Google is my doctor

Experiencing some strange symptoms I did what every normal American would do, I googled them. "Pain in left ear and top of head". The problem with googling your symptoms is that you will undoubtedly stumble upon something that will make you think your situation is much worse than it actually is. Nevermind that you don't have all the symptoms that they were talking about. Just because I don't have intense vertigo or incessant ringing in my ears doesn't mean the doctors won't be just as stumped with my condition. Besides, who's to say that I'm not just in the first stages of this? My ears could very well start ringing any second now, and I'm pretty sure I had a moment where I might have felt just a teensy bit lightheaded after I got up too quickly. Fortunately, reason (or the accounts of multiple spinal taps, MRIs, and CT scans) got the better of me and I decided that I probably didn't have what that man had after all. I was still convinced, however, that whatever I had could be easily diagnosed using the internet.

I turned to one of my favorite sites, an online self diagnosis tool. It's the ultimate hypochondriac's tool. Just click on what hurts you, and it will give you 2-3 diagnoses along with possible treatments. It even has options for mental illness when you click on the head, as I found out. It turns out, my symptoms are consistent with middle ear problems. Armed with that valuable information I could now do the next logical step: use the information to perform a more informed google search. "pain in middle ear and top of head".

With the new keywords I was able to make a much better diagnosis. When I say better, I mean one that doesn't involve multiple trips to the doctors and various invasive procedures. According to the Michigan Headache and Neurological Institute, I have what is called referred pain. According to their FAQs, "Nasal or sinus pain may be perceived as a headache on the top of the head." This must be allergy related. Having successfully found a diagnosis to my liking, I am now ready to prescribe my treatment. I'm going to take the allergy medication my doctor prescribed for me last month and go to bed. Isn't technology great? What did people do before google? They probably just went to bed and felt better in the morning without ever knowing why.