Seven separate ways that my own body could be rebelling against me on a cellular level.
Panic rises in my throat.
I hadn’t even considered that I could have something that wrong with me. I was thinking it might be some kind of muscular disease, or maybe a problem with my brain chemistry. Those things sound bad enough, but when considered alongside the C word, they obviously pale in comparison.
It’s only one website. Try a different one.
Yes. That’s right. It is only one website, and its algorithms may be patented, but that doesn’t mean they’re not also a load of old shit.
I move on to another symptom-checking site, this one called CheckSym.com.
I type in the same symptoms . . . and get back virtually the same answers – only this time, it looks like I could have cancer nine different ways, instead of seven.
So, I try a third website, and then a fourth.
But each one spits out the same potential death sentences as quickly as the first. Although website number four only suggests I could die from six types of cancer, which is something of an improvement . . . I guess?
So I abandon that strategy, and instead type my symptoms straight into Google, to see if that comes up with something more constructive, and slightly less life-threatening.
Nope.
If anything, it’s even worse.
Instead of just telling me I could have one of half a dozen cancers, Dr Google lets me know that I could be suffering from hundreds of them, each one more terrifying and harder to pronounce than the last. Something called a ‘cerebrodendroglioma’ sounds particularly horrifying.
The panic in my chest rises even more, and I can feel my jaw tightening to such an extent that the sharp, stabbing pains in my head are coming faster and faster.
Oh God. Oh God. Oh GOD!
. . . Now then.
There is a logical part of my brain that knows I’m overreacting.
I have been surfing the World Wide Web long enough to know that trying to diagnose yourself using the Internet is a ridiculous waste of time. Especially when you have so many symptoms.
Pump enough symptoms (any symptoms) into any checker or search engine, and the chance of it informing you that you have a terminal disease is nearly 100 per cent.
You could tell the damn thing that you have a ringing in your ears, a mild toothache, a small ache in one knee, a fear of chickens and a slight sense of disappointment about your place in the world – and it’d probably tell you that you have three minutes left to live.
Intellectually and logically, I know that sitting here at my laptop trying to self-diagnose is a bloody fool’s game – but I’m not thinking intellectually and logically right now, I’m thinking with my gut.
Another twenty minutes goes by of me feverishly hunting for any website that will tell me that I’m going to be fine, and that there’s nothing really wrong with me – but such a thing does not exist. It’s all doom, gloom . . . and please make funeral arrangements as fast as you can.
The panic is now clawing at my very soul.
I need some kind of reassurance. Some kind of sage advice from other people that will help me climb off this ledge of fear I’ve placed myself on.
I know . . .
To the forums!
If ever I am unsure of something, and I’m not convinced that Google knows the answers, I turn to my friends on the various forums that I belong to for advice. They rarely let me down, whatever the subject matter.
I belong to forums that cover every single facet of modern life. If I have a DIY issue, I go straight to HandymanForums.com. If I need advice on something electronic or technological, I pop over to DigitalSpace.com.
If I want to book a holiday and can’t decide between the three four-star-rated hotels I’ve found, then the people on the TripAdvisor forums are right there and waiting.
And, if I have a health issue, I go to HealthSpace.com to get advice. It’s there that I discovered how to syringe the earwax out of my ears at home, meaning I could hear properly for the first time in years.
With this in mind, I jump into the forum’s general advice section, and compose a suitable post about my latest potentially life-threatening problem.
The replies I get over the next couple of hours range from heartfelt to piss-taking of the highest order. This is to be expected. You can be guaranteed that whatever the topic you talk about on the Internet, you will receive replies that vary from compassionate to stone cold. It is the way of things. It’s just important not to take either to heart, and to sift out the actual practical advice from the sarcasm or overblown sentimentality.
And the practical advice I’m getting – whether it be in the gushing response from Trixie1986 or the ‘hilarious’ reply I received from MrBigTrousers telling me I’ve probably got Ebola – is that I need to get off the bloody Internet and go to see a doctor.
I chew a fingernail as I read down through the replies, all saying more or less the same thing.
I’m not happy about it, not happy at all.
I know that I have to go and see a proper doctor, and that Dr Google is not the way forward, but I was really hoping somebody on here might at least give me a hint of what I have wrong with me. You know, something along the lines of: Oh yeah! I had all of those symptoms a couple of years ago! Turns out I had Bob Bobbins syndrome. The doctor put me on antibiotics for a month and it cleared up, no problem!
That would have stopped me feeling quite so panicky. Nobody wants to suffer from Bob Bobbins syndrome, but if you can solve it with the right pills, then it’s not really much of an issue.
The key thing is, at least I would have known that I didn’t have anything that serious. At least I wouldn’t still be thinking I was about to drop dead at any moment.
But nobody has told me I have Bob Bobbins syndrome, and in fact, nobody has really tried to guess what I might have wrong with me at all. This cannot be good.
If nobody on this forum wants to venture a guess, then it means it’s probably something rare and awful. Nob Nobbins syndrome, for instance – which kills you in a week, but not before your eyeballs start bleeding and your bum falls off.
I compose a short thank you to those who have responded to me on HealthSpace, and surf on over to the newly created digital appointment platform that my doctor’s surgery instituted a few months ago. Much fuss was made of this wonderful, new, convenient way to book a doctor’s appointment. The local Facebook page has an entire thread dedicated to it.
It’s been terrible, needless to say.
Public service websites are invariably terrible in the UK. It’s just the way things are.
I have a feeling that the day you can seamlessly communicate with any government or public service organisation of your choice via the Internet, will be the day before artificial intelligence finally takes over and murders everyone.
I cross my fingers and attempt to book an emergency appointment with my doctor for tomorrow morning. When the entire web page freezes and boots me out of the submission form, I sigh deeply and reload it to have another go.
This time it tells me that the next available emergency appointment I can book will be on Thursday, 19 September 2097.
I fear that this may be a tad too late to help me, so I reload the page again, and have one more attempt.
Hallelujah!
This time around I successfully manage to book the appointment, not for the distant future after the machines have taken over the planet, but for Thursday morning at 8.30 – a mere two days away. This still doesn’t really constitute an emergency appointment, but I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth here. There’s every chance that if I reload the submission form and try again, I might not get another appointment until four days after the earth has been consumed by the sun going supernova.