I agree with this. I do google symptoms myself on occasion, but I always try to make sure that what I see online reflects what's actually going on with me to t

I agree with this. I do google symptoms myself on occasion, but I always try to make sure that what I see online reflects what's actually going on with me to the extent possible, and I don't freak out when one of the possibilities ends up being, for instance, "cancer," because it's relatively unlikely that I have cancer, and a lot of things end up being symptoms of various cancers. Here's a great example: I had some weird calluses show up on the very sides of my thumb pads and on the ventral aspect of the first phalangeal joint of each of my index fingers. The areas in which these calluses showed up was exactly mirrored on each hand. I googled a little bit and found a whole lot of nothing, but I did find a reference to calluses and esophageal cancer. I clearly do not have esophageal cancer. I have none of the symptoms so it's just a wildly improbable diagnosis. What I did was show them to a friend of mine who's a family med doctor. I have an agreement with all my doctor friends that I will not ask them personal medical questions beyond "hey, is this weird and should I go see someone about it?" My friend said those were extremely weird places to have calluses given that they weren't the result of some activity I'd recently taken up using my hands (and they weren't). Eventually, I ended up in a dermatologist's office where they diagnosed hyperkeratotic hand eczema. Given I have asthma, allergies, and I've had eczema issues in the past, that's a reasonable diagnosis. And when I went to a doctor, I didn't say "I googled this and these things came up." I said "I have these weird calluses. I don't know why they're there because I haven't started any new activities recently so I'm a little concerned about them."