Whenever something might be wrong with me, health-wise, I always do the exact thing I should not: search the Internet. This is especially bad if you are a hypochondriac [which I am], because basically all the Internet does is take your symptoms and tell you that you might have cancer.
My favorite is when I go to a medical site in order to try and eliminate what could be wrong with me by looking at other symptoms. I think, “Well, phew! I don’t have any of those!” and then the site continues to say that all or none of these symptoms may be present. That’s not helpful! It’s like with heart attacks. Heart attacks in women can have no symptoms at all. You, Female Reader, could be having a heart attack right now and never know it. Does that make sense? Isn’t that something you’d think you would know about? Clearly all systems are not normal here.
Our organs should come with distress beacons. “We’re getting a signal coming from the pancreas. Copy that, Pancreas, prepare for hospital visitation.” But no. Our body’s way of telling us something is wrong is with general, unspecified pain. So when I have pain in my calf and go to the Internet to try and find a reason I see that it could be a stressed muscle from not stretching before my daily stint on the ellipitical machine, sure. BUT IT COULD ALSO BE a blood clot that will make its way through my blood stream and lodge itself into either my brain or my heart, killing me instantly!
Or cancer.