Irrational fear over new and unusual lumps/rashes/coughs/tongue patterning is a common affliction for the work-from-home flancer. And what a stroke of luck it is that the World Wide Web is sitting there in front of us, 24/7 so that we may enjoy full, unlimited access to the sort of information that can turn gentle puzzlement into paranoia and terror of epic proportions within seconds*. Combine that with a caffeine to blood ratio of 78-22 and only a <Gray’s Anatomy> box set for company and voila! it’s highly likely you have 13 days to live.
Googling one’s ailments is a double-edged sword. One massive plus is that it saves you from having to do any work – but it ALSO omits the need for a visit to a GP. Now, to all of you that have inhaled sharply at the notion that anyone in their right mind would choose www.haveyougotlurg.com over a bona fide health consultant, it is suggested that you go and hang out with some student doctors quite soon. If you had ever had this dubious pleasure you would realise that placing yourself in any GP’s hands is an almighty gamble – especially if you’re having your appendix popped out by the doctor who – the night before his Appendix Removal Class at college – likely sunk fifteen pints of gin at All Bar One. Indeed, those very hands which are taking your temperature today were, only a few years ago, shaky, DT-ridden mitts, trying desperately to clutch at a scalpel and dreaming of a lunchtime pint.
Food for thought indeed.
Saying that, online health info is about a million times more scaremongeringly evil than a GP who, despite possibly having spent a lot of his university life trying to climb onto the roof of the Ents office whilst dressed in a sequinned mini-dress and wig would rarely – if ever – hoike out technicolour photographs of a gigantic weeping sore, explaining in a cold detatched manner that this is how your unidentifiable spot could look within weeks. Online doctoring also loves a bit of worst-case-scenario. Google ‘Headache’ and you will find out everything you need to know about brain stem tumours. Google ‘Rash’ and ringworm will haunt your dreams. Google ‘Dizziness’ and The Brain and Spine Organisation of Hull will present you with a questionnaire to discover whether or not you will lose the use of your limbs within the next 48 hours. (Probably)
And so if you happen to stumble across a flancer gazing in dread at a laptop screen you can make an educated guess that they have just Googled ‘Mole’** and are now looking at a page full of words like : ‘spread’, ‘malignant’ and ‘nodular’ and other unpronounceable horrors that look like the Countdown Conundrum before it’s solved***.
But at least it stops you worrying about your overdraft for a bit.
TODAY’S FOOTNOTES
*depending on whether or not you have Broadband.
**NEVER google this word.
**Either that or they’ve just FB-ed an old boy/girlfriend and are looking at their wedding photos.
Things to do in freelancing when you're bored 