and this is what I’m diagnosing myself with because I’m cleary smarter than you”…i just explained the details of my pain exactly as they were.
He at first responded, “well, sounds like a blood clot, but you dont smoke cigarettes and youre fairly young [29] so i sincerely doubt that, probably pericarditis ” and i just looked over at my boyfriend and smirked and then texted my mom and was like ” yea he totally thinks it’s that peri whatever thing, I’m basicallya doctor now”
SCORE.
Anyways, turned out to have 2 blood clots, 1 in each lung and i was a ticking time bomb apparently, lucky to be alive and stupid for waiting 14 hours to go to the er.
A mother who was convinced her son had familial Mediterranean fever. He did not. She was repeatedly told this, nicely of course. Yes the child had had genetic testing by the time I saw the family. Oh, but a small percentage aren’t detected by the testing!
Thing is, her kid was fine. Healthy kid. Mom was just obsessed with this diagnosis. (Not exactly Munchausen by proxy, she never did anything to him to make him sick, or subjected him to a lot of unnecessary procedures. But on that spectrum.).
I’ve been on the opposite end of this when I was in college and wasn’t felling well. Looked up my symptoms and came to the conclusion I had strep throat.
Went to the free clinic on campus and told the doctor there that I think I had strep. She chuckles and says, “Well, we’ll see about that.” So, she does the test on me and later comes back and says, “Wow, you were actually right!”
I guess being on campus she had a lot of people coming in saying that when really it was nothing more than a sore throat.
Not a doctor but worked in emergency services. Guy went to bed after convincing himself that his chest pain was indigestion. Took some antacid and climbed in bed.
Wife was in tears the next morning when he was no longer alive.
I had a woman come to see me because of abdominal pain. I spent a good 10-15 minutes of asking her questions to get a better understanding of what could be happening. I ended up ordering an ultrasound to assess for an ovarian cysts and some blood work. As she’s leaving she goes “are you doing lab work for my prostate?” I had to bite my tongue so as not to laugh and said “no, because you’re not a male and you don’t have one.” She just said “oh.” and left.
Spoiler alert – she had an ovarian cyst.
The person who refused to tell me what symptoms they were actually having xD they had decided that they had pneumonia and any time I tried to ask what they were experiencing they just said “I have pneumonia! Don’t you know what the symptoms of pneumonia are?!” Pretty sure they looked it up, decided they had, but couldn’t remember the exact symptoms…
Not a doctor but…..I developed a rash on my lower back that began to blister the day after the rash appeared. I googled and came back with shingles. I went to the doctor, told them it was shingles and I got an eye roll and the entire, “You’re too young for shingles (21)” and “You would be in so much pain if it was.” I didn’t even get my shirt up all the way before the doctor JUMPED up and said, “Nevermind, that’s shingles.” The doctor didn’t believe me because I have never had the chicken pox as a kid.
P.S. I had absolutely no pain with my shingles. Had I not felt the blistering on my back while taking a shower, I wouldn’t of known.
Patient here, was on recovery from gallbladder removal and began having a sharp pain in my right calf muscle. Of course I googled it!
I found tons of info about blood clots post surgery and decided to see my doctor. Had an EKG performed in the office, was sent to the hospital for a d-dimer and veinous doppler. During the veinous Doppler the results from the d-dimer came back positive.
Went from having two blood clots just behind my right knee to going through a CT scan and being told I had pulmonary embolism. Wasn’t allowed to walk anywhere.
Took Xarelto for 6 weeks and all the clots dissolved.
Thinking back on it, I remember feeling so silly even bringing up the fact that I had googled my symptoms and telling my doctor I had done so.
Glad I did!
Opposite sort of happened to me but I had some sores that were itchy and spreading across my stomach. Naturally I looked up what it could be and pulled up a page on various spiders and what their bites look like. Thinking that I probably shouldn’t use the Internet to self-diagnose, I made the decision to see my doctor.
