If your doctor won't tell you, the Net offers alternatives. Olga Spiegel Amie Yaussy's general practitioner was clueless about the stiff, cold and swollen fingers she developed last year. His information was persuasive, and through discussions with family members Yaussy discovered a late aunt had scleroderma. Library research told her a finger biopsy by a dermatologist would disclose if if she, too, had the autoimmune disease. Eight months after that first visit to her general practitioner Yaussy, who lives in Columbus, Ohio, had a positive diagnosis for a disease which too often takes years to identify.
Many doctors appreciate informed patients.
The University of Washington campus security guard has done just that, learning much from the Internet. Some doctors, initially skeptical or hostile to patients who insist on being equal partners in their medical care, come around. An asthma patient in Madison, Wisconsin, who asked that her name be withheld, reports her allergist was initially dismissive when she told him about the relief she'd gotten from oral magnesium supplements, which she'd learned about on the Internet. But he was impressed when the woman, a writer, showed him citations in the Internet's Medical Sciences Bulletin. The articles cited had originally been published in the 1994 issues of The Lancet and the American Journal of Medicine.