fashion 2011: What I wore when facing a terrifying internet diagnosis

Yesterday morning I woke up a bit sniffly and sore-throaty. By nightfall I could no longer deny that I had come down with a bad cold. Naturally, before popping Advil or making tea with honey or doing anything normal people do when they get sick, the first thing I did was answer quizzes about my symptoms over the glow of the computer screen. Did my head suffer from a stabbing pain, a sharp pain, or more of a dull ache? Did my cold come on suddenly, or had I felt sick for days? Did I feel queasy? Sweaty? Nauseous? The computer spit out a variety of terrifying diagnosis: Brain tumor. Cerebral laceration. Influenza. Today was going to be a long day.

One of the most important (and wildly ignored) lessons I've learned in my online life is that if you're sick, or anxious, or anxious about being sick, the internet is only going to make things worse. Perhaps you can relate.

For example, I've learned that, if pregnant, just don't Google anything. Ever. You will go from a perfectly normal pregnant woman, wondering why you have a side cramp, to a sobbing, heaving, hysterical wreck who may or may not be carrying a severely deformed Elephant Man-child with one eye and six arms, who will probably be born and immediately descend into a life of crime because you had half a glass of WINE last week, and now you're a terrible mother and your child stands no chance and oh, you should check for a fever because you've probably CONTRACTED MALARIA and YOU AND EVERYONE YOU KNOW WILL BE DEAD, and did I mention there is some horrible malady affecting your baby right now? RIGHT THIS VERY INSTANT?!?! That will teach you to take Benadryl, you drug-addicted harpie.

I usually turn to the Web for advice on common ailments. Mistake. Got a UTI? You should drink cranberry juice, not drink cranberry juice, eat yogurt, avoid dairy, take antibiotics, but be aware that the antibiotics will interact with your birth control, except when they won't, but it doesn't matter because you shouldn't have sex for three days/a week/two months/the rest of your life because what if you give the UTI to your partner/push it up into your brain/get hysteria? There's so much conflicting information on the Internet that even a minor illness can become a complex psychodrama of contradictory recommendations. I once determined, with help from WebMD, that I had a brain aneurysm. Turned out to be a sinus infection.

And don't get me started on the labyrinth of despair I enter when it comes to my children. When my daughter was 5 months old, I once googled "diaper rash". I figured it was a normal thing, but hey, why not google it just to be safe? Wrong. Don't google anything involving the word rash. Just don't. Out spat information regarding the tropical fungus my child was most likely infected with, and a sly accusation of child abuse and neglect. I spent a month feeling like the worst mother on the planet and half-expecting CPS to swoop in. I was convinced they'd be doing me a favor anyway because OBVIOUSLY I couldn't be trusted to care for a child.

I have no doubt that there are some people who can simply visit MayoClinic.com, get reassurance or a few questions to ask their doctors, and then move on without tumbling down a rabbit hole of anxiety and photographs of lesions. But not me. No sir, most certainly not me.

While I wanted to spend the day under the covers in my favorite flannel pajamas, I had to leave the house. We know how I feel about people who wear pajamas in public, so that wasn't an option. Instead, I went with something classic, comfortable, and warm. My head might be spinning with terrifying internet diagnoses, and I might be worrying that I'll drown in a pool of my own snot, but you'd never know it, right?