The doctor will see you now.
The doctor will come to your house. There is no appointment necessary.
The doctor will explain the diagnosis. Need an extra few minutes? An extra hour? No problem. Want a second opinion? No problem again. See a specialist?Of course, referrals are so easy.
The doctor takes Medicare, Medicaid, or private insurance. Free works, too.
Obamacare under fire? Don’t worry about it.
Come on in. Or, rather, click on in. Because this doctor, of course, is Dr. Internet.
Granted, there are some creeps, frauds, and imposters lurking around the office. But there are some first-rate docs too, from places such as the Mayo Clinic and Harvard Medical School. Some of these actual doctors, with licenses and medical school training and humanoid features and all that, try to share space with Dr. Internet and actually charge for their personal online attention.
Good luck with that! They soon learn what musicians, newspapers, and writers learned long ago — once you give it away you can’t charge for it.
Here’s the cold reality of healthcare in this day and age. If you’re broken or bleeding or unconscious or in imminent danger of dying, go to a real doctor and be prepared to wait and pay big money. If you’re suffering and don’t feel well, sleep well, eat right, drink right, or look well, consult Dr. Internet. Any hour, any day.
It was recently widely reported that diet soft drinks can have nasty side effects such as increased risk of strokes and dementia. Never mind that anything sold in 32-ounce cups in convenience stores and gas stations probably isn’t good for you. This warning came from a study by doctors at Boston University School of Medicine who wrote that “there are many studies now suggesting detrimental effects of sugary beverages, but we also need to consider the possibility that diet drinks may not be healthy alternatives.”
As a substitute, is orange juice good for you? Google that and get 8.4 million results. Drink up. Or throw it out. Your call. Grapefruit juice instead? Excellent source of Vitamin C, which prevents colds, scurvy, and hyper tension, according to conventional wisdom and “www.webmd.com. But not with Lipitor, the commonly prescribed statin drug for lowering cholesterol. “To be on the safe side, check with your doctor,” says the Harvard Medical School online publication.
Sun exposure is good for you, says a 60-something doctor friend in Memphis who walks shirtless and hatless every day he can in order to get at least 30 minutes of full-body sunshine and Vitamin D. Bad for you, says another doctor friend who lathers up every square inch of his head and body with sunscreen and layers of clothing when he goes outside to lessen the risk of skin cancer. Dr. Internet says they’re both right.
More on vitamin D. We all “know” by now that cheese is bad for cholesterol, and eggs (especially the dreaded yolk, a veritable dirty bomb waiting to explode in your bloodstream) are worse. Well, if you have had a physical recently, and that physical included a blood test screening for Vitamin D, you may have gotten a note from your doctor to add more Vitamin D to your daily diet. And if you then go see Dr. Internet and ask about “natural sources of Vitamin D” you will see the aforementioned cheese and eggs and egg yolks.
To be fair, Dr. Internet often gives a detailed explanation that tamps down the alarm and straddles the medical fence. But the nightly television news shows and the big online newspapers have to boil it down to a minute or less to accommodate the attention span of viewers and online surfers, which leads to simplifications that can cause stress and anxiety and drive you to sleep aids that cause dependence and short-term memory loss that make you irritable, which leads to heart attacks, so you probably should consult a doctor right this minute.
It’s no problem.
