25 Stories Of Patients Who Used Google To Diagnose Their Symptoms

The internet makes it easy to look up your symptoms instead of rushing to the doctor. However, online tools don’t offer the depth of a real medical exam. They depend entirely on the information you provide and what you think is relevant. As a result, people often find themselves with unreliable self-diagnoses, usually fearing the worst. Recently, a few perceptive Reddit discussions highlighted this issue, with various users sharing their experiences. We’ve selected some of the best insights, which you can find in the gallery below.

#1

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I’m an RN in pediatric neurology. We frequently have families who refuse to put their kids on seizure medications regardless of the EEG findings and the fact that they, you know, have seizures and stuff.

One family “did the research” and attempted to cure the child’s epilepsy with essential oils, over the counter CBD oil, yoga, metal ion wristbands (to “balance” the brain). They even went as far as having the kid’s dental fillings removed and replaced with a non-metallic filling.

There was the time that someone told us she didn’t need medication because if you opened a fizzy can of Pepsi and put it under her nose she would come out of a seizure. If that didn’t work, you could whisper “Reese’s Pieces” in her ear and she would stop seizing.

My least favorite visits are from parents who refuse to believe that their kid is twitching because they have motor tics and likely Tourette’s instead of epilepsy. Like, if it was a choice between Tourette’s and epilepsy, you should choose Tourette’s all day long. Why these parents are hell bent on giving their kids a diagnosis of epilepsy is beyond me.

I just don’t even know anymore.

#2

Image source: anon, Yunus Tuğ/unsplash

My ex wife diagnosed herself (correctly) not off WebMD but at the local medical school library.

She was tired of scores of doctors doing nothing but prescribing yet another medicine to treat symptoms. She eventually began to wonder what the odds were that she’d have 10 different diseases with 20 different symptoms as opposed to having one disease that could account for all of them.

So she set out to find out if such a disease existed.

It did.

She then studied the clinical diagnostic criteria for that disease and began looking at her dozens upon dozens of test results and started putting two-and-two together.

She brought it up with our family practitioner who thought she just might be on to something. All of the specialists she saw thought she was an idiot, though.

“It’s a one in a million chance you have that!” they all said.

“But the odds of me having these ten separate diseases to account for all my symptoms are one in 25 million,” she’d point out. They still dismissed her as crazy.

She finally fought with the insurance company—with the family practitioner standing by her side the whole way—enough to get permission to visit probably the best specialist in the world for what she thought she had. He was in Seattle.

He confirmed she did. She had a relatively simple operation and was cured of all of those 20 symptoms overnight.

The whole experience of not being listened to by her doctors who were just interested only in prescribing medicine to treat symptoms instead of diagnosing root problems led her to go to medical school and become an endocrinologist.

Today she’s an endocrinologist at one of the best hospitals in the world, and a medical school professor.

#3

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Serious answer: I try to ask my patients if they have googled their symptoms. It gives me a lot of information about what they are worried about. I then try to stay humble about their findings, and try to not be a jerk about that. Trust is not built by telling people they are stupid. However, it is hard to keep a straight face when a 50-year old male walks in and says “I think I have caught the Down’s syndrome”, or when a young woman thought she had testicular cancer.

#4

Image source: chile-con-limon, Getty Images/unsplash

I had a UTI, because I had the symptoms and Googled it. Day of doctor appointment, it was just a regular check up. But I asked for a UTI test since I explained how I was feeling.
Convo went like this:

“could it be possible to request a UTI testing? I’ve been feeling the symptoms of burning when I pee and some discomfort-”

“how do you feel now? Any pain?”

“well no not at the -”

“well if you did have a UTI the symptoms wouldn’t go away you are fine”

2 or so days later I get a full blown kidney infection from a, who would have guessed, a UTI. sent out a complaint. I always ask for a test if I am suspicious of anything and I have them document it if they say no from now on. That was a horrible experience.

#5

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RN, but my favorite was when a patients family member rudely insisted we give her mother who had a major stroke (resulting in nearly zero swallowing capability) as much water as she could drink because “I read a study online that said you can’t aspirate on water because your lungs just absorb it back into your bloodstream”. I looked her straight in the eyes and said “Ok, then explain drowning to me”.

#6

Image source: alyssarcastic, Andrej Lišakov/unsplash

Another opposite story: when I was maybe 13-14 I randomly one day got really bad pain in my side that would come and go. I ignored it for a couple hours, but it eventually got so bad that I threw up. I Googled the symptoms and was pretty sure it was a kidney stone.

