I Spent Two Months as a Cyberchondriac
When hypochondriacs flock online, a community of the truly sick helps them find comfort
A year ago, around Christmas, I noticed a red rash on my right breast. I was nursing my six-month-old, who liked to sink his fingernails into the flesh of my breast as he ate. On this occasion, he had left a series of tiny cuts, like paper cuts, but they quickly grew red and itchy, and the patch spread. I thought the cuts were infected, and then I wondered if I had been bitten by bedbugs or fleas.
Predictably enough, I Googled “itchy red rash on breast.” The first result, boxed off in an authoritative square at the top of the page, was inflammatory breast cancer (IBC), an extremely aggressive form of breast cancer that presented unusually — rather than the characteristic lump detected by feeling or mammogram, IBC flares up as a sudden rash, usually hot to the touch, and sometimes accompanied by a dimpling that resembles the skin of an orange.
When I saw this result, I felt a flush of chill power through me, as if I’d been injected with ice water. Every result on the page was about IBC. I was only 36; wasn’t this too young? I Googled more. I read the blog of a 30-year-old woman diagnosed with IBC, the mother (like me) of two small sons. The last blog entry was written by her husband…