While I was in the waiting room after checking in, noting the reason for my visit, I had to go to the bathroom which was past the doctor’s office. I glanced in and noticed he was looking up something on the Internet and lo and behold it happened to be the exact same page on spider bites I was looking at myself. Shouldn’t have to explain what his diagnosis for me was soon after.
To be fair, in the end they weren’t bites but rather a pretty rare skin disease I happened to contract. Doctors said it’s often confused for bug bites.
This is somewhat related but I’m not a Dr.
The only time I self prescribed was when I thought I had rhabdomyolysis. Never had even heard of it before.
I woke up that morning feeling like I’d been in a car accident (had done a very heavy workout 2 days prior) and literally wondered why it was the worst soreness of my life. I didn’t start doing any webmd stuff though until after I went to the bathroom and realised my urine looked like coca cola.
What’s funny is even going to the er I was thinking, “this is a total waste of time and I’m going to be laughed at by a Dr today for being an idiot who looks up stuff online.”
Then I spent the next 5 days in the hospital and went through 70 IV bags before I was finally discharged.
NAD but
My daughter was suffering from amazing bruises all over her body that you could just about watch spread. It was very scary. The pain she was in was excruciating and she couldn’t move her limbs.
We started sunny doctor after doctor who said it was nothing, or passed it off as growing pains.
Eventually our sister in law, who was a nursing student, suggested vasculitis. We told the doctor what we thought, and he agreed when we took her into the ER. We successfully self diagnosed with internet help.
Soon enough, the tending doctor was bringing in other doctors to quiz them one after another.
My only thought was, “I’m not paying for this one.”.
I went to an ENT doctor after a couple of weeks of getting world-spinningly dizzy – literally not knowing which way was up for a few seconds at a time – when I moved my head in certain ways. It was so bad it would wake me up when I moved in my sleep. I was nauseous all the time and started to get brain fog and become irritable and confused at work as a result of constantly feeling like I was falling over.
I looked it up and it sounded just like something called BPPV – benign paroxsymal positional vertigo, I think. It’s where (salt?) crystals form in your ear canal and start messing with your balance. It’s easily diagnosed by moving the patient into a position that triggers it, and for something like 90% of people, easily cured by moving them into a different position to dislodge the crystals. I read online though that people can make it worse by attempting these positions themselves so I decided to go to a doctor to do it.
The doctor carried out the diagnostic test wrong (didn’t tip my head back when laying me down), so failed to trigger it and declared no BPPV despite me triggering it myself when I got up off the bed. He gave me a leaflet for labyrinthitis and said it would clear itself up but might be another month or so.
I got home, had my husband carry out the diagnostic test properly, confirmed it, then had him carry out the treatment procedure. Immediately cured.
Then again this is the same guy who diagnosed a perforated eardrum but told me I didn’t need to get it fixed or take any precautions when swimming or anything. Now I am half deaf from glue ear following a nasty middle ear infection.
Not a doctor, but between coworkers and the internet had to basically self diagnose that I had gall bladder issues.
(Had seen a male doctor first who basically said I had a stomach bug after asking me if I was sure I wasn’t pregnant and I need to lose weight. When I went back later and saw a female, she sent me for an ultrasound and turned out I needed the gall bladder removed.).
I’ve worked in a pharmacy on and off for the last ten years so I’ve heard quite a few doctors stories about patients.
One I recall is about a patient who was suffering from severe migraines and was adamant they had a blood clot in the brain. Quite an assumption to make, doctor assured them it wasn’t anything so sinister and was most likely sinusitis. Of course the patient didn’t believe him because Google told him otherwise so he decides to go private and spend close to ÂŁ500 on tests and private care only to be told you’ve got a sinusitis infection…
Obligatory not a doctor but a Massage Therapist. Basically (not at all) the same thing.
I have lost count of the number of people who think they have carpal tunnel syndrome that really just have a minor case of nerve impingement.