My mom took me to the clinic, and the doctor was completely useless. I brought up kidney stones, and she said that couldn’t be it because I was too young. Instead she asked me multiple times if I was pregnant, even after I told her I was a virgin. She kept saying stuff like “this could be something really seriously life-threatening if you’re pregnant, so it’s important to tell the truth.” Then sent me home with antibiotics.

That night I was crying in pain again so we went to the ER, and the doctor almost immediately diagnosed me with kidney stones. I’m still pissed off at the first doctor, I know she only ignored me because I was a teenage girl. I wish I could’ve rubbed it in her face.

#7

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Like a couple people have posted I’ve been on the opposite side of this, but i think it still fits. Back when i was a teenager i was a really big fan of Humon comics, and she posted a PSA about a condition she was recently diagnosed with called Polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS and listed the symptoms. Aside from the ones i couldn’t account for like fertility problems, i had nearly all of them, the biggest one being i hadn’t had my period in over a year. My parents took me to the doctor who immediately booked me for an ultrasound. Turns out i really did have it and my doctor commended me for coming to him about it.
I’m very thankful to Humon for posting that PSA, i never would have known otherwise that what i was experiencing wasn’t normal.

#8

Image source: anon, Getty Images/unsplash

I’m not a doctor, but I did take my very elderly Nana to the hospital after I showed up to her house and found her slurring her words and behaving very strange overall. Now, my Nana is a major hypochondriac and when she was admitted the first thing she told the doctor is that she believed she was experiencing the beginning signs of Parkinson’s.

It turned out that she had mixed up a bottle of non-alcoholic wine with a bottle of regular wine, had drank the entire bottle, and was completely hammered.

#9

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Not a doctor, but I had a coworker come into the office with this one. He was having nausea, fatigue, frequent urination and decided to WebMD it. We’re chatting in the office one day and he says something like “Yeah, I’ve been feeling bad lately, and it sounds like gestational diabetes but I can’t find any cases of men getting it.” I just slowly lowered my head into my hand and asked him “Do you even know what gestational means?” He did not.

#10

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Just graduated medical school a few weeks ago.

The most frustrating are the concerned parents who buy into all sorts of myths regarding vaccines. Especially frustrating are the parents who refuse the HPV vaccine for their daughters (and sons), not based on any misguided health concerns, but instead due to beliefs that it will encourage their daughters to be promiscuous when they’re older.

#11

Image source: anon, Getty Images/unsplash

Doesn’t exactly fit the web and thing but…

A woman came to the ED complaining of chest pains. When the doctor asked if had tried to treat the symptoms she said she ate a bowl of oatmeal.

The doc was a bit confused and, figuring it doesn’t matter why she did that, he continued with the exam and eventually it was determined she wasn’t having any kind of cardiac event.

I had to explain to him later she ate oatmeal because she saw a commercial that said oatmeal can lower cholesterol. She thought she was having a heart attack so she reacted by having a bowl of oatmeal.

#12

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The other day I had a guy come into the ED in tears because he had wrist pain and the nurse at his work’s occupational health looked it up and told him he has multiple sclerosis.

#13

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Worst self-diagnosis as a doctor. I was in a rough part of training, not sleeping, working 90+ hr weeks, and losing weight. I crawl into bed after 40 hrs awake at the hospital, too tired to eat. I notice my laptop on my lap is twitching. I realize I can feel my abdominal aorta pulsing. I freak out thinking I have an aneurysm (0 risk factors). Then realize I am hungry and tired and thinner than I have ever been.

#14

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My sister is a paramedic. One day she and a team are sent to house. A man had called about a broken arm. I don’t know how he broke his arm the first time, but had read somewhere on the internet that if he just kept breaking his arm than the pain would go away. He had tried around three times by jumping up and smashing down his weight on his arm, and it shocked everyone that he proceeded after the first time. In the end the guy had to get four surgeries on his arm, but my sister isn’t sure if it wasn’t eventually amputated or not, since she was pretty sure by the look of it and the x-rays that it would have to be.

#15

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This will make my friend sound stupid, and she really isn’t. When she had her first baby and was in that woozy/sleepless/new mom phase, she took the baby for her checkup and completely misheard when the doctor told her the baby had eczema. She got home and started Googling what she thought he had said, and called me in a panic, saying, “The doctor said the baby has emphysema!”

Why, that infant never smoked a day in her life . . .

#16

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Nurse here. I have a lot of WebMD stories, but my favorite is the 57 year old woman who came in for routine visit and a request to try a new medication that she saw advertised on TV. Her visit was for a complaint of increasing urinary retention over the past three weeks. Most urinary retention in women is due to a mild bladder infection… very common in women that age. When we asked her about the medication she wanted to try, she said the TV ad said it was for urinary retention, so we listened. She took out a scrap of paper with the name of the medication scribbled on it: Flomax. Well. That’s not what’ll work for her and the doctor quickly said he could not prescribe it for her. She was a little offended at the refusal and asked why not. The doctor said, “Flomax is for benign prostatic hypertrophy and you don’t need it.” She demanded an explanation. The doctor bluntly explained, “This is treating an enlarged prostate. Women don’t have prostates.”

