Hi all!
New week, new month, new season!
Pardon my absence for the last couple of weeks – I’ve been a bit crook and have been coming home from work completely knackered and quite incapable of doing much other than going straight to bed! Nic has been cranking out some awesome content though so I’m sure that you have hardly noticed 
Having been sick, the last couple of weeks have been a struggle in terms of BGs and not just fatigue with, unsurprisingly, lots of fluctuations and heaps of hypos and highs as I’ve been trying to get the levels back under control. For a couple of weeks I thought I was just working too hard and not getting enough rest and sleep but things didn’t seem to be getting any better and then, upon a visit to my brother and sister-in-laws place a week ago and a discussion I had with them, I decided that I would do some research on the internet to try and find some solutions.
As it turned out, I actually managed to figure out what was wrong and a quick visit to my GP the following day saw me leave with a 2 weeks course of antibiotics in hand and I’m already feeling about a 1000 times better – thank goodness! The BGs are also coming back down nicely and everything is returning to normal to my great relief. You know what it’s like right? You feel a bit run down but nothing serious and then the levels go south but you still think you might just be being a bit of a pansy so you rock on and so it goes…it’s nice at the end of it to find out that there really was something causing it and you can give yourself a bit of a break from the self-deprecating thoughts that’d been flying round your head.
Then again, maybe I’m just a typical male?
In true form though, it got me thinking about how much information is available for us all to access via the web and that how despite the huge amounts of great information around there is undoubtedly a good dose of utter rubbish and potentially damaging information out there. Nic raised the topic when she was blogging about all the doomsayers and negative information out there on pregnancy and diabetes but the same is also true of just general health info too as I discovered last week (not to mention the news and general info). It makes you wonder doesn’t it – how much information is too much and, how do you get the good information with useful and formative details to people without the useless tripe?
How much weight do you guys place on what you read online about diabetes and health stuff in general and how do you filter it? Would you trust something in print more than you would the web? Do you ask your healthcare team to vet the info for you ? Do you do lots of Googling and read the primary research?
I’d be really interested to know because sometimes, it’s an obvious life saver. Does anyone have any good stories?
- Aaron
Posted in Complications, Hypos & Hypers, Medical Services, Slice of Life
Tagged as google, GP, illness, internet, Sick
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2 comments have been made on this post
Candice wrote
Hey,
First of all – while I totally get where you are coming from on the ‘too much scary information’ online when it comes to researching health issues – but if it weren’t for Google I may not have been diagnosed as quickly as I was. 2.5 years ago when I starting experiencing the typical diabetic symptoms I began googling and diabetes kept popping up – eventually I rang my doctor and told him the deal saying I should go get bloods done before I saw him so that we could shortcut the whole process. And badda-bing badd-boom I am type 1.
I think you just have to use your intuition – obviously personal accounts of health issues have a certain place in the mix, but it has to be remembered that each person is different (as is their writing style and level of dramatisation!)
In terms of very factual based stuff, I find medical sites useful to a degree and a friend pointed me in the direction of this one http://nz.reed-biomedical.com/ which is from the president of the Diabetes NZ Rotorua and has a great balance of info that doesn’t make you feel like it is all just a hopeless case.
At the end of the day I am grateful for the internet when it comes to having diabetes – it is all about how you use it, and being able to connect with people all over the world in the same situation certainly helps.
Aaron wrote
Hi Candice,
I couldn’t agree more. The internet has done amazing things for people and there has really opened up information and knowledge which is awesome. Many people now have access to help that was previously completely unobtainable which is awesome.
The perfect example is exactly what happened with you diagnosing yourself – hardly a bad thing!
Your right about the common sense and the grain of salt. Ultimately the good definitely out weighs the bad though, no doubt about that