Typing your health symptoms into Google is a one-way ticket to Panic Town.
One minute you’re mildly perturbed by your tingling fingertips; the next, you’re coming to terms with the fact you have some form of rare cancer. Even though you probably don’t.
Deep down we all know self-diagnosing is an unwise (not to mention rather risky) exercise, but that hasn’t stopped some people from marching into the nearest doctor’s surgery and telling their GP what’s what.
"So, I googled my symptoms, and it's definitely life-threatening." (Image: iStock)
In a recent Reddit thread, doctors (and a few sheepish patients) have shared their most outrageous self-diagnosis experiences.
"Had a patient come in once due to weight gain that she thought was due to being pregnant. Made sense, except she'd taken more than half a dozen pregnancy tests and they were all negative. She was convinced she was pregnant though, and wanted me to check. I tell her, 'OK I'll do a blood test, since we can detect pregnancy earlier with that,' and she refuses. Says that she just wants to pee on the stick in front of me and have me read it. So I say sure, and lo and behold, it's negative," one doctor wrote.
You can see where this is going, can't you?
"Little more questioning, and it turns out she'd been eating literally nothing but chicken wings for weeks. When I asked her why in the world she would do that, she replied that she just really liked chicken wings."
Well, that's reasonable.
Watch: The five pregnancy symptoms nobody warns you about. (Post continues after video.)
"I had a patient a few weeks ago who was in her late 80s come in worried about having a sexually transmitted disease. She goes on to tell me that she hasn't had sex since her husband died. In 1994."
"My mum took my sister and I to the doctor when we were kids because we had weird bumps all over the back of our tongues. We were diagnosed with tastebuds."
Wow. Shocker.
Not all "weird bumps" are cause for concern... (Image: iStock)
"I had one patient wait in the ER waiting room for eight hours for painful lips. Diagnosis: chapped lips. Prescribed chap stick."
There's more.
"Another patient waited the same amount of time in the ED waiting room at the county hellhole hospital. The reason: mosquito bite. One stupid mosquito bite. He said he was a hemophiliac and was afraid he would bleed to death."
"Someone had booked an emergency appointment to have a mole inspected because 'it had shown up overnight and was cancer.' About five seconds into the exam, I wipe the 'mole' off using my finger. It was chocolate melted onto her skin." (Post continues after gallery.)
"A woman came in claiming her 'foul odour' was from a 'leftover condom' in her nether regions from TWO weeks prior. Needless to say there was no condom down there, just some fungi, even more unusual."
"My boyfriend is a doctor. His patient came in claiming he has testosterone deficiency with the only symptom being headache. A freaking headache."
"Oh no, it must be testosteron deficiency." (Image: iStock)
"I once went to the hospital because I thought I had a collapsed lung. Turns out I was just super hungover and my ribs hurt from throwing up all night. Very embarrassing and expensive."
"The amount of 'coughing up blood' I've heard... You'd think the T-Virus really was out there or something. [In] 99 of 100 patients it's an irritated throat from post-nasal drip from a URI. Truly, coughing up blood is very serious and usually very fatal."
The moral of these stories? Step away from Dr Google and listen to the flesh-and-blood experts.
Have you ever attempted to self-diagnose?
Featured image: ABC
