As many of you know, I moved to a new town recently. I ended up with the flu and needed to find a new doctor. My blood pressure has always been a little higher than normal and I had just come off three weeks of pumping myself full of cold medicine. My new doctor (who was 30, looked 20 and reminded me of Doogie Howser) proceeded to go through all of the horrible things that could happen to me from having high blood pressure and recommended that I go on medication. I am only 36 and a little over weight. I could get off my butt and start working out and leaving the cookie after dinner behind. But I was a little hesitant to start taking blood pressure meds with no other tests. When I expressed this to my doctor, he simply said “Google it.” (meaning high blood pressure meds).
Google it? He wanted me to Google my health issues? Yeah, I do use WebMD to self-diagnose from time-to-time, but Googling my high blood pressure? That just seemed wrong.
I told this story to several friends and they were just as surprised as I was. But, as we conversed about other topics, I couldn’t believe how many times I heard (or said) “I Googled it and found out….”.
Are we becoming a society that is so lazy we are relying on Google for all answers? Do we believe everything that we read on the Internet? Do we find ourselves Googling everyday? Am I blowing this out of proportion?
I’d love to hear other opinions on “Googling it”.
