Just so you don’t think I hate the Internet I have to share with you the story of 13-year-old Danielle Fisher from England. In October she began suffering from severe headaches and fatigue. Doctors diagnosed her with all kinds of problems: meningitis, a tumor, psychological problems …

Unfortunately, Danielle got worse. In the next six months she couldn’t walk and had severe vertigo. Her mom, Dominique, hit the Internet and began using the information she gleaned to help diagnose her daughter. It turned out Danielle had lyme disease. The mother took her daughter to see a professor who confirmed that diagnosis and also noted she had three other infections. Danielle is now on antibiotics.

This story shows the amount of information available online and what it can do for people. Lyme disease once was not well known in the U.K. but the number of incidents is increasing.

However, it is important to note that medical information can be used to help and should not replace a doctor. This was shown in the extreme on a recent episode of the TBS comedy, My Boys. Brendan created the alter ego of Dr. Brando to diagnose himself using the Internet. While hilarity ensued - including him eating moldy bread in the place of penicillin - the episode illustrated the possible danger of relying on the net for all your medical info!

Robin

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 1:49 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.