Fuelling hypochondria and hyper awareness the Google way!

Recently I had the misfortune of contracting a rare urr emm...condition. I woke up one fine (pun intended) morning with my eyes all swollen and blisters over my face. I had no clue what the hell had happened to me. I tried squishing the blisters and went to off to work looking like somebody had boxed me the previous night!

Since I work for an IT company where there are no doctors in the workforce for friendly advise I turned to Google for a free diagnosis. I searched for swollen eyes which led to all kinds of posts describing how people suffered theirs for weeks and months till they found out it was a food allergy or till they found out how it could get better (using Nizoral shampoo on lashes for e.g.) without any idea of what caused it in the first place.

I read that strange rashes on skin can be caused by all kinds of things from hard to diagnose food allergies to hard to treat conditions like herpes.

Worse they could take months to heal!!!

I was ready to drown in self pity and remorse when a little bright idea struck me...why not go to the doctor even if I had a fat chance of being diagnosed correctly given all the testimonials that Google threw up.

I tried calling up the most famous dermatologist in town but her secretary told me I couldn't get an appointment till next week. Not only that she slammed the phone on me. So much for customer service!! I couldn' t even get in my angry "And what if I were to die off by then.." remark.

Next stop was trying to find an offshoot of a respectable chain of hospitals or a standalone clinic where they had speciality doctors like dermatologists. Thankfully I found one soon enough and booked my appointment for the very same evening.

Turns out I'd been bitten or rather touched by a distant relative of the Spanish fly. A blister beetle! The doctor told me rather non-chalantly that it was common enough in this season. Oooh how much I loved her for saving me from food allergies, herpes and not to mention AIDS (why at the slightest threat of a disease I start thinking AIDS is beyond me but it's almost become like a 10 on the scale of the things you can contract that I just can't seem to stop triggering this this stupid response even when I'm only sitting on 3. Of course the thought that you can get AIDS in all kinds of ways - dentist etc etc adds to my paranoia)!!

Anyway post diagnosis I came back home and did a whole lot of Googling on my condition "Blister Beetle Dermatitis". I think I know more about it now than even my doctor who suggested the beetle bit me when post my research I know the beetle doesn't bite but releasing a kind of poison when you crush it. Anyway I looked up images of the beetle, killed off any insect in sight that looked like it (and there were many at home) started bolting my doors in the evening (the beetles get attracted to fluorescent light) and heaved a slight of relief as the medicine worked and the non blisters started healing in a short time. I went from looking like I had been smacked by a helmet to scratched while played basketball in a matter of days...just as those medical papers revealed in Google searches said I would.

Moral of the story: Once you know what's bugging you Googling can help...but the best way to deal with a condition is still to go to the doctor not the Internet!!

Tragedy of modern love

I wish we could only love the worthy but the tragedy is we are more inclined to go for the mysterious and the scarce. This poem is a comment or rather lament on that state of existance.

I love you every day
Even if you are never there
And when doing so I must conclude
that my life's comfortable enough
that I can think of you and your love
and carry on missing you when you are never there
without giving up or giving in to dispair
or being cynical for that matter