Sue’s Views: Doctor Google, I presume?

It was official, I was on my deathbed according to doctor Google. Now you may laugh but how many of you out there are guilty of self-diagnosing using the ‘trusted’ internet?

A couple of years ago while watching television I felt a long lump like bump in my mouth. You know how it goes – there you are mindlessly watching some programme and your tongue encounters this ‘foreign’ lump in your mouth. You roll over it a couple of times with your tongue for good measure trying to convince yourself it’s all quite normal.

Nope, nothing like that on the other side so it’s off to the bathroom for a good old look-see. So there I was pulling and prodding away at my mouth in the bathroom mirror with drool pooling down the side trying to locate the damn thing when my partner popped his head around the corner to find out what was going on.

I don’t know what startled him the most – the drool that made me look like a bull mastiff lusting after food or the huge searchlight torch I was using to better illuminate the inside of my mouth.

ALSO READ: Sue’s Views: Welcome to my world

After explaining what I had felt on the inside of my mouth he was reluctantly pressed into peering into my mouth to locate the tumour.  Yes in the space of 15 short minutes it had gone from a lump to a tumour. “I think I see something,” he mumbled “but it just looks like a normal small white lump.”

Amazing isn’t it how we all jump to worst-case scenarios. Heart rate up, we are dealing with a tumour here folks, I headed off to power up the laptop. Doctor Google my old friend let me peer into the depths of the internet and confirm my worst suspicions.

Turns out I’m right, according to the internet it’s a tumour and I have approximately, at the best, eight months left before I slip the bonds of this mortal coil. In a right old tizzy, I tearfully tell my partner the bad news. “Hmm why don’t you go to bed and see how you feel in the morning’” he suggests. Sleep? Are you mad! For I toss and turn, running my tongue over the darn thing.

Eventually, I must have drifted off for the next thing I knew it was morning and yep on investigation there it was – larger and I could almost swear it had developed a pulse of its own. A doctor’s appointment was made and a day later, fearing the worst, there I was in all my glory with my tumour.

The good doctor took a look, sat me down and told me in no uncertain terms that it was a small harmless mouth cyst and that if I hadn’t prodded and poked at it would have been gone in a day or two. But let me guess he said, you googled didn’t you? Sheepishly I admitted I had and solemnly pledged not to do so again.

Well, just last week I woke up with tingling down my arm. You slept on it my partner sighed. Nope, I’m sure it’s more than that. Oh, doctor Google I am baaaaack. It’s official – I have Alien Hand Syndrome.

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