Doctor, doctor

By T Osiame Molefe

Hello…my name is Osiame and I am a self-diagnosed chronic cyberchondriac.

*Pause for group reply*

It has been a day since I googled my last set of symptoms. Needless to say, despite the radiating headache and short-term memory loss, I discovered that I do not suffer from encephalitis as I self-diagnosed. It was probably celebrating the New Year well into the early hours of the 3rd of January that brought on those symptoms. I spend hours on the internet reading through medical journals and medical encyclopaedias. I play endless games of “pin my gripe to the disease” far more often than I would like to admit. The Doctors and Medical Detectives are two of my favourite TV shows. I can name almost all the major bones in the body from memory and I know where I can find my flexor digitorum longus.

Most doctors will tell you that cyberchondria is a real threat to a patient’s well-being. In addition to the stress that worrying about imagined diseases causes, it can really hamper patient-doctor relations. I’m one of the milder cases though. I mostly keep this crazy side of me online and rarely bother doctors with my imagined plagues.

I cannot explain why every glitch in my normally smooth running body strikes me with the fear that I’m about to succumb to some horrible disease. I cannot explain why I find solace in attempting to put a name to the said disease. Just trust that my neural pathways almost fused when I checked my symptoms online before I self-diagnosed as a cyberchondriac. Let me give you a moment with that one.

I think it’s an awful waste of time this is. And pretty morose too.

Correction, I used to think it was an awful waste of time until those rare occasions when I actually had to pay a visit to a doctor. Let’s just say there’s a reason why it is called the “practice” of medicine. I once averted an archaic treatment for a gastric ulcer because I knew about helicobacter pylori. I also once refused to accept that a closed reduction was the best way to treat my distal radius fracture; I now have 99.9% normal mobility in my left wrist thanks to that.

Most of us put our absolute faith in medical professionals and most of the time, it works out. It is often taken for granted that the medical professionals who care for us know best and that they will do their best. There are times, however, when that unquestioned trust ends in malpractice suits and unspeakable tragedy.

A recent visit to a hospital emergency room re-affirmed my belief that my cyberchondria has made me somewhat of an educated patient and that educated patients are more likely to survive bad-apple doctors. You know those ones; the ones that operate with that churlish charm that seems to form part of the curriculum for some medical schools. The ones that turn smug when you ask a question or worse, knit their eyebrows, cross their arms and say: “Well, you are welcome to treat yourself since you know best.” All that, to stop you from discovering that in this case, with that particular doctor, you probably do know best.

By no means am I suggesting that everyone take up my symptom googling lunacy and I am also not saying all doctors are bad. All I’m saying is that you should have the basic knowledge to engage with your doctor about the care you receive. You should know your basic medical information like blood type, allergies and medical conditions affecting you and your immediate family. Take time out to educate yourself on any diagnosis given and do not be shy to seek alternate opinions. Reticence has no place when it comes to safe guarding the body you’ll hopefully be living in for a long time.

Competent doctors are more than happy to field questions from their patients; it is the ones that become cagey and defensive that will likely send you home worse off than when you arrived in their care.

T Osiame Molefe is an MA (creative writing) student at UCT. He is also yellow-bellied, self-ingratiating fraudster. He passes himself off as a writer, photographer and child of bohemia living in the Age of Aquarius. Truth is though, he’s never published a thing, his camera is more competent that he is and despite his best efforts, he has never been involved in any kind of orgy. His irrational thoughts are made public at http://www.boyuninterrupted.com