#17

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Follow-up on a recovering triple bypass patient. Was giving the general “You should try to eat more healthily, watch your weight, take moderate exercise, avoid smoking” sort of thing.

Resulted in a five minute harangue about “Nanny State Doctors telling us what to do and denying us simply pleasures. Healthy at any size, internet says so, just bad luck, stop interfering.”

I appreciate that there is a time and a place for (unsolicited) lifestyle advice relating to cardiac health, but an appointment with your physician to discuss your recovery from a coronary artery bypass **IS** that time and that place.

Some people are beyond help.

#18

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Late to the party but may as well add this:

I was working with a physician and we went to see a patient who insisted that he had tiny fibers and worms/ bugs coming out from his skin. He had extensively googled his symptoms, self diagnosed with Morgellons disease, and had even gone as far as to join a support group. He was extremely articulate and intelligent, but when confronted with the fact that Morgellon’s disease is a delusional parasitosis, he acknowledged this but couldn’t grasp that a delusion would mean that he is perceiving something that is not actually there (delusion = fixed, false belief).

#19

Not a doctor, but throughout my childhood and teen years I had these weird episodes where I would suddenly have really bad Deja Vu and get very nauseous. For the next few hours afterward I would feel like I was in a fog and my memory would be bad. Eventually I googled my symptoms and learned they might be minor epileptic seizures.

I went to a doctor and he laughed it off and told me it was probably just having panic attacks related to the normal emotions of being a teenager. I was so sure he was wrong that I opted to go get an EEG – turns out I have a mild form of epilepsy and google was totally right.

Image source: mambo_number_69

#20

Image source: hungrylikethewolf2, Getty Images /Unsplash

Like many others commenting on this post, I had the reverse happen. I was having debilitating stomach pain and vomiting about 4 years ago. I couldn’t keep anything down and I lost 20 pounds. A gastroenterologist told me I had acid reflux. My mom, however, went online and suspected I had Crohns Disease. A visit to a second gastroenterologist confirmed this, and I had to have about 8 inches of my small intestine taken out a month later.

#21

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Not a doctor but worked at a hospital for a while. One of our doctors came back to the nurses station laughing because someone was fully convinced they were diabetic because they were “craving” water and webmd said that makes them diabetic. Turns out they are just human and require it to live..

#22

Not Web MD, but bloggers….

My husband just graduated Med school and during his pediatrics rotation he ran into morbidly obese 10 year old girl who was showing very clear signs of type 2 diabetes. He and his supervising physican calmly explained to the mom (who was well over 400lbs herself) how serious this was. The mom pulled out some card written by a blogger how the questions they were asking were showing clear anti-fat bias. She quoted things about statatisics and genetics that were absolute nonsense and she got it all from HAES (health at any size) bloggers. she tore both my husband and the MD a new on on Health Grades so that really pissed me off so I looked into the blogger she quoted and the blogger is such a clear liar it’s not even funny. She doesn’t understand the first thing about stats or science despite claiming advanced degrees, she claims to be a world record marathon holder at 300lbs and an ironman Triathelte. It was so ludicrous and as dangerous as anti-vaxx and as silly as flat earth.

Image source: madisonpreggers

#23

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I have a spin on this topic…

I had a searing pain through the left side of my chest. It was excruciating. It started as a dull pain but quickly felt like my chest was on fire. I thought I might be having a heart attack.

While lying in bed attempting to sleep and literally crying from pain, I googled my symptoms. My self diagnosis: shingles.

The next morning I went to the doctor and told him what I thought the problem was. To my surprise, he opened a web browser and went into EXACTLY the same site I’d looked at the night before. And sure enough: shingles.

#24

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For a stretch towards the end of high school and beginning of college I repeatedly had sinus infections. We’re talking one every 3 to 4 months for the span of about 2 years. The nurse I got initially told me not to believe everything I read on the internet and to stop googling my symptoms just for my doctor to come in about 2 minutes later and say “so you have another sinus infection?” knowing I was going to be right without her checking.

#25

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Paramedic student here. Last week we had a call for an imminent delivery. Pt started having abdominal pain that would last a little bit and stop. And about 2-3 min later would start again. She googled her symptoms and everything she found was saying she was in labor. She called her husband and he told her to call 911. We walked in as the baby was crowning. She had no idea she was pregnant